In the past eleven years, this blog has left few subjects in my life in the shadows. I started this blog writing about my love of music, I wanted to let my thoughts and wonders about the art of music out into the open. Slowly the blog evolved to reflect the changes in my life. While music will always be my hobby and part of my professional life, my thought and experiences in my life pulled focus away from music, and the blog reflected this change.
First it was posts about this little puppy name Buffy, then running, politics, college, parenthood, and then teaching. These subjects are more the norm in this blog because more than music these subjects are what is at the certain of my life, my energy and where I find the most meaning in my life.
This blog also has been a way that I could process and better understand challenges in my life. There was an early post about my having shingles, and then I went deeper. I wrote about having Crohn’s disease, challenging times with Buffy. Other difficult moments, including struggles with parenthood. I wrote about openly, facets of my identity, and deaths in my family. There are a couple things that I haven’t written about in my life on this blog. One these topics I haven’t discussed (except for this one post) was my time in high school.
My time in college was meaningful but it has a simpler narrative. It’s was the final chapter of a trilogy. As I wrote about in these post, I had my mentors, my tribulation, and my tribe. I left college knowing myself and with an amazing partner, Diana, ready for the next adventure in life.
High was school was that darker second film in the trilogy for me. It was a time of feeling lost, not knowing my place, with an ending that felt incomplete. The road ahead after high school not well understood as high school. My teenage years didn’t give me the space and permission to fully be myself. When I graduated from high school I was both relieved to be done with high school but I also wanted to stay. This was despite the knowledge that even though I knew that even though my time at this place benefited me, it was a place that didn’t truly see me.
I feel less confident writing about my time at high school than my experiences with racism. I don’t know why, but I think that’s why I need to write about this time in my life. It has been more than twenty years since I started high school and in a year, it will be twenty years since graduating. Memories from high school, like ghosts, visit me, and instead of facing them, I have chosen to ignore them, and in that process push aside experience I need to better understand to better know myself.
So let’s do this. [inhale, 1…2…3…4…5 exhale]
I’ll tell you about the island that I grew up on and fantasies left unfulfilled. I’ll describe those tore me down and how in my responses to them, I only aided them in their pursuits. There are teachers I will write about who inspired me, and peers who made me feel less than. There are those individuals I will honor, the most unlikely of friends who showed me love and showed me a path to learn to fully be myself be and love myself.
Welcome to Mercer Island High School, home of the Islanders.
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