Having a "Senior Moment": What Happens When You're a 12th Grade Teacher

“Can you say the prompt again?” One of my 12th graders asks.

I wasn’t sure if I could. It was a Council prompt I pulled out of my ass...a skill I’ve honed over the years as a teacher. If I accomplish nothing else in life, I’ll feel good about the fact that I can sling a question out of my butt.

“Yes. So the prompt is, looking back on your senior year, what was the path you thought you’d take and how did you veer off? What worked out differently than you thought it would?”

As my students are on the verge of graduation, a momentous occasion that I’ve witnessed for the last 14 years, I am once again thinking back to my own high school graduation...my senior year...the paths I took, or didn’t take...the choices I made. These thoughts enter my head every year, and every year, I avoid them. Because I made my choices. I experienced what I experienced and there’s no going back. That part of my life is done. It doesn’t make sense to me to focus on regrets. So why do I find myself questioning and avoiding each May? What do I need to examine here that feels unfinished?

What if I hadn’t have lost myself in a dysfunctional relationship my senior year? My first real relationship with a boy a year younger. A relationship that was great for two months and then somehow morphed into verbal, emotional, and physical abuse that happened so gradually that I could no longer tell when and how it went so horribly wrong. A relationship that ended with an anonymous phone call to my mother from a friend culminating in a restraining order against him, the purchase of a shotgun by my father, and me learning how to shoot a gun at the Palos Verdes Police Department.

What if I had actually tried to, as I tell my seniors, “Finish well”? To not “sneak out the back door” but to continue bringing my best self each day and feeling good about my efforts. To leave some kind of legacy. A Hali Stamp that read, I was here and this is what I accomplished.

What if I had really soaked in my environment...the cliffs of Palos Verdes...the fact that I could see the ocean from my house? Collecting shells along Rat Beach in Malaga Cove. Ordering chicken tacos with a side of beans and cheese at the Red Onion.

My high school graduation was small. There were three of us. That’s right. You heard me. Two other boys and me. A reversed Three’s Company situation with a similar awkward tension with each daily episode. Rolling Hills Preparatory School was relatively new with 23 students in grades 9-12 and it saved me. It saved me from drowning in a class of 50 people. It saved me from teachers who didn’t care. There was no hiding, no sinking down in my desk chair in the back of the room. It was what someone like me needed. As much as I wanted to disappear, they didn’t let me here.

By my senior year, I was Vice President of the school and the Editor of the yearbook. Actually it was more like a Year Pamphlet but it was a role I never thought I’d play.

I knew how much my dad wanted me to be the “Valedictorian”, if you can call it that with three people.

“You have a chance to do this. Don’t let it pass you by.” He said one night.

“Okay.” I responded, hearing his strong wish and knowing that, if I did try, I could pull this out. I could be the top of my tiny class. And I wanted it...but apparently not badly enough. “Finishing well” was no longer an option. I was deep into my relationship and it’s all I thought about and cared about. Pleasing him. Doing everything I could to not rock the boat. I had isolated myself from friends. If I wanted to see them, it meant that I didn’t want to spend time with him. After winning an essay contest with the American Legion, he threatened to end the relationship when the essay I helped him write didn’t win. He accused me of writing it badly on purpose. My first ever painting that was entered into an art show won an honorable mention and his did not. That was a tearful evening when he grabbed his painting and hurled it into the trashcan at my house.

“Your butt is getting big.”

This comment from him sent me straight to Nutri System in Torrance where I weighed in at 118 pounds, four pounds over my usual weight. He was right. When I would pull out my pre-packaged food, he would make fun of me.

“What are those? They look disgusting! You’re gonna eat that?”

At graduation, I gave a speech. Actually, we all did so that wasn’t particularly a special prize. But, I’m a public speaker. It’s something I enjoy doing. Standing up at the podium in my navy blue cap and gown, my 1989 huge hair, I spoke about my parents. About their constant support. How I was so grateful to these two people who really saw me for who I was. The shy, anxious girl who felt most comfortable when being nurtured in a small group. How they took the necessary steps to pull my best self out and into the world. I spoke about how I wished I could fit into my mom’s jeans still, although I was secretly stealing her hippie necklaces and belts. How my dad introduced me to “what real music is all about” they day he carried a stack of record albums into my bedroom. Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Cat Stevens, The Eagles, and Elton John. And I thanked my boyfriend. The person who probably least understood me but who I thought I loved. Who viewed me as more of an object than a person.

