Thanks to my English Teacher

I think that I have always processed my emotions in a way which some people would describe as ‘abnormal’. I find that if I don’t write down how I’m feeling, I can’t come up with a solution or even understand why I am feeling that way. This is one of the reasons I chose to do a creative writing degree. I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing(I tell myself as I write a sixteen-page essay, trying to figure out why my mum upset me on our family holiday.)

I guess that I have always expressed myself creatively. I was nine years old when my dad passed away. Going through that sort of grief at a young age is confusing. My mind was innocent; I didn’t wonder about violence or death. So, when he died, naturally, it took me a while to grasp what had happened. I can remember so vividly wanting to go to school the weekend after my dad’s passing. My family gave me the option, expecting me to choose staying at home with my older sister, where we could cuddle all day on the sofa in our pajamas, binging the Harry Potter movies with lots of snacks. But instead, that Monday morning, I got up like normal at 7:30 am, brushed my teeth, got dressed, struggled to find a pair of even socks, asked my mum to do me pig tails with my favorite pink ribbon around each bobble, ate a big bowl of Coco Pops, and hobbled to school with my cousin, Billy.

When I got to school, I ran into the cloakroom, hung my backpack and coat on the rack, headed into class, and sat with my friends. We spoke about our current hyper fixation on Hannah Montana and which characters each of us would be. Not once did I mention what had happened to me over the weekend. I was so oblivious to all three of my teachers having a conversation about me, to which some other students overheard. Eventually, I got taken out of class and asked to help Mrs. Kinnison print out some worksheets, which, at the time, I thought she could’ve easily done on her own. I soon realized it was a way to get me out of class so that my head teacher, Mrs. Starbuck, could tell the class that ‘Mia’s dad has died’ and to be ‘extra nice to me’.As I opened the door to the classroom, I was hit by about fifty faces of pity and a few awkward smiles. I felt every pair of eyes in that room pin me. My palms begin to sweat, and my feet curl up, rubbing against the front of my shoe.

Even at the funeral, I don’t remember fully processing my dad’s death. Which I find strange, because everyone says that funerals make things feel more real, hearing your family and friends talk about that person in the past tense rather than the present. But I don’t think that’s true. It becomes real when you want to tell that person something, but you can’t. Or when you go through a milestone in life, like starting school.

I was never much of an academic. If I wanted to be good at something, I had to put the effort in. I would stay behind after math class to go over things everyone else understood three lessons ago. I guess this worked out well for me; it’s given me more of a disciplined attitude towards things I don’t want to do, but probably should, like going to the gym or applying for jobs. The one subject I didn’t have to try hard in was English, specifically English language. Sometimes I found English Literature boring, although I didn’t like to admit that to myself, in case that meant I’d lose my love for writing, I tried to force myself to enjoy Macbeth but would often end up zoning out in class.

For the first two years of school, I had an English teacher called Miss Whitaker. I loved creative writing in her classes, and I always got good grades, but we would often write specific fiction like fantasy or sci-fi.

It wasn’t until my third year that I had a new teacher. He was called Mr. Owen. He had a really interesting way of teaching a class, he would make us all write down on his whiteboard what we wanted to learn about on that day, rather than lecturing us about things we had already gone over one hundred times.` I still call him my Mr. Keating (the really cool teacher from the movie ‘Dead Poets Society’). He was interested in the way I wrote and allowed us all to discover our own voices in our writing. From this point onwards, all I wanted to do was write. I found ‘my voice’ in writing about things that were personal to me and broadening them into short stories. I got into the habit of journaling, not daily if I’m completely honest, but maybe weekly to help with writing inspiration, and whilst doing this, I discovered a lot about myself.

One day in the summer of 2021, when I was fifteen years old, I sat in my window sill, journaling. And found myself crying as my words naturally flowed from my pen onto the paper. Crying because I had just written what it had felt like to lose my best friend, my dad, at the age of nine.