05/09/2010
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I've seen all sorts during my time at McKinley High.
It goes with the territory- as a guidance counsellor, i'm lucky enough to get a first-hand look at the seamey underbelly of this average, run-of-the-mill high school, filled with average, run-of-the-mill suburban teens.
I get to listen to their problems. I get to smile, nod, tilt my head in a tell-me-more sort of way, and then smile some more, as they ramble and rhapsodize, shuffel their feet, shoot pleading glances at the clock on the wall, bite their nails, stutter and mumble their way through the fifteen minute time slot that their benevolent principal has deemed appropriate to bestow upon them.
Lucky, lucky me.
I began my post here, fresh from studying to get the necesary qualifications (my text books were still warm on my desk when I got this job) and I arrived with first-timers enthusiasm, desparate to help the multitudes of pregnant, drug-addicted, generally messed-up kids that my training had convinced me filled every school.
I wanted to do good, I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help, and I was SO sure that there were plenty of students who not only needed, but WANTED my help.
Of course there would be. This was a school, wasn't it?
Of course, after about fifteen minutes, I started to realise what kind of school I had come to.
White bread. Middle class. Suburban. Safe.
These were the shiney, all-american teenagers that lived up to every stereotype the teen movie industry instilled: they lived in nice houses, with parents who held respectable, white-collar jobs, and brought them cars when they turned sixteen.
They went to prom in limousines with their friends, or their girl/boy friend, and they waved flags and cheered at school football games.
They joined the football team or the cheerleading squad, they went to college and got married and sent their 2.4 children to their old nursery schools.
Their biggest worry was growing out of their prom dress before they wore it, their biggest hope was being voted homecoming royalty.
They didn't need me help. They had everything they needed, they had everything they wanted, and I resigned myself to a year of the occaisional failing grade, the occaisional drawn-out break up. Maybe a kid or two whose parents were considering divorce, not that they'd actually go through with it in such a perfect town.
Easy, mundane, and even...boring?
It took a relativly short period for my belief that my help was really needed at McKinley to fade.
It took a slightly longer period of time for my conviction that the lives of these kids were pretty perfect to go.
What was it that changed my mind?
The third stick-thin girl who was convinced beyond all doubt she was too fat, or the fourth boy who came begging me to tell him how he should tell his parents that he was failing all his subjects, and didn't want to take on the family business after he left school?
Or was it one of the nights I've locked up my office, picked up my bag and calmly locked myself in my car in the parking lot and cried and cried, for all of them.
For them...and for me, because I know that no matter what they say, no matter what I think, there's nothing I can do to help them.
Oh, I'll try, of course. I want to help, I'm trained to help...
But after all this time, I've come to realise that everything I've learnt boils down to the bare minimum when it comes to reality.
Listen. Give whatever little advice you can think up. Give them the number of someone who can do more- PlannedParenthood, or something like that, usually.
The list of things I can't do far outweighs the list of things I can.
Don't get too close, don't act like you're judging them.
Don't encourage dangerous or illegal or immoral behavour; don't tell them anything about anyone else, including yourself.
Don't accept gifts, don't give students your home adress or phone number.
Don't appear to be tolerant to bad language or degrading refrences to members of the faculty.
Don't ask too many questions. Don't assess a situation without knowing all the facts.
Don't break the code of confidentiality.
And it goes on like this.
Maybe they sound reasonable, and I'm sure they're necessary rules to have...but they also mean that I have to fight my instincts the entire time.
I can't help solve these kids problems if, in solving them, I violate a rule.
I watch Brittany Jansen play the strap of her bag and stare at the floor as she reels off a list of minor issues in her life for the first twelve and a half minutes of her appointment, then turns just before she leaves to add, in a rush, that she doesn't think she's good enough for her currant crush because she's failing in all her subjects except dance and gymnastics, and therefore isn't smart enough for her.
After two more sessions, I learn that Brittanys crush is also her best friend.
Three full sessions is exactly half the length of time it takes for Santanna Lopez to actually stay in the room for longer than five minutes. During her seventh appointment, she stays long enough for me to learn that she is having trouble dealing with...well, everything.
In front of me, this teenage girl in the short red cheerleading skirt grips the edges of her chair and bites back tears, while proving that perhaps it is not better to be feared rather than loved, since she spends half her time wondering at what point she lost her friends, and gained a crowd of hangers-on instead.
I watch. I nod. I dispense tissues from the other side of my desk.
If only I could do it- help them both in one go. I only I could tell Brittany that it is really HER friend who thinks SHE is not good enough for Brittany, not because she's failing, but because she's generally considered the bitchiest sophomore in all of Ohio.
If only I could tell Santanna that no matter how alone she feels, she also has the loyalest friend anyone could ask for in Brittanny, who never sees her as anything less than perfect.
But I can't help them. I can't help the others, either.
Quinn Fabray sobs throughout her appointment, and I can only think that if anyone ever had reason to cry, she does. Outside, the corridors thrum with a rhythm of feet and voices as students go to lunch, but inside my office is just the broken, wavering voice of a seventeen year old as she describes her father setting the timer on the microwave, giving her thirty minutes to pack before he throws her out...and only realising hours later that she's left half of her most important things- photo albums, her favourite skirt that happend to be in the laundry, the diary under her pillow- behind.
And it would be breaking the rules to do anything other than hum sympathetically. I can't offer her somewhere to stay- although my heart is breaking for her, and I wish I could. I can't give her the security she needs...and the free condoms which I CAN give her are coming several months too late.
The girl with a stutter stops stuttering long enough for my eyes to drift to the silvery lines that stretch, razor-thin, from the skin just under the short sleeves of her black t-shirt and continue an inch or two down her arms. They're barely visible, even under the direct light of the desk lamp.
No wonder no one else has noticed them.
The thing is, although asking her about them wouldn't be breaking any rules to speak of, I still don't.
Today, I can't deal with being helpless.
So I'll make the pathetic, unprofessional choice and act like I've seen nothing.
I comfort myself with the scar tissue covering her cuts.
It means its been a long time since she last did it, which I will choose to believe means she has worked through whatever the problem was.
I don't want to contemplate the fact that maybe nothing has been solved, maybe she just realised cutting yourself solves nothing, because sometimes, against all odds, things do work themselves out.
I watch Brittanny and Santanna wandering the halls with their little fingers linked.
I watch Quinn, acting oblivious to her baby bump, raise up her head and stare masses down, daring them to make a comment, surrounded by her faithful glee club friends.
I watch Tina in the midst of a crowd with Artie Abrahams at her side, and with him, there is no stutter, and with her, there is no bitterness.
I see everything- the happiness as wellas the heartbreak.
I see the tears, the cuts and the lies but I also see the linked arms, the smiles, the laughter and kisses- the scar tissue forming over bad experiences in their pasts.
I see the happy endings.