tearful sky.

I'm standing in-between Avenue C and Mulberry. The rain water had collected with enough effort to pool together into great streams all across campus. The downward slope starting from the GAB was like traversing through a mountain creek - not too glamorous in my water soaked feet and my contacts that were drying up due to my mask breath. It was lonely. All the students in class today had all went home, since everyone was attending class via zoom, and I was the only one left guarding the work space. Even after classes had ended, I still went to work past that time, studying for an exam at another school even knowing that I'm probably going to fail that midterm. Upon leaving the building, the groups or pairs of students I would normally see at this time, living their lives and spurring a sense of narcissistic jealousy in me about the ease of their lives, were no where to be found. Hugging my umbrella handle like it was my closest friend, I let the loneliness seep in. 

bell hooks talked about change being painful. When I first read that, I had thought about how much I remained unchanged as I tried to change myself. If I did more, if I was more, then it might be possible for someone to love me, then the loneliness that I have since the day I was born might fade away. But as I climbed to academic ladder, more course, more degree plans, more involvement and personal responsibility, despite the joys I've felt interacting with everyone I've met, they always went home at the end of the day. They all had someone waiting for them at the end of the day, while I would walk this mountain stretch everyday alone. I haven't changed enough for love, for freedom. It was certainly the case with the people I had to interact with on a daily basis. They never said it, but the look in their eyes, their silent expressions, the change in personality around others, I knew my presence elicited hate in them. And I deserved it - I wasn't enough to be their real friend. At best I was a friend, a being stuck in a relation where the other couldn't bare to have any ownership in the flimsy relationship, where I wasn't needed. Or they were friendly, just going through the gestures and phrases like an automated message. When will I be enough.

But, when I heard my students in my individual meetings, I heard cadences and melodies that I thought only I could hear. Sacrificing time for work and school, driving around trying to be a member of a school, fitting in times for meeting that stretched all day long, working through both school and work with an injury. Weren't these the symptoms of loneness too? bell hooks notes the disastrous separation of the private from the personal. What's the point? I should give up. Thoughts that were produced all day and everyday. What was the point in moving up this hill day-after-day, night-after-night. These students feel it, too, right? The denial of self as they try to grab a sheet of paper to get on with their lives, as the support themselves. What grade I make, any thing I could produced in the greater world, I would still be like I am now. Walking alone in the rain. Sitting in my car half-breathing. Crying while eating a burger from McDonalds after midnight.

I heard cars passing by; they too are lonely, right? Loneliness is that separation of self, one that hooks and Freire argue against in learning and education. I feel like I can't change, but it's maybe because I haven't tried yet. All this time, I've been trying to add to a fractured identity, and never once tried to include all of myself. The parts I hate. The parts I wish was like everyone else. The parts that deeply and desperately wanted to be love. These accidently testimonies from my students made me realize that if I wanted support, then I needed to give it more. 

As I returned to my apartment, bug-ridden and out of food, as I took off my socks and saw how wrinkly the bottom of my feet were, I exhaled and fell to sleep, feeling that #LifeGoesOn. Life really does goes on, without or without my sadness. When I wake up, I'll do better to be more of myself, rather than who I should be. People will still leave, hate me, forget about me life the sticky-note kid I am. But I'll still try to mend those distant and paradoxical parts of myself, and I hope I can do the same for my students.       

     #LifeGoesOn