Failure

Today someone told me a very sad story, it was a young girl who is so vivacious, she can really bring up all a groups mood. She lingered a while until everyone left and asked me if I got along well with my family. I said sure I did, maybe not all the time but generally we were civil. Then she asked me if I thought that all families should be that way, and that's when her line of questioning started to worry me. But I said, that yes I believed families should support each member that the world is a hard place, and a family should be that one constant place you can find safety. She said to me, my parents don't love me you know. I thought she was joking, but the way she said it was so sad, I had never seen her eyes wander so, or her voice trail so dimly. It's so strange why people believe you can be a rock for them, even when you barely know each other, but what truly amazed me was that, even with such heartache weighing over her, she was willing to trust people, and open up. To look for help in trying to understand what seemed so hard to grasp.

Some of the most difficult things of being a teacher has been dealing with stuff like this. Listening to young kids and older people talking about their problems and how they have been affecting them. Sometimes it is bullshit, the just need to get of the hook, and believe they can buy my sympathy with a sob story. But then there's this times, when you look into a person's eyes and it's bare, their soul is pouring out and they just want someone to listen. They don't need me to fix their problems, that young girl was probably happier when she saw my reaction of disgust for the type of people who would treat her like that, than if I had actually had a solution to her problems. She just wanted to see it in someone else, that shit wasn't right, that it wasn't fair to her. 

It's hard to stay mad at the world, or in particular some people, when you can look into their eyes and just see it. They're broken; they don't know how to be at peace with the world. They don't know how to be happy themselves; some just make others miserable because of this. The one's that truly make me sad, are the ones who try to make the world better for everyone else. And the can usually succeed, but they can never make themselves truly happy. It hurts when it's someone you care about, because you know deep down they are lying, you can always see it in their eyes. Or hear it in their voices. Sometimes they just hide, push you away, and that's when you realize you can't do anything for them. No matter how much it hurts you to have to walk away.