2014

“We go through bad stuff to learn things about ourselves,” Jerrica once said to me. “I truly believe that.”

Wise words from my first-born daughter, then in nursing school. They reminded me of the definition of existentialism I had written on my chalkboard for students after we had read Camus’ The Stranger:

To exist means to suffer. And to live through that suffering, we find meaning in our lives.

Now I could see the book’s lessons a different way; I could relate. I had lived through the suffering, and I was looking for meaning.

“I’m still trying to figure it all out,” I told Jerr.

“Mom, your doctors didn’t even know how you lived through the accident.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.

“Really? Did they tell you that?”

I was aware that Jerrica had to sign all of my surgical consent paperwork, but she had never said much about it.

“Well, not in those words, but it was obvious,” Jerr went on. “I think it was the second day after the accident, and one of the doctors was explaining the surgeries you needed. I asked him if you were going to be okay, and he wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”

Trauma doctors, who saw life-threatening injuries on a daily basis, were surprised I had lived through the accident. I thought of the voice in the car that night. I thought about the fact that I had been resuscitated.

And then, one winter snow day off from school, while writing at the kitchen table, I decided to look up “resuscitate” in the dictionary. Maybe I was exaggerating its meaning. Or worse, maybe I didn’t really even know what it meant, I thought.

I sipped from my shiny black mug, then typed the word into Merriam Webster’s website.

“Resuscitate.”

Definitions: “being revived from apparent death or from unconsciousness.” The word’s Latin origins meant to reawaken, to rouse, and to put in motion.

That’s what I thought.

I sipped from the mug again, wondering what synonyms the word resuscitate might have, so I typed it again, this time into thesaurus.com.

Raise again. Restore. Resurrect. Bring back to life. Breathe new life into.

Resurrect.

Breathe new life into.

Holy shit.

I knew I had been resuscitated that night after losing so much blood. I knew that trauma doctors were only “hopeful” I would recover. I knew that family members were not given the reassurances they needed. But now the idea that I had been resurrected gave me pause. I had never thought of it like that.

I’d been brought back to life. A new life breathed into me. A chance to start over. A chance to finally find the happiness and peace that had been missing even before the divorce, the heart attack, the accident. A handwritten scrap of paper confirmed it.

I’d just needed to figure it out for myself.

• • •

I left our delightful two-story house in the country at the typical time—a half hour before school—on a chilly, gray weekday morning typical of early April in Ohio. It wasn’t dark, but the sun wasn’t shining, either. Rain showers, typical of spring, had been predicted for the afternoon.

But today wasn’t quite so typical.

I backed out of the garage and turned down the driveway, noticing the faintest specks of water, pinpoint-tiny droplets on my windshield, but only three or four. Not even enough to turn on the wipers. Not even enough to say it was raining. And certainly not enough to deflate the giddiness of my about-to-burst, happy heart.

Jackson wanted to marry me!

I reached the end of the drive, where I always waited to pull out. The slight hills hiding the oncoming traffic of the busy state route presented quite a challenge. In fact, if you were going to go, you had to commit.

Ah, the irony. Was I ready to commit myself to someone again? And did I believe in marriage enough to try?

I checked my hair in the rearview mirror and then glanced across the road to the field straight ahead of me, an open area before a tree line. I could not believe my eyes.

A single vertical rainbow stood straight up and down all by itself in that field.

I looked quickly to my left and right again to see if there were other witnesses, but no one else was around—no cars drove by, no neighbors stood in their yards, no joggers passed on their morning run. A rainbow for my eyes only.

A sign from the Universe that I couldn’t deny. Approval. A blessing. A symbol of hope and a promise of the future.

Very strange, this out-of-nowhere rainbow, especially on a morning with little rain and hardly any sunshine, the two ingredients normally needed to create such a phenomenon of light.

But not a coincidence. I understood this. I felt it in my heart and body and soul—all that had once been broken.

Its message was shining through.

• • •

Teenagers: the people with whom I have chosen to surround myself for seven hours a day, five days a week, thirty-six weeks a year, for most of the past two decades. You can do the math on that (I am an English teacher, after all), but I’d say that’s a lot of time invested in the “future of tomorrow.”

I’d also say it makes me somewhat of an expert on this age group.

Teenagers historically have been one of the most underestimated groups out there, but I’ve found that they really do care, and about lots and lots of things. They are also the most curious, honest, and open-minded group of people I know, and sometimes to a fault.

There’s never a dull moment with teenagers around. They make everything interesting. They’ve made me laugh, they’ve hardly ever made me cry (except that first year—class of ’95, you know who you are), and they’ve accepted me for me, on a daily basis.

Even with all my quirks.

“Don’t rattle that wrapper; she’ll flip out.”

“That Ricky Martin poster of hers creeps me out for real.”

“Dude, do not tell her you don’t have a research topic today.”

“What’s with the word ‘thusly’? Is that an English teacher thing?”

“Don’t ever knock on her door and interrupt her while she’s teaching, either. She will come unglued.”

