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hannahssimblr · 6 months ago

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In the hallway after school on Tuesday, as I head to my locker to retrieve my gear bag, I spot Miss O’Reilly. She is locking up the art room, and gives me a big smile as I approach her. She’s always doing that, smiling at me, I mean, and it throws me off. It's usually not the expression teachers have when they see me coming.

I smile awkwardly in return and she turns her body towards me, takes a step, prompting me to halt beside her instead of barrelling past her like I would have, not enthused about facing the wrath of Doherty if I hit the rugby pitch even one minute late.

“Jude! I've been meaning to congratulate you.”

“Um, for what?”

She laughs as though I’m being dense deliberately, “I spoke to Eileen, the guidance counsellor last Friday and she told me about your offers.”

“Oh, for college.”

“Yes! How wonderful. I’m just so pleased for you that everything worked out the way that you hoped it would, after all of the hard work you put in this last year it’s just fantastic to hear it. And tell me, did you get accepted to every college you applied for?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” she takes a big pause, taking it in, “wow. You must be delighted. How does it feel?”

“I dunno, miss.”

“Hard to get your head around, I’m sure. Your parents must be proud too.”

“Mm.”

She’s determined to ignore our mismatched attitudes towards this news, taking a big, jubilant breath before launching into more affirmations, “well, what a confirmation of your talent and skill. I had a really good feeling about your work when you came to my class last year, and I’m just so pleased that you got the results you wanted. Have you decided which college to choose yet?”

I shift my weight from one foot to the other, “yeah I’m choosing NCAD.”

“Oh!” I can tell she’s trying to maintain her upbeat attitude, but eyebrows slowly draw together in confusion, “I hadn’t realised you changed your plan. When we last spoke about it in March you told me you were looking forward to attending universities abroad.”

I shrug, “Yeah, I, um, I changed my mind in the end. I’m going to stay in Dublin.”

“Hm, okay, I just… Jude, do you mind if I ask you why?”

“Yeah, you can ask,” I say, and am instantly horrified by the tremor in my voice. I fight it back with a hard swallow, “It’s just, like… um,” Oh God. What is happening to me? I’m conscious of the crowds of students milling through the hallway right behind me, and of the fact that I categorically cannot do this here. “Sorry…”

“Oh, come in,” she says in a low voice, jangling the keys in the art room door with an urgency that feels entirely necessary, and when she lets me into the room ahead of her I stand dumbly in the middle of it as she fumbles with the blind over the glass doors, tingling jolts of anxiety running down my arms and through the tips of my fingers.

“What is it, sweetheart?” She says, and simply that, the word she uses and the way she uses it makes me want to crumple onto the linoleum floor in front of her.

“You’re alright, you’re just…” she purses her lips, searching for the word, “overwhelmed, I’d say. College and all of that kind of thing, it can get on top of you at this time of year. I know it’s a lot to think about.”

I manage a grunt of vague agreement.

Miss O’Reilly drags a folding chair from the side of the room, “C’mere, sit down there and we’ll have a quick chat about it.”

“Um, Mr. Doherty…” I say, and she understands, “Don’t mind him. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

She settles into a seat across from me, and gives me an encouraging smile. As I search for the words I want to say I’m cognizant of how comforting this woman is, how unfazed she is by me and whatever it is that is happening to me in this room. She has a daughter, I know that, a daughter who goes to our school and for a moment I’m jealous of her, that fourteen year old girl who gets to have a mother like this one, that is soft and comforting in all the places where mine is sharp and disinterested in me and every feeling I have ever experienced.

I’m not convinced that I even know how to talk about things like this, afraid that I will try to and come across like the weirdest, most unhinged person on the planet. My thoughts and feelings will be so nonsensical that they will make everyone around me cringe with discomfort. “I’m trying to do the right things,” I attempt, “but somehow the right things feel very wrong to me.”

“When you say ‘the right things’, Jude, do you mean you want to choose the right college?”

I nod.

“And why does NCAD seem like the right choice?”

“Because of my girlfriend.”

“Michelle?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know you knew that to be honest.” I never thought that teachers noticed or cared about things that weren’t arbitrary uniform rules and homework assignments, but evidently I was wrong.

She smiles kindly, “So Michelle is going to NCAD?”

“Yeah if she gets the points in her leaving. She applied for all the same colleges as me but got none and now I feel sort of... like I have to stay for her.”

“Is that the right decision for you?”

“I dunno, miss.”

She hums contemplatively, “I’m sure you’re tired of hearing this kind of thing, but it’s not always the best choice to base big life choices on your girlfriend when you’re only eighteen years old. Especially one as important as your university.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s never an easy choice to make. I really empathise with you here, because when you’re in love with a person, you-”

“I don’t even know if I love her.”

