#teacherprobz

You were supposed to love me no matter what.

There were not supposed to be conditions.

At no time did I ask to be here.

At no time did I have a choice to be yours.

I came into this world to be who I am.

I grew up thinking you would always love me.

I grew up thinking you would always support me.

I grew up thinking you would protect me.

I grew up and learned I was wrong.

I slowly learned that there were conditions.

I slowly learned to be afraid to talk to you.

I slowly learned to hide who I am from you.

I slowly learned to protect myself.

I slowly learned to find love elsewhere.

I slowly learned to find acceptance elsewhere.

I slowly learned to make my own family.

Then I watched you very quickly tear it all away.

You.

Who was supposed to support me.

You.

Who was supposed to keep me safe.

You.

Who showed me that apparently there can be conditions on love.

By: Kayla Boyd-Robertson

I was finally able to write this after my tears subsided. One of my kids was outed to his mother and is being forced to go to a private Catholic School now. I can never understand parents who put conditions on loving their child.

For all of you out there struggling with this, know you are not alone. Know you are loved. If you need to talk, message me.

One of my students started asking his classmates if they've seen any birds since the government shutdown. He slowly started convincing them that they haven't and that the reason is because all birds are spies with cameras for the government.

One kid brought up that they migrated for winter. His response was "Yeah. They migrated back to their homebase."

School has started again and I have come to a point of realization. I say things as a teacher of freshmen that I believe people would never have to say in general. Today was one of those days. I allowed my students a bit of free time after going to library and behaving pretty well. I was sitting at my desk grading papers and heard a noise.

*weird noise to the front of me*

*me not looking up from my papers* “(student name omitted), stop snorting stuff in my class.”

*class proceeds to burst out laughing*