Last updated on November 26, 2023
My personal traumas might seem minor, yet they are traumas that cause me a lot of misery.
If I’ve had a bad experience somewhere, I relive it when I pass nearby. In Minneapolis, I struggled to walk or drive past some buildings on the university campuses. In Pittsburgh, I could barely drive by Moon Township without feeling pain in my chest. My heart would race and my body would go into a hyper-vigilant overload. Even seeing the freeway exit signs for Moon was painful.
Most negative experiences I carry about as emotional baggage come from school and work… work at schools. I should probably just dread all campuses, since schools haven’t been good to me.
Every classroom reminds me of a list of teachers and professors with whom I had negative interactions. Even if I’m the teacher, I keep hearing and seeing those memories. I hear the voices telling me I’ll never graduate from high school, I’ll never go to college, I’ll never finish a degree.
My earliest memories of teachers are negative. Most of what stays with me are the insults and criticisms. From my earliest experiences in Bakersfield to my most recent graduate degree, there have been educators that reinforced my anxieties and self-doubts.
Too many negative, unsupportive, and outright lousy teachers. Some probably thought they were offering “tough love” to students. The junior high school teacher who called us “dumb as coconuts” and compared us to his dog. Other students might have laughed it off, but the insults stayed with me. As did his throwing erasers at people. The junior high history teacher prone to throwing chairs. That’s always a good way to prove you don’t belong in a classroom.
The music teacher who never accepted that I needed to use alternative fingerings for the clarinet, due to my partial paralysis. The physical education teacher who mocked my arm not swinging properly and my inability to perform some tasks.
Each negative teacher increased how much I dread stepping into a classroom.
I can tell myself, “I am Doctor Wyatt. I have several graduate degrees. I am the instructor in this classroom.” That doesn’t help. I’m stuck in the past every day. I’m leading a class in the present, while reliving the past simultaneously. It’s overwhelming.
Over the years, I’ve dealt with a few good principals and department chairs. Sadly, for every good leader, there’s a bully. The bullies have all been insecure men, trying to intimidate others with their physical presences. Two high school principals still living their college and high school football glory days. The big men on campus, literally, relying on that to somehow mask their insecurities.
Both of those principals yelled a lot, with booming voices, while admonishing instructors who tried to manage out-of-control students.
I was never able to quietly do what teachers and administrators expected. When I tried to defend myself, when I tried to explain why I read slowly, write slowly, run awkwardly, “tremble” without cause, and so on, the responses were too often yet more criticism. More blame for being the way I am.
You’re not disabled. You’re lazy. You could hold the instrument correctly. You could run like a normal person. You could solve these math problems the way the book does. You could omit information from this report. You could ignore what you heard the principal say another teacher. You could just get along and be like everyone else.
Stop making trouble. Be like everyone else. Only someone incredibly stupid would cause so much trouble everywhere he goes. It’s obviously intentional.
People who say and do mean things cannot imagine reliving those insults day after day (and wouldn’t care anyway).
My desire to have a career runs into my personal anxiety. In every position, eventually I’ll mess up and make the person in charge angry. It’ll be my fault, since I don’t follow the normal social rules.
Of course I wish I could be normal. I wish I could just be quiet, follow directions, and never upset any teacher, supervisor, or colleagues.
“If I could stop being me…” is the thought that keeps replaying in my thoughts. “If I could just blend in or even vanish into the background.”