The Paths We Take by Rachel

The Paths We Take by Rachel - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

Growing up, I wasn’t on the best path and with each day, it seemed the path grew darker. I was headed to a bad place, and yet despite the many danger signs along the way, I kept going because I didn’t think that there was any other path worth taking, I didn’t think I had the ability to change my path or my destination.
When I entered high school, I was so lost, so tangled in the dark trees, entranced by the poisonous flowers, that I was written off as one of the lost ones, too far gone to be saved. I was ignored, avoided like a contagion, like I was infected. Most didn’t look at me twice and I couldn’t blame them. What people never seem to realize is that things aren’t always what they appear to be.
My first lesson in this was a teacher who was my parallel opposite. She was loud, she was talkative, and she was enthusiastic about everything, life, freedom, literature. She lit up a room and commanded the attention of every place she walked in. Man, did I hate her for it. Every word she spoke to me I ignored, or swatted away like all the other menial words that had been spoken at me by people who thought they could tame my wildness. I wrote her off, Just as I had been written off so many times before.
It wasn’t until the first time she spoke to me alone, in a room that was completely empty, so quietly I thought I had imagined it. She wasn’t quiet. She wasn’t reserved. I had never even imagined that someone so loud could speak so quietly.
“Why do you hold back?” she asked me. I didn’t dare to respond. I didn’t speak to people; there was no point. She didn’t seem to notice that I hadn’t responded. She didn’t even look up from grading the papers on her desk.
“Your writing is good, but it is reserved. You’re holding back.” She sighed. “Most people write what they are told. They don’t know how to do anything better. They do what is expected of them, predictable down to the very last word.” She looked up, her icy blue eyes meeting mine and freezing me to my core. “I know you aren’t like that. When I write a prompt on the bored you sit there for twenty minutes before you even write anything on the page. I can see the way your eyes light up for those twenty minutes. There is a wildness there that both scares and intrigues me. Then, the moment you put your pen to the paper it’s gone. You write what is expected. Now, for your other classes I get it, because that is what most teachers want, but not here. In this room, that is a lie. You keep living like you’ve got nothing to live for, and one day you won’t. Wake up, Rachel. Wake. Up. You aren’t a character taken from Shakespeare; you aren’t a tragedy. You are the heroine, now you just have to write your story. And I don’t ever want you to hold back. Not from me. Not from anyone.”
And just like that she went back to grading as if nothing had ever happened. She didn’t look up, didn’t even seem to notice as my world imploded, collapsing in on itself like a star, drowning everything in a strange sort of light. I found that I was sad in that moment and scared. Everything I knew was changing. The person I thought I was, the one I was comfortable with, the one that was on a one way path to tragedy, was gone. She collapsed, leaving all her expectations behind, and in her wake grew an entire universe. There I stood, in the middle of this vast new universe, at home in the wilds.
It was there, in that empty classroom, that I picked up a pen and began to write and I never stopped. A thousand universes bloomed from the page wherever the ink touched it. With every word I wrote, I created my own path, just as wild and tenacious as my own mind, but more free than anything I could have ever imagined.
In a single moment, that teacher changed me. She showed me that everything is subjective. That given the chance, we all have the ability to be our own heroine, to change everything, to create our own path.