There’s a pause, she looks surprised, and so am I. I'm stunned that I told her that, this thought that I've never dared to utter before.

And then everything comes spilling out of me. “Look, it’s just that I feel very trapped,” I say, “Sometimes I think there’s something abnormal about my brain, because I make decisions that even I don’t understand, like with Michelle... when I think about us being together and our relationship I can hardly remember anything good that’s happened between us for a long time, the last fun thing we did or the last time I felt happy. I can’t even remember what I was thinking when we got together. I feel like I’m on autopilot, or like things are just happening to me without me having a hand in it.

“Somehow I’ve just, like, ended up here and I’m making plans with her and promising her things that I haven’t even decided if I want yet. I thought that I wanted to move away, but maybe I don’t anymore. Maybe it’s wrong of me to do that, because what if I go away and then I realise that what I actually wanted was to be with Michelle?”

I breathe in, knowing that I have probably been talking too much, but now I am unwilling to stop, “My parents, they’re fighting a lot at home. Something happened a few months ago and it's just been a battlefield ever since. I know that if I go away I’ll leave my sister alone to deal with all of it. She’s only nine, and the constant tension upsets her so much, she goes into a spin about it and starts fantasising about all of these awful scenarios, and see, my parents don’t know how to deal with her, they don’t really like it when kids act like kids. Or at least they’re not that interested in them– in her. I keep imagining this future where I’m gone, I’ve left home and I’m hundreds of miles away and she’s all on her own with them, and there’s nobody to really look after her because I can’t get home so easily, and when I think like that, even the thought of going away, even wanting it a little bit makes me feel like the most selfish boy on earth…”

Miss O’Reilly produces a tissue and holds it out to me. I stare at it for several seconds before I realise she is offering it because I have started to cry. My face is somehow wet with tears. “Oh,” I say, hoarsely and take it.

“Jude, you’re still a teenager.” She says gently, “You can’t possibly be responsible for the emotions of every other person around you. It’s too much.”

“Yeah.”

“When you’re young you have to make selfish decisions, ones meant for yourself and yourself only. Nobody else is going to make them for you. You have to really ask yourself what the right choice is for you, whether you’ll be able to be truly happy in your current circumstance where nothing may change or will you be better off on your own, doing something you love and experiencing real freedom in spite of how others may feel about it.”

I wipe my eyes and nod, staring down at my lap, still in a state of shame and disbelief that I have allowed myself to sob like this in front of my teacher, though if she is bothered she doesn’t show it.

“When you imagine your ideal life,” she urges, “where none of these things are a factor, not the things you promised to Michelle, not what's going on at home, what does it look like?”

“God,” I breathe, almost chuckling because the answer is so easy, “I’m gone. I’m not here. I’m just miles away and I’m making art and hanging out and doing what I like.” It sounds so simple when I say it out loud, yet for the longest time now I’ve felt like a criminal for wanting these things.

“And where do you see yourself?”

“Berlin,” I say, surprising myself. It’s not like I’ve put real time into thinking about this, visualised myself walking those streets, in fact I don’t even know what Berlin looks like, but it feels right to say it, as though there is some cosmic reason for me to go there. Perhaps only because it’s the furthest from home.

Miss O’Reilly nods, “NCAD is a fine college, Jude, but your talent is wasted in a place where you don’t want to be. You could do anything you want. You have incredible potential and I’d be very sad to see it wasted. Life passes you by very quickly, you know, and these kinds of opportunities don’t present themselves as often as you think. It may seem obvious, but you only have one life to live.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t tell you what to do. I can’t make a decision for you, but all I want you to do is really think about this. Put a good amount of thought into what you really want when you remove everyone else from the equation, then, once you know, you can decide what's worth sacrificing. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Good, then that's your homework,” She smiles and reaches to squeeze my hand, which I am embarrassed about because my skin is clammy, but just like everything else about this moment that is humiliating to me, it doesn't appear to faze her.

“Thank you,” I say, and she nods. “I hope you’re not in a hurry to get to your rugby practice.”

“No,” I sniff, and let out a thick laugh, “No miss, I think I’ll skip it today.”

“Good,” she says, “That’s a good start, see? Here you are, doing exactly as you wish.”

She smiles at me, once again, that bright, warm smile, and I give her one in return because maybe it's just me, my weird brain and the things it invents, but the feeling of hope that rises in me in that moment feels very real.

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#lucky boy 2010 #that's the last of April!!#i'm so exicted to move on from this #and say goodbye to this cursed school

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