nela etc

[venusundae]

During the first half of my senior year of high school, nobody in my abundant class of nineteen was getting along; it wreaked enough havoc on our academic standings to prompt some in-class soul-bearing therapy session that we all affectionately called “marriage counseling”. We were asked to write down every problem that we had with each student in the class, anonymously, and the sentiments were collected and read back to the person for them to confront. For some kids it was awfully brutal! It made you uncomfortable just to witness it, even if you agreed with what was being said some times. For me it was generally just “you should talk more!” comments. Nothing else memorable. It all sounds counter-intuitive, and did while it was all happening, too. But for some people it really helped them out to be given the opportunity to defend themselves against what they knew other people thought of them, or to anonymously-not-so-anonymously (there were only nineteen of us, remember) speak their mind against what was hurting them in a safe environment. I never really got around to “talking more” but it was nice to see others make peace. Anyway, almost as an after-thought, we all decided it was probably a good idea to go about writing some nice things to pass along, as well. So when all the crying and yelling was over, we were read the positive list of things those same accusatory voices had to say about us. We were even given a list, to take home and keep. That was about three years ago, and while cleaning out some old boxes, I found the list again! x