Dread
A funny thing happened just a few days into my Christmas vacation. It started as a flutter. A deep, increasingly constant feeling inside me, like a desperate, flightless bird trying to take to the air, wings pumping feathers and dust, noise and pressure, without ever taking off. My day was greeted by this feeling and I tried to push it down, ignore it, and distract myself with holiday affairs and the levity of family. But it was always there, lurking in the depths and recesses. I would lie down at night and feel that bird flap its wings once or twice in warning. “I’m not gone.” As the days went by, and the end to my vacation edged implacably closer, the feeling only got stronger, anxiety knotting up inside me, taking up more air, constricting my diaphragm. As much as I tried to unravel it, it wouldn’t go away. Towards the end of my time in Seattle, I finally figured out where this feeling was coming from. My cousin and I had several talks about teaching (she is also an educator...