Okay, here's the deal... Now, I'm gonna sound like a fruitcake, so bear with me for a bit.
Now and then, I see flashes of things that latter happen to me. Well, no, that's not quite right. I see flashes of people I later meet, just normal early interactions with new people who end up holding key positions in Lornaworld. Life is fluid, so they may not stay for an incredibly long time, but they make a massive mark.
These images happen when I am nearly asleep or nearly awake, so it's hard to remember them well enough until I can tell you exactly what's going to happen in the scenario as it unfolds; sadly, it is often only then that I remember the earlier flashes. Now and then, I remember them and get a chance to really analyze (and fret over) them.
A confusing one was when I was yelling and my world was blurry, but I was calling across the house and had not grabbed my glasses in my haste. The first one had me quite freaked out. I was a child at the time. And this one that happened today has me feeling frazzled.
I saw a girl. She looked youngish but could have just had a vague age, such as being short and wide eyed. She had tightly curled Afro hair, but African-American was only part of her heritage, for she was more caramel-skinned and her hair looked brownish.
She was happy to be in my class.
The sense that came with this image of her was quite emphatically that my role is to be a teacher, something I have basically run away from due to how stressful it is to pour your heart and soul into presenting something and getting a sense (especially for an empath) of boredom and hateful loathing coming back from most of the people in the room. There are exceptions, of course, but one happy, appreciative student doesn't effectively compensate for that much "don't want to be here."
When I helped teach a writing class, tutored, acted as teacher assistant, and even subbed for professors, and I enjoy public speaking and performance--I have never felt quite as alive as when onstage--but the emotional stress from uninterested students who rarely put any effort into assignments and you have to jump through hoops to keep their attention was just too upsetting.
However, I have been feeling lost away from school, and my father was a professor who was cherished by many--and greatly hated by those unwilling to learn.
Anyway, I guess I will reconsider things. I was told I could always come back as a poetry TA for fun, and I know I partially taught many of my classes, although that may have just been my own obsession with being heard.
Yet, oh, how I have missed that audience. I have been half a person without it.
Recently waking during anaphylactic shock and being unable to breathe--a miiiighty scary experience, mind you, and reminiscent of when my first roommate tried to strangle me--has me remembering what Dr. Wayne Dyer, self-help guru, used to always quote, "Don't die with your music still in you."
I shall endeavor to, EpiPen at the ready for the randomness of life and all things anti-Lornaworld, share my "music." I know I can do many things, including sing in such a way that gets me gushing with compliments about its beauty, actually, and reaching others through helping them open up and be heard.
So, I will endeavor to see how much of my music I can let be heard, including rethinking my stance on teaching and also letting go of my need for sharing my writing to come with, well, anything. I have had trouble writing and sharing my fiction and creative nonfiction because it felt like shouting to an empty room, but knowing I could, quite literally, drop dead at any moment--for that is the nature of mortality, after all, even though we try to ignore it--has made me want to share more of myself now, for now is all we can really count on.
And they tell me it is a gift, so it should really be unwrapped.
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