“And whatever you do, forget sniffling if you have a cold, tapping your pencil to help you concentrate, or crunching chips. Just not worth it, man.”

They have me figured out, and they have for years—probably ever since I stepped into the classroom that first day. I have always tried to allow my students to see that I am only human, just like them, and they seem to appreciate it. Maybe even embrace it. I’m sure that watching me live with The Trifecta of Shit has helped students to realize it even more. And if I ever need my own personal cheerleaders, particularly with my sideline hobby of writing, I certainly know where to turn. Teenagers are my go-to…everything.

It just took losing my grip on the meaning of my life to figure that out. I had been so steeped in professional arrogance, thinking I deserved more, that I must have forgotten my ultimate teacher goal.

And that’s where teenagers—my students—came in.

In the months, even years, after the accident and my return to teaching, students were the ones who helped me remember. As I continued teaching what I knew—literature and writing—I let my traumatized guard down, slowly, and resumed sharing myself as I had before.

Seniors in high school on the brink of the rest of their lives and adulthood, on the edge of true independence and adventure, those whose existence hasn’t yet been marred by time or jaded by experiences—teenagers on the verge of living—listened to me, questioned me, thought for me and helped me process what had happened…to me.

They inspired me. My middle-aged self needed to hear what they had to say. I needed to see it through their youthful eyes.

• • •

I was in the middle of reading Darin Strauss’s memoir Half a Life aloud to the seniors in my English class when their bullshit meters started to go off—at least the outspoken ones.

“You know, this dude’s guilt is unbelievable,” K.J. said. “It’s, like, too much. Is he serious? Like, dude, quit wallowing already. It’s not your fault!”

When Strauss was eighteen and a month from graduation, a classmate on a bike swerved in front of the car he was driving, which struck and killed her. His memoir was an attempt to work through the guilt and responsibility he felt for her death.

“Yeah, enough already,” Corey said. “I kinda agree with K.J. on this one.”

It was early spring, a couple months before graduation, when seniors were predictably skeptical of everything. I had hoped that this late in the semester a literary non-fiction unit, rather than The Canterbury Tales (a mistake I’d made my first year teaching seniors), would keep them engaged. I had also hoped that reading it to them, rather than assigning it, would help.

So far, so good.

“Don’t you think you might feel guilty if you were in his situation?” I asked.

“Yeah, you guys,” Samantha added, “you know you would.”

“Well, yeah, of course,” K.J. said with a hint of sarcasm. “But come on. He keeps going on and on and on about how guilty he feels. He didn’t do anything wrong! Let it go, man!”

Quiet giggles erupted then, partially what K.J. had hoped to achieve. Students looked at me with wide eyes, trying to gauge my reaction.

Corey jumped back into the conversation then.

“You know, when you think about it, this book is pretty selfish,” he said.

Selfish? Where was he going with this?

“He’s taking what happened to her and writing about it, twisting it like it’s his story, and guess what? He sells books,” Corey said. “Selfish.”

“Yeah,” K.J. said. “Has he even written another book? Or is this the only one? Did he just write this one to profit off the accident?”

Uh-oh. This was not how I had hoped the discussion would go. Had I chosen the wrong piece of non-fiction writing for the unit? I had to get them back on track before they completely derailed the conversation. Luckily, I had done my teacher research.

“No, he has written other books,” I said. “In fact, he started by writing fiction and realized he had to get this story out. The guilt was too strong.”

I could identify with Strauss. I had only recently started processing in writing what had happened to me—The Trifecta of Shit—because I needed to understand it. I needed to figure out what it meant to me and the person I had become. And I also had gotten stuck in the guilt.

But I didn’t want to talk about me right now. My story wasn’t relevant.

“I know that if that happened to me, I would feel guilty,” Morgan said. “I would need to talk about it, too. It must be so awful to know that someone died in an accident you were involved in.”

“But it wasn’t. His. Fault,” K.J. insisted. “The girl rode her bike right in front of his car. He couldn’t help it.”

“You know, Ms. Young, this is just like what happened to you,” Corey said.

I wasn’t sure what he meant. I wrinkled my nose and furrowed my brows.

“Well, your accident, y’know…You did nothing wrong, and someone else died,” he explained.

“Yes, but it was different,” I said. “He was under the influence.”

“But,” Corey went on, “didn’t you tell us once that you felt some guilt for what happened, even though you did nothing wrong? And you couldn’t have avoided the accident?”

Oh, man. The discussion had just turned personal. Yes, I probably had shared that with the students. They knew I was writing about what happened, and sometimes I even shared my work with them. Modeling is a worthy educational tool.

“Yes, that’s true, Corey,” I said. “There is not one thing I could have done differently that night. It happened so fast. I never saw him coming. And yes, I do feel guilt. I couldn’t protect the girls who were with me.”

I hoped that was enough of a response. I also hoped I could get through this discussion without an emotional breakdown. I was still having trouble processing the recent events of my life on my own, let alone in front of students.

