The Troll on the Bridge

I have been singing the same song in my head for twenty minutes now. It’s not that it’s my favorite song or that I don’t know lyrics to any others. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to sing it, but I do know that it was three minutes and seven seconds long and that its title was five words long. I also knew that if I picked up a rock to examine it, I would have to start the chorus over again because I would be too perplexed on which way the rock should sit to think about the words. North, south, left, or right, either way it wasn’t how it should be situated and….shit. It’s the troll again.     

In story books, there is usually a troll blocking the entrance of a bridge. This troll tells the traveler the riddle and asks for the answer. Now the traveler must guess the correct response in order to cross the bridge. I have found that sometimes the troll is a little bitch. Since eight grade I began to develop anxiety. Transitioning to high school had not been easy for me and in a few years I also found myself dealing with that troll (OCD). I was never a person who liked talking about feelings so I decided to write about them because even if you don’t trust paper you can at least burn it. My sophomore year of high school I began writing poetry that expressed the troubles I was facing. Throughout my stressful senior year I kept at this habit in an effort to find the damn answer for the troll so I could cross the bridge into a stress-free life. I believe everything has meaning so to figure out the riddle’s answer I reexamine two of my poems and explore what the importance behind it was and how writing helped keep me from strangling the troll.

No One Understands (1/27/15)

No one understands
This endless pain I’m in
All they know is reprimands
For each accidental sin

I don’t have control over myself

No way to calm down
There is so much danger just sitting on the shelf
And my thoughts make me feel like I will drown

I need help, but I don’t want to ask
Everything makes me stressed
I’m scared my future lies in a flask
Because right now I am a mess

I found myself surrounded by people who did not understand what was going on. Singled out, I was told to try and control my anxious behaviors, but I couldn’t. “What if I had an allergic reaction to this?” or “What if people see me using my inhaler?” ran through my mind. These thoughts and emotions weren’t like a faucet that I could just turn off. Stress clung to me everywhere I went with everything I did. Relaxation techniques had never really worked for me. The deep breathing exercises made me feel dizzy and the meditation just made me even more tired than I already was. The constant thinking weighed me down and I couldn’t help but notice how hard it was to get out of this rut. I felt like therapy might be a good option for me, but I was too embarrassed and scared to ask. My stress levels began to rise and my fear of these thoughts and emotions staying with me became a recurrent nightmare. While I was struggling with my troll I found that writing actually helped quiet their screaming voices. In a journal I began to write poems about the sadness and frustration that was bubbling inside of me. These writings weren’t told to anyone or on display, but for myself. It was a way to babble about my problems without talking to myself or crying.

Anxiety (3/8/15)

It is the nagging voice
That lives deep in my head
Hurting me and befriending me
Saying it will soon make me dead

Stop breathing
And listen to me
You are such an outsider
Who has no life, don’t you see?

Why are you dressed like that?
You feel bad things that others don’t
Just keep thinking and worrying
It will hopefully stop one day, but not now it won’t

The voice in my head, my conscious, became evil. It was if it realized it could have power over me if only it spoke a little louder and a lot harsher. “You will have an asthma attack if you don’t do that,” it warned, “and if you do, people will see you as the neurotic freak that you are.” I didn’t like this voice anymore and I didn’t even feel like my own friend. The only problem was that this was one friendship that I couldn’t just run away from. It was a one sided friendship in which I was side less. The voice used to tell me to stop breathing or if I didn’t do something then it would just make me. It took personal stabs at insulting my appearance and even social life, or the lack of one. The only social aspect I had was me yelling at myself to stop. I felt separated from everyone else because I felt like I was the only one going through all of this. My two best habits of thinking and worrying began to flourish, leaving me wilting in the corner. I believed that this would all get better one day, but I didn’t have any idea as to when. Since these voices and feelings grew stronger, my writing grew more frantic. I wrote more often and the topics in my poems where deeper and more personal. At least when I wrote I felt like I was talking to the paper about my problems instead of just myself.

