Layers

1. Realizing you only five days left of living on a scummy campus and only seven more days until you live in your new house
2. Sleeping in on Saturday morning
3. Leisurely sipping coffee and grading
4. Getting accepted after a home visit to become a dog owner
5. Realizing your family that you oh-so-miss will be here in a week
6. Being told by animal activists that you are a cruel person
7. Driving in torrential rain with your trunk open with your new dining room set
8. Watching a drug deal happen right in front of your house while unloading your new dining room set
9. Eating Uno Pizza and assembling said table and chairs
10. Sleeping in on Sunday morning

I can't wait to be done with this training program.

I'm ready.

Damnit.

Five minutes from now I begin the usual nightly routine of working until my eyes seduce the bed and my brain gives in to its funk.

The last three weeks at Phili's Inst*itute haven't been nearly as stressful as everyone cautioned. Maybe it's because my own little life experiences have taught me that, in the long run, deadlines and assignments and expectations are trivial. Every requirement has been accomplished, deadlines met. I don't know how. I just go, do. Throughout all of the going and doing and being and structure and people-hurting-themselves-with-stress, I can still stand back and feel peaceful. This isn't pain. It doesn't look like this. This looks like growth, which has jagged edges at times. Pain spurs growth: it isn't growth.

These students of mine, new yet similar personalities as my former, they get the methodical, healthy me. They get the person who has left tragedy behind and not looked back. My students get my stories, but my stories are no longer me. My every day creations, sequences of movements, thoughts, and street paths are me. I feel free; a sense of focus overwhelms.

Then there are these new people that are becoming fast friends. People aren't what I expected. I feel loved. I'm part of something important, even if it means I've been brainwashed. It's not the organization I feel connected to, it's the new relationships.

While sipping my guilty pleasure, I watched a man dig through a trash can. His fingers were shaking with desperation as he looked for anything that could slide into his stomach. He piled every edible ounce into a dirty container and walked away.

It's not that I've never seen homelessness and its horrors, but I've never watched a man with so much innocence and defeat. I wanted to do so many things in that moment, yet I did nothing.

As he walked away, turning disgusted stares, I couldn't help wondering about what opportunities were stolen from him.