Ed. note: Jacob was a participant in our first cohort of SELFIE (Social and Emotional Learning for Independent Education), a year-long health and wellness program. (You can read more about SELFIE here.) These were his thoughts about the program.
By Jacob Mcpartlan
I want you to imagine something with me.
You've lived your entire life with a ball and chain around your neck.
If you moved wrong, breathed wrong, blinked wrong or so much as flinched, it would strangle you, and the man at the end of it would yell and scream until your ears rang.
So you learn to move quietly, breathe shallow enough that you don't get caught doing it and never, ever, ever look away from somebody's eyes when you talk to them. And it's still never enough, because the man will always yell and scream and pull that chain until it bruises.
And that's your reality, for 12 years, down to the minute. That's your life, for what feels like forever, and as far as you know, that's normal.
As far as you know, this is just how things are, how they were, and how they always will be.
Then the man holding the chain dies, quietly as you lived. Then the man is dead, and you are free. Then the man is dead, and holy crap, your entire life is ahead of you now.
You live on, of course, but you live in limbo. Every day is some kind of grey, unchanging and eternity unto itself, a haze of fog settling itself around your eyes as you go through the motions of existing, the chain still weighing heavily around your neck despite nobody being there to pull it.
That's what my life was, for years, dry and nothing, feeling like I had no future or life to look forward to, exhausted before the starting shot's even fired.
Then my ma signed me up for SELFIE, at roundabout 15. Didn't want to do it, at first. Felt like it wouldn't help. Like there just wasn't much point to trying to turn my life around, given that it'd been spun on its head.
A year or two later, and I've got an entire future ahead of me. I know my name is Jacob, I know that I like trees, forests, the ocean, fish, ships, the world, and the color green.
I, honest to god, consider volunteering at parks. I, honest to god, am considering college. I, honest to god, have a life ahead of me, and if it weren't for this class, I wouldn't have been able to see it.
I, honest to every deity I don't believe in, am alive, despite everything, and if it weren't for SELFIE, I wouldn't have known what to do with that.
Y'know that metaphor, with the bird that has to fly away from the nest, staring over the edge right before they take that jump?
I thought my wings were too withered. I thought I'd fall right outta the sky and splat on the floor. I thought that no matter what I did or how hard I tried, there'd be no point to it.
Then I was exposed to people who'd done it several times over, to adults who'd experienced and done the same things I had, and they told me that there was more than one way through life, more than one way to jump that cliff.
They told me who, what, where, when, why, and, finally, how. They gave me honest to god solutions. They told me that there was more than that one mysterious way through life that nobody tells you about but everybody expects you to find.
If this ain't too profound to say for an online class on life in general, I feel like I've found a part of myself here that I thought I'd lost.
There but for the grace of these wonderful people, I found my hope, and I've got a life ahead of me that I know what to do with. Ain't over yet, bet ya that.