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Miss Ballerina

The old art of saving souls

By Roxana LeontePublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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Miss Ballerina

Shrinking in a corner, pressed into the wall;

Do they know I am present, am I here at all?

Is there a written rule book, that tells you how to be -

All the right things to talk about-

That everyone has but me?

Slowly I am withering

A flower deprived of sun;

Longing to belong to,

Somewhere or someone.

Wallflower by Lang Leav

I promise this is not the poem that I had in mind, when I was looking for the proper English translation of the one I intended to stick in my notes. But then I found this one – or should I say that it found me? And it resonates, it actually translates me – to me in the first place. Where does the social awkwardness come from? Why does it happen? They say “relax, you don’t have to try that hard to fit in, you already do, we already like you”. Don’t you think that I know that being relaxed, the so-called one’s self, is the secret to fit in? The fact is that once you are aware of it is exactly the reason why you are not relaxed.

Traumas. Traumas that have made you be who you now are, though the events that traumatised you are long gone. You’re an adult, you’re supposed to know better, do better. But the child within you, the one who was hurt by something, someone, a word, a situation: that child does not understand that whatever hurt them is no longer in the here and now.

I know what hurt my inner child – and it was a teacher, among others. She managed with a couple of sentences to make me feel unworthy. Unworthy of being in that prestigious college, me, the daughter of such simple parents. Unworthy of being seen or heard because she made it clear that it was not my damn place in there. Feisty as I have always been, I did not believe her, nor considered it too much. Or at least I thought I hadn’t.

At the time, I was pretty much aware that I was coming from a poor simple family, while most my colleagues had parents who were teachers, doctors, engineers. I was dressed decently, but poorly, unlike my colleagues. When I was a teenager, I already regretted not having to wear a uniform. It would have made my life – in both then and now – so much easier. I knew/felt that it wasn’t really my place, but I guess I hadn’t given it much importance until her words.

We used to call her Miss Ballerina, as she was limping badly, her whole body seemed to go dangerously on a side while walking. Of course, the nickname was meant to be ironic. We did not like her, to say the least. We feared her and probably hated her with the same passion she seemed to have hated us and her job. She would remind you more of the Titanic inclined on the side just before going deep into the dark waters.

Miss Ballerina had the nerve to mock me, in front of my colleagues, because I was wearing a woollen handmade jumper. I still remember it: cream, not particularly beautiful, but it was clean, it was decent, it was made by my mother and it was one of the few things that I had as winter clothing. Why she did such a thing I would never understand. The lesson that the adult-me took with her is that words bloody hurt. Like hell. They can cause traumas it takes a lifetime to get over. And this is why I first learned to apply positive talking while working with children. Pour positivity and confidence into those little minds; be responsible for a good adult, not a traumatised one. It takes a big heart to educate little minds. Pour yourself into educating them, but pour only your good side, your best side. Don’t poison untouched, virgin minds. You’re a teacher to expand minds, not to close horizons before they had even started to open up to the world.

Teaching comes with responsibility and it is not a job. If one thinks of teaching as a job, as an income, they’d better not do it. Do you know what a teacher is? A teacher is a mind surgeon. Only that teachers do not operate physically, they operate from the heart, they transmute their energy and knowledge into an empty fertile field. A teacher is, since I have just mentioned the field, a mind and soul farmer. It takes knowledge and practice and dedication and heart to understand what kind of seed is best for each and every field. To know how much metaphorical sunlight and rain are needed for each field.

Surgeons might need a blood transfusion while operating, teachers do soul transfusion daily. A surgeon saves a life only when the operation was successful. A teacher saves lives every single day. That we are referring to school days or not is not relevant, because I mean what I said. A good teacher will save a pupil’s life every single day. Not the teacher’s every single day. But the pupil’s. They will save their pupil long after the teacher has ceased to exist on this planet. Until the very end of their pupil’s life. Because a good seed, correctly and lovingly planted and taken care of, will flourish beautifully and healthily and it will always be there to remind the pupils of their teacher and the society of someone they might not even be aware of, never known in person, but instinctively know that it’s a good educator’s merit.

Hymn to the teachers, whose efforts have never been fully understood and acknowledged. My gratitude goes to a bunch of my personal teachers who opened up my mind and pushed my limits. To one in particular goes my immense gratitude, but I do not want to talk about him in the same opening as for the Ballerina.

Miss Ballerina was a Maths teacher and I’m pretty sure she crossed onto the other side who knows how long ago. I don’t think there is any of her former pupils who missed her or were grateful to her for her teaching or for her humanity – she had none, none whatsoever. Nonetheless, I have forgiven you, Miss Ballerina. You probably had your own traumas that somebody else had caused you, or life just happened. But, if you reincarnate, please come with your lessons learned, at least the most important ones. And if you haven’t learned your lessons, please don’t go into teaching. Though nowadays no school and no parent would allow you to treat a pupil the way you did. Gone are those communist days where the teacher was a demi-god or something.

Those times, people were not that much into healing, into introspection, into positive thinking, into help a child grow and flourish into their best option. On the contrary, one of the communist characteristics is that the education was done through pain. Both physical and emotional. They might have thought they knew something, considering that even now people believe that big transformations or a tough character are built through pain.

I didn’t see that much love while growing up. Not in my family, nor in the families of my friends. I saw punishment, where the physical punishment was king. Fear was used as the most sacred educational tool. Did I or others like me and of my generation come up as failures? I don’t think so. But traumatised, yes. I have a few friends who, once adults, said what most wanna-be parents say: that they want to give their children what they did not have, or at least more than what they had. But they said it with a twist: “I want my children to grow up knowing that they are loved”.

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