“Aw, but how could you protect them?” Samantha asked. “You had no idea. You did nothing wrong.”

I no longer felt as if I were the teacher in this discussion, leading students to their own revelations and insights. The students were counseling me, and caught up in my own thoughts, I felt the words come tumbling out of my mouth.

“I also feel guilty because someone died. A mother’s son. Someone’s brother. So young. Sometimes I feel guilty because I didn’t die. I know the accident was his fault, but I don’t know how or why I stayed alive.”

Alyssa raised her hand, and I nodded to her.

“You stayed alive to be here with us and to be with your own children. To keep teaching, to share your story, to inspire,” she explained.

Wow. I smiled at her, blinking away tears.

“Thank you.”

I was not going to cry.

“Yeah, she is so right,” Corey agreed. “I think you have what they call ‘survivor’s guilt’? Where you made it through a horrible situation that someone else died in?”

“Yes, I suppose so, Corey. I have heard of that before. Hey, K.J., what do you think now? Does it make a little more sense? The guilt, the remorse, the sadness?”

“Yeah,” K.J. said, “I suppose.”

The serious tone of his words told me he was already thinking differently about the memoir.

“But the dude still needs to get over it! It was not his fault!”

The class erupted in laughter, releasing the tension our discussion had created. K.J. was good at knowing when to make a crack to lighten the mood, but I also sensed what he was trying to tell me. What the class was trying to tell me. In their polite and clear, not-so-subtle teenage way, they were telling me it was time to let go of my guilt. And coming from students about the same age as Strauss when he hit the girl on the bike, the same age as Zach who hit me, it might have been just what I needed.

• • •

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone raise her hand and motion me closer.

Kristyn.

Quiet and thoughtful, she was known by her classmates for being strong in her faith and mature beyond her years. Kristyn recently had gone through her own tragedy, losing her mother to a heart attack just days before school started last fall.

And now she was coming up with title ideas for her English teacher’s trauma narrative. I had explained my thesis manuscript to students, asking them for their thoughts. Teenagers had way more creativity than I.

Kristyn continued to sketch in her art notebook as I approached her desk. Drawing helped her focus, and she did it quite often during class. She looked up and smiled at me.

“Have you ever heard of the Japanese artwork called kint-something?” she asked.

I had given students the key ideas and significant imagery of the manuscript to focus on—reparation, scars, shattered, etc.—and then let them brainstorm. Anything would help. I just needed a jump start.

“Um, no, I don’t think so. What is it?”

“Oh shoot, I can’t remember exactly. I mean, I know what it is, I just can’t remember what it’s called,” she explained. “You should Google it. I think you might be interested in it.”

“Okay, then I will—got any idea how to spell it?”

I had no idea even where to begin.

“Try Japanese plus art plus k-i-n-t and see what comes up,” she said.

I was amazed at what Kristyn led me to.

The first entry to appear said kintsugi was a Japanese word meaning “golden joinery.” It was an art form that repaired something broken with seams of gold so that the mended work was even more valuable than before it broke.

Oh, my goodness. Kristyn was on to something.

According to one ceramics website, it is believed that kintsugi originated in the fifteenth century when a Japanese shogun broke his favorite bowl and tried to have it repaired by sending it back to China. Metal staples were used, which displeased the shogun, so he hired Japanese craftsmen to find a better answer. Their solution was kintsugi.

The reparation with gold seams of something broken. An art form. More beautiful than before. Kintsugi as metaphor. Yes.

I had never thought of myself and what had happened like that, but it might work for me. My life had shattered into pieces, too many to count. I had become scar upon scar upon scar. Some had faded, some had been revised, and some served as reminders. All cracked and then repaired.

I had been put back together, literally—my doctor told me so. I had also been resuscitated—resurrected and given a chance at a new life, as I had recently realized. So what if my restoration embraced the flaws, even the ones I had tried to cover up? And what if my breakage became a part of my history, rather than being forgotten or avoided?

I was honored that Kristyn had thought of this for me. Humbled.

Repaired and restored, I was starting to feel whole again. Maybe, like that broken bowl, I could be better than new. More valuable. Perhaps even a more beautiful version of the person I had been.

My students thought so—at least one, anyway. Someone going through her own reconstruction.

And that was enough for me.

The classroom had become the perfect environment—without my realizing it—for a type of therapy to occur. And because my students believed in me, they were able to guide me back to myself.

It all made so much sense once I recognized what had occurred.

Teaching gave me a purpose to be alive when I couldn’t understand why I was. Teaching provided the opportunity to share my story even while trying to make sense of it. Teaching and writing helped me beat PTSD while finding forgiveness and understanding for a young man whose entire life was ahead of him. Teaching allowed me to come full circle with the experience and to feel whole again.

My students, most around the same age of the young man who hit us that warm summer evening, did what doctors could not. They fixed what he had broken, and my wounds finally started to heal. They rescued me from danger and returned me to where I belonged.

Tragedies or trauma shouldn’t define you; what gives you purpose should.

That was it. My new mantra. My own little answer to existentialism.