stuckbetweenStations.

“Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night.”

I don’t post here much anymore, and it seems as though it takes a pretty sweet morning with eighty plus eighth graders to make me want some sort of record of the magic that just happened at my place of employment. 

We’ve started studying monologues within a unit of characterization. Honestly, we’re preparing for a dinner theater fundraiser for our magnet program. But when I began the plan for this assignment as a means to an end of providing some sort of entertainment for that event, I had no idea what this would become. 

There are a series of monologues that exist titled simply “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night.” Originally, it was a group of high school students attempting to put into words the awkwardness that is existing in your teens. Expressing the voice of adolescence that every adult cannot possibly understand and tries very hard to put on permanent mute. 

I want to hear what they have to say. I gave them this, and I let them go. The response? A quiet that spells out success. A challenge that hit them in the gut, that will create true words of wisdom as it exists in the 13 year old brain. And believe me, it does exist. 

I modeled this, in hopes of inciting bravery & courage. I admitted my own struggle, so that they would not fear their own. So here, internet, & please never let me forget that I most certainly learn as much from my students as they learn from me.

And, of course, that I still have a lot to learn. 

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and everything has changed. The dark is there, of course, but the bedroom I’ve known my whole life has taken a new shape and I am uncomfortable in everything. Even my own skin seems to not know me and for a moment, I am frozen in this strange place, void of comfort, of familiarity, of peace.

I know that our world stops for no one. I know that you can’t plan for each individual minute of the future. I know I have to let things happen the way that they will happen, even when that way makes no sense to me or the plan I have worked so hard to create around fate’s unknown intentions. You learn that lesson when you lose someone. I know that.

But sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, blindsided by the change, by the stifling reminder that we are alone in this, I forget what I know. I forget what I am: worthy, valuable, and strong. I succumb to the fear and fragility that has seeped into my being and just listen to the quiet. Slowly, I remember. A snoring dog, the gentle twirl of the fan, the way the hall light dances off the popcorn patterned ceiling. I am awake. I am whole. I am home.