❝...❞ (voice)
[A deep breath, and here we go...]
Well [pause] it seems like a great deal about pain has been discussed already, and it's hard to hit points that haven't been taken care of. I can honestly say that I don't know what to add to the melting pot of ideas and feelings already thrown into the network. Maybe that's a good thing, to think not of pain itself as the common factor but the experiences drawn from it and the different ways it changes us as people or helps us stay the same. For me, well, mostly I deal with high school students, and I call them 'kids' but I've seen them go through a lot of really difficult things, things I can't imagine having to deal with at that age--at any age, honestly. Sometimes I think it's easy to forget just because people are younger, because life hasn't necessarily hit them as hard as it can or it might, that they go through pain that can end up sticking just as long. It doesn't have to be life or death to leave a mark and we don't have to be in our thirties to go through something that qualifies as 'real'. And...and I know there are lots of people who just sort of roll their eyes when kids tell them their hearts are broken over a boy or a girl or not making a certain team...or their club not getting enough funding. But if those same people think back to when they were that age...I don't think that any of them can tell me they haven't felt the same way at one point or another. True, it's a simpler kind of pain---not traumatic, not...well, maybe a little dramatic. [slight, soft pause] But it doesn't invalidate it.
If we're going to accept things from paper-cuts to severe physical damages, from bad dreams to mental trauma, then it only seems fair to accept the other forms of pain too, even if they are parts of, as they say, 'what everyone goes through'. In a way, isn't that even more of a reason?
For instance, there is...this man---a teacher, Will Schuester. He's amazing at what he does and he...recently, well the beginning of this year, he took over the Glee Club at our school, and...they've been doing incredibly, just. It's unbelievable. And you would think pain had nothing to do with it, but...if you can, picture a man about to give up on that pursuit. A man who would become an accountant because his family would get better benefits, overall support. But also a man who I knew wouldn't be happy for a single day in that kind of job. Picture that and change it into...the most dedicated fervor for singing and for the kids he's teaching. It's that kind of enthusiasm and joy he's been able to give to them and it's that happiness that would be taken away if the funding was cut. They wouldn't die, no, of course not.
But the club has given them a lot, changed them. I've seen it. To take that away isn't any less painful than other things people would consider more crucial.
[Pause, because she's gone on a verbal spree as sometimes she does, gets carried away of course...and a mildly nervous trickle of a laugh--not much.]
That...wasn't originally where I was going with that, but...it's all true.
I'm going to miss him them.
[ooc; last part is barely heard as the network device as left on accidentally but she set it aside, thinking she had in fact turned it off, backdated due to work obv ._. lala /kills schedules of bakeries]