The Failure of Positive Thinking
Look up there, and you'll see my favorite photo of all time. It was taken in Italy, around the beginning of the pandemic. There's so many stories there. On the most basic level, it's about something we all feel.
It's about running out of gas.
Back in high school, there was this teacher. He used to stand in the hallways and watch me walk to class. He locked eyes on me. I tried to make myself smaller and sneak past him. Then he said it.
Smile.
He had no idea who I was, except I was some sad girl who needed to cheer up. He didn't know that I'd spent the night in the ER with a paranoid schizophrenic parent. He didn't know she wanted to kill me. He didn't know that social workers visited me at my house and had me called out of class to answer questions about whether or not I felt safe. He didn't know I lied.
He didn't know that I'd already spent hours pretending everything was fine and I was just a normal teen. He didn't know he'd caught me in that one brief…