Anxiety (3/8/15) Continued

Don’t go out
Stay inside
Don’t try new things
And from everyone else you should hide

People are hard work
Too much that could go awry
Oh there goes another chance
A chance to be a teenager, oh well, goodbye

Home became my favorite place to be. Public places stressed me out. I don’t like large crowds or loud atmospheres. My head is stuffy enough and the voice is already screaming. I avoided trying new things and decided to stick to my comfort zone which didn’t include a lot. The fear of being pressured by people to go in the unknown forced me even more to avoid public and social situations. My stress soon found a new creature to feed upon: friendships. I noticed I separated from friends and invited too many social events. I felt like I wasn’t a friendship type person. There was just so much that I was dealing with that another person and their life was just not in the mix. I also didn’t want to do anything so how could I possibly be expected to go out be social and not freak out. What’s worse is that I didn’t feel like a teenager and it really saddened me. I see all of these movies about wild teenagers staying out late and partying and I can’t relate to any one of them. I felt like I was missing all chance to have fun and be young. I didn’t want to miss out but I had no choice. But the good think about literature is it could take me here. I started reading a lot of books that took my mind off of my own issues and let me focus on those of the main characters. Portals opened up where I could jump in a book where there was magic, love, and mystery all of which I didn’t experience.

Anxiety (3/8/15) Continued

Just think about everything that could go wrong
Here why don’t I just hold you back?
From all that you should or want to do
Come on life pick up the slack

While you’re at it say a quick amen
Asking god to make you feel okay
But you don’t because here I am
Like every other stressful thinking day

I hope one day that it will get better
I’m pretty sure it will
But for now darling here I am
The anxiety that engulfs you until

I was never fond of track so when I had to hurdle obstacles I was not a fan. My worrying got in the way of everyday tasks and began to hold me back from doing things I needed to do. I was waiting for a break; for the day the troll would lose his damn job of bridge monitor. I have never been super religious but when I felt hopeless I made a quick prayer. This tactic never really worked and I was still stuck with the roaring voice that worked 24/7 seven days a week. I felt a servant to my own mind, but figured that at least I could get a poem out of it. I used the horrible ideas that were filling my head onto paper to show how cruel the bodice actually was. Instead of trying to totally ignore it, I let the feelings flow from the voice to my paper. Sure the poems were depressing and a bit disturbing, but they were poems none the less.

I still write poems today, but not to find the answer to the riddle. I decided that the forest is vast and that the bridge was not the only way to get to the other side. My poems became maps that are still leading me on my journey. I sing dozens of songs and don’t stress on how to leave the rocks that I find. The troll is still mocking me, but I try to block him out with the other sounds in the forest. I can actually hear birds and squirrels that were mute to me before. With my map and the sun shining I know that one day, maybe not even soon, but one day I will go back to that troll with the answer and I will be the one laughing at him.

As Seen on Fox Network: Passion = Progress

“I had a high school English teacher who made me really work at writing.
 And once, when I got an assignment back, she’d written: ‘This is so good, Andrew. This should be published!’ That made a big impression on me.”
– Andrew Clements

Every Tuesday night at 9:30pm I would be planted in front of the television to watch my favorite series on Fox: New Girl. It isn’t just a funny and relatable show, but an inspirational one.  The main character, Jessica Day, is a Middle School teacher who is seen in different positions, such as Vice Principle and substitute. The manner in which Fox portrayed teachers really impacted me. Jessica Day is a teacher who really loves her job and what it means to be a teacher. She has glitter under her bed, a planetary model in her office, and dresses that capture her enthusiasm and individualism. She stands out from the other teachers, which includes a science teacher who does drugs in his office and a nurse who is sleeping with the gym teacher, because she really cares about the students. For instance, she realized that none of her students were able to draw a beach since they lived in a city that wasn’t close to the water. To give the students a new perspective and chance to experience education outside of the classroom, she was able to get a delivery bus lent to her in order to drive the students to a beach. This is passion. This is compassion. This is thinking outside of the box. This is what I want to be, nay, what I will be.

