I have written this letter to a personification of trauma. I kind of wink to the teachers that have helped me through this and how they made me want to be a teacher. They showed me how important teachers can be to teenagers. All of them stepping away from the curriculum to teach me more about myself, my environment and how to look more critically at the world around me. This ties in with the text ‘A critical pedagogy of place’. I would have gone deeper into this if it would have fit better with the thing I chose to write this letter to.





Dear Trauma,

I really tried not to talk to you for a very a long time. I did not answer your calls, I did not read your messages. I have avoided you. Somehow, you still ruin a lot of good things for me. I decided to write you this letter, to open up a conversation. We might be able to figure some things out in the future and to just leave each other alone after that. One can only hope.

We have known each other for a very long time now, but our relationship has never been healthy. We never just let the other be, we always try to change one another into something we’re not. I really want us to stop doing that. I guess we will be stuck together forever in one way or another, so maybe we could just try to not interfere all too much?

You always try to remind me of all the things that went wrong in my life. You force me to think about that, while I just want to move on. I want to look ahead but you just keep on pulling me backwards. You literally want all of my attention and when I give someone else a bit of it, you just try to block me. Why are you so jealous? Why is it that if I am not with you, you still make sure I won’t enjoy myself? You absolutely consume my life and it is keeping me from progressing in other ways.

I guess I am just always thinking about you. Even though I have avoided you, you haven’t left my head. But the thing is, I don’t want you there.

I know this is going to be harsh, but I just need to let it out. It is because of you that I had so much stress in high school. It is because of you that I feel like I am good at nothing. It is because of you that I put so much of my own worth into the grades that I got at school. It is because of you that I feel like a failure all the time.
I just really wish that school would have seen me more as an actual person than a number. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of my teacher did. I learned the most from the teachers that thought life was more important than getting good grades. The teachers that understood that you were consuming all of me sometimes. The teachers that taught me more about myself and how to stand up to people like you. Now I know that I want to be that teacher for someone in the future. You could say that is the only positive thing I ever got out of meeting you.

So that’s why I am writing you. I have learned that I need to speak out. Communication is key, they sometimes say. Even though talking about your emotions is considered a taboo for a lot of us. I just hope that one day you will write me back. Explain yourself to me. So that I can at least understand you.

If I can’t get rid of you, please just help me understand you.

I guess that’s bye for now,
Nina