A few days later, I went to a party...without him. This was huge. Huge in the sense that I decided to do something for myself and by myself. It was a chance to see people from my old life at P.V. High. People I grew up with who assumed I had “died or something” since I had seemingly vanished from school in 9th grade. My desire to be free, to make my own decisions, and to reconnect overrode my fear of his anger. Drinking a bottle of Heineken and reliving moments from Children’s Theater, an old friend who played Peter Pan (I was Tiger Lily) was asking me about my life. Where I went. Why I left. In a room filled with people and REM’s Orange Crush playing loudly, we went into my friend’s brother’s room to continue catching up. Nothing sexual, just two platonic old friends.

A kid bursts through the room.

“Hali, he’s here. He’s sneaking around outside the house. He knows you’re in here with this guy.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Shaking and red, my boyfriend appears in the doorway and the other two guys leave. We’re alone in this room and I’m sobbing.

“Nothing happened. It’s not what you think. We’re just catching up.”

I sounded like a bad Afterschool Special.

He slams the door behind him and picks up a hockey stick that’s leaning against the mirrored closet door. I’m standing against the bed and his face looks like a fire truck. With his trembling hands, he outlines my body with the hockey stick, almost taunting me. Up the left side, over my head, and down the right side.

“What do you expect me to think? You’re in here with this guy? Alone?”

He drops the stick and picks up a small barbell and pushes me down on the bed with it. And I’m begging...pleading.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

He grabs my arm and walks me out of the house. And everyone is looking at me as I’m wiping my eyes and nose.

Soon after the party was when the call came to my mother and then the restraining order after she’d seen him sneaking around outside our house. My dad bought the shotgun for protection after hearing that he was threatening his life. Pretty hilarious looking back given my dad is 6’3 ½” and he was 5’5”. I became familiar with the police department where I learned to shoot a gun. It all felt like too much.  Too over the top and I questioned whether all of this was necessary.

A few days before leaving for Boston and sneaking phone calls with him, he somehow convinced me that I shouldn’t leave. That I shouldn’t go to college. That we should get engaged and I’d move in with him. He was really good at persuading me...although I felt like a button on a joystick that he was controlling. Incapable of making my own decisions and terrified of leaving what had grown normal and comfortable.

I approached my dad in the morning, already crying.

“What’s the matter?” He said.

“I don’t think I want to go to Boston.”

“Is this because of him?” His jaw clenched and eyes fill with rage.

“No! I just don’t...I just don’t want to go anymore!”

“You’re getting on that plane if I have to handcuff you to the seat!” He yelled.

I had never seen my dad like this. I had never caused trouble like this. It was new for all of us.

And that was it. That was the moment when the old Hali returned. The Hali who had applied to Emerson because she wanted to go there and wear sweaters and coats. The Hali who wanted to become something.

So, I can sit here and go through all of the “what ifs” and question my decisions. Or I can accept all of the things that didn’t go as expected. That my path veered into dark places. Because I look at where I am now and, honestly, it all feels like another lifetime. Almost a dream. And, as I tell my students, the surprises that throw you off your path are key to personal growth. I can look back on fucking up in school or isolating myself in an unhealthy relationship (not the first one but definitely the last) or seeking out the worst ways for validating my existence, or I can look back and say, “God, I fucking made it through that. I didn’t let it destroy me. I pushed forward.” I learned a lot from my experiences. I learned to find my voice and what I want and need in relationships. I learned.

If I were to answer my own prompt, I would say the following:  Going into my senior year, I wanted to show up each day as my authentic self. I wanted to laugh with friends, I wanted to enjoy learning, and I wanted to flourish creatively. The path I had intended to take was one of social, emotional, and academic success. And the path exploded with unexpected obstacles that left me paralyzed. I “started well” and ended similarly to how I felt as a child. Fearful of others, afraid to speak, and disassociated from who I truly was.

Perhaps next year at this time, when I pose the prompt, I won’t have to question or process, or figure out why things went as they did. Sure, they’ll be twinges of “what ifs” but there’s no going back. And I think I’m finally okay with that.