The quote by Andrew Clements above captures one of my main goals of being a teacher: to support the students. Every student is different and that is what makes this job so amazing. If a student has a passion, such as Celements’ being writing, then I want to encourage them to indulge themselves deeper into that topic or activity. For example, if a student is really into cars then while we read The Great Gatsby I will assign him the section of the novel that has to do with Gatsby’s and Tom’s cars and how they impact and modify the plot. In addition, if a student has the goal of traveling the world when they graduate then I will have them be the person that researches where the novel takes place and information about it that may be useful to know while reading the book. This student would be able to explore St. Petersburg, Russia in the 1860s from Crime and Punishment to Scandinavia in the 5th or 6th Century from Beowulf. Once a student sees how their interest, or my preferred term “passion”, relates to their education they are more apt to dig deeper into the content and prove to everyone that they understand what they are learning. Hence, my theory is that passion equals progress.

Stephen King once said, “Let’s face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in.” High school is a really tough time in ever adolescents’ life. Puberty, dating, pressure to do drugs, making friends, finding yourself, deciding whether to have sex or not, grades, scholarships, and so many more factors attribute to the dreaded four years of high school students will endure. I believe that my job as a teacher is to be there for students and be willing to help them through this difficult time. This is exactly what one of my teachers did for me. I struggled with Anxiety and OCD as well as numerous health issues in high school which made feel like an outcast and embarrassed. I didn’t have a boyfriend, I was never invited to a party, didn’t want to go to football games, and struggled to keep close to my friends. I didn’t feel like a teenager; I felt like a weird combination of a child and an adult who took a time machine to jump from age twelve to twenty-two. But I wasn’t alone. I had a math teacher who many people didn’t like, due to his strictness and strange personality, but who became my role model. He told me about how he is going to go blind in less than ten years and how his wife is becoming Agoraphobic and won’t leave the house like her mother. This connection to my physical and mental health issues made me feel like I was included. HE told me that I could always leave the class to take a walk or go to the nurse without asking, hence, without making a big deal of it. Once when I had an eye twitch, due to stress and which is still an occurring annoyance, he came up to me and asked if I was okay and needed to go to the nurse; he thought I was winking at him to let him know I needed help. This amount of observation and personalization made me feel cared for by someone who’s job description didn’t include that requirement. This support became even more impactful to me when we had a lock down drill, or shelter in place drill as it is also known, and a student asked, “What if someone actually did come into this classroom with a gun?” My teacher responded, “The only way they would get to you guys is if I was dead. It is my duty to protect all of you.” I am still in awe of this response today. Everyone wants to say that they would risk their own life to save another, but the reality is that very few people would actually do this. My teacher was one of the few. He taught math, made me feel safe and understood, didn’t let kids get away with anything, made jokes…I still think this man is a superhero.

That is what I want to be: someone’s superhero. If I can just make one student feel half as respected and protected as I felt, then I am doing something right; I am not wasted space on this earth. Because, I believe, a teacher is more than a mind full of facts and a gradebook full of names, they are human with life experience and knowledge that can teach more than just allusions and appositives or the Pythagorean theorem and how to graph cosine. Teachers teach us values, responsibility, independence, manners, individualism, and other aspects to daily life that students must also obtain before heading out into the “real world”. To capture the essence of becoming a good English teacher, to me, I will leave you with the quote:

“A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination,
and instill a love of learning.” -Brad Henry

– Skyler Metviner

Author’s Note: My essay collection “Using Literacy and Education to Cope with Anxiety” is a combination of the reasons why I am going into the Education career and why I am an advocate for the Mental Health Awareness movement. Using my poetry and past experiences, I explain how writing and learning has been therapeutic and a necessary part of life for me.