Not Like the Others #3/This one Goes out to my Goats

I found out yesterday that the alternative high school that I graduated from, is discontinuing its services this June, after the last senior class takes the stage for graduation. I would say my emotions were already pretty unpredictable, but when I started crying, somehow I wasn't surprised. I knew that I was sad about the news. I was grieving a loss, and still am. It feels like I have lost a person; an old friend whom I might have lost touch with at some point, but that would always be around for me when I needed them. When in fact, I have lost more than a single person. I have lost a community, a family, a tribe of people that have always accepted me for who I am, even as I continue to grow and change. We were kindred spirits, soul mates, like-minded individuals who had all come from different places and needed to belong. No I wasn't best friends with all of my classmates and no I didn't get along with the entire staff. Some I never got to know at all; but that was the magic of the school. You were only supposed to stay as long as you needed to and then you would move on. You could choose to visit regularly or never look back, but the school would always be where it was, waiting, for you or anyone that needed to be part of something. 

Yesterday when I heard the news I thought back to how I had come to belong there. I was 14 years old, had "completed" my first year of high school at a public school in the neighborhood where I lived. The year had passed, and that was the only closure I had when the beginning of my high school experience ended. I had been severely depressed, isolated myself from my friends, stopped attending my classes and had been hospitalized for self-harm. I was spending most days at work with my mom, in a cubicle in the back of her office, laying on the floor and hoping to die. The school year ended and I didn't feel like I could ever return to the school, my friends or that world. I didn't want any of them to know what had become of me, that I had even continued to exist. I was humiliated and disgusted with myself. I was crazy person, a beast. To this day, when I run into someone from that school and neighborhood, I pretend not to know them, hoping against hope they really do not know or remember me.

That was it, I had told my mom, that was the chance I had to graduate high school and I had blown it. She refused to believe that, she refused to give up on me. I will always be grateful to her for that, and so many other things. She found Open Meadow and I applied, never thinking that it would be my home and sanctuary for the next three years. I still remember having my initial interview with Laura, the art teacher. I remember telling her that I was bipolar, when the diagnosis was still new, something I didn't know how to talk about or fully understand yet. She was the first person, other than my mom or psychiatrist that told me that I could still be anyone. That I had talents I hadn't discovered yet, that I was bipolar but it did not define me and that I would come to embrace it and have hope again. She told me those same things the second time she interviewed me, after I had flunked out of my classes. She told me that until the day I graduated, and now she reads my blog. Hi Laura! 

She is only one of the many people from that tribe, that family that embraced me and gave me hope again. I will never be able to explain to them or to anyone what those people and that school mean to me. I am overwhelmed by the kindness, compassion and wisdom this community has shown me. I used to think that I would one day be a teacher at that very school, and although the program will cease to exist, my dedication to continue the work that Open Meadow started has been renewed and is stronger than ever. I reach out to my Open Meadow family now with my whole heart. I am thinking of all of you and wish you wholeness, happiness and belonging, wherever you find yourselves.

I think all of this reminds me of where I have come from and all that I have yet to see; of the world, of others and of myself. This is a message to persevere, in dedication to those that have always encouraged me to do so. In this there is grief and loss, but also a sign that in this moment, I am right where I need to be.