After Hope · Society of Ordinary Gentlemen

Nov 8 (edited) • Mental/Physical Well Being 🥊

After Hope

Gents,

I’m currently trying to learn how to let a dream die.

Rather, how to kill a dream dearer to my heart than just about anything.

For over a decade—nearly half of my life—I’ve aspired to become a schoolteacher. I didn’t know if I wanted to teach elementary, middle, or high school, I didn’t know what subject I wanted to teach, and I certainly didn’t know where I wanted to teach whatever it was I would end up teaching. All I knew was that, more than just about anything in the world, I wanted to be a teacher. Not a professor, not a coach, not an online guru, but a teacher at the front of a classroom—guiding the youths who walked through my door through the impossibly precarious roads of adolescence.

I’ve dreamed about living in a small town or suburb, where I’d be walking to the grocery store and stumble upon some students or their parents, and we’d know each other by name. About former students dropping by after years, decades, just to catch up or share how their life has changed. About showing as many people as I could that there are still teachers who will put their 120% into their students, despite the crippling expectations, regulations, and obligations that come with the almost-livable wage.

To most people, that hardly sounds worth it.

Most people are right.

And I think I’m starting to become most people, too.

To be fair, it isn’t financial aspirations that are crushing my dreams. There’s no veil that’s been lifted, exposing my innocence to the harsh reality that I no longer feel ready to face.

The thing I’ve been coming to terms with is myself.

I’ve spent the past 5 years (& 1 month) desperately clinging on to my declining mental health as I awaited the “next stage,” where things would finally get better. Boot Camp, MCT, the Schoolhouse, my first & last duty station in Okinawa, my return home to Irvine, CA, my attempt at dorm life in Fullerton (still CA), and now, I approach half a year in Chicago.

Every time I reached the next “stage,” I puffed out my chest, rolled back my shoulders, brought down my jaw, and stepped into where my life would finally begin. Every time, I tried to leave the hours, days, weeks, months, and years I spent in misery behind so I could finally turn the page.

Every. Time.

I think I first started calling out my own hopium when I was being separated in Okinawa. That match I’d been able to relight each time I finished a chapter (though it dimmed with every use) was cold and damp. Truth be told, I don’t think I ever did manage to relight it after that, though I continued to pretend like the spark was still there. Now, three cycles later, that ragged, flimsy twig barely even resembles a match anymore. Trying to light it is about as effective as scraping your fingernail on the striker slip.

But this time, it’s not the “next stage” I can’t get excited for.

This time, it’s the finish line that I’ve lost sight of. (Edit: I should refer to this as the “start line,” since it’s always represented when I can finally begin the life I’ve yearned for)

I’ve wanted to be a teacher for over a decade. Through every chapter I had to strike that match, that dream was a lighthouse reminding me that my little match wasn’t the only thing keeping the darkness at bay. Even when the match no longer lit, I could press forward, stumbling in the darkness towards the vague glow of that distant lighthouse.

But now? I’m not even sure it’s there anymore.

I can’t even be sure it was ever there.

I think I’ve been chasing after a mirage this entire time. Not a real, tangible light in the distance, but a manifestation of my desperate desire to believe such a beacon existed.

Does its existence (or lack thereof) invalidate the steps I’ve taken because of it? No.

Does the fact that it might never have been there at all mean I was chasing after nothing? No.

But it does fill me with a unique pain, an aching that runs far deeper than even the silent suffocation of depression.

Depression, I know. I’ve had both Major Depressive Disorder and Persistent Depressive Disorder. Heck, I don’t even remember what it’s like to have a baseline outside of depression, since it even predates my dream to become a teacher.

But this isn’t depression.

This isn’t the cold, numb, silent killer of the soul I know so well.

This is seeing a crack in your living room floor. This is finding a patch of mold in the bathroom, then realizing that the wall feels like paper mache. This is opening your mailbox and pulling out yet another debt collection notice. This is finishing a routine checkup and seeing the smile fade from your doctor’s face.

This isn’t suffocating.

This is drowning.

This is despair.

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