We had groups of kids here, on this retreat, all these kids who did not know each other… some who did not like each other.  We split them up, you see, into groups with people they did not know.  No one wanted to talk about nothing, not here, not to each other.  They wanted to talk with their friends and laugh and joke, not share with strangers and cry and feel real things.

No one knows what I’ve been through… No one can relate to me… I don’t want pity… Everyone here is stupid, they all told us.. 

This is a safe place, we told them… share your story… everyone wants to help…

They sat in a circle, in a quiet room, just ten students and me, a teacher, no one talking… just looking back and forth, waiting for someone to speak up.  The silence in the room was a vacuum.  Finally, one brave soul sighed, she looked to the sky, she shared:

my dad’s best friend raped me when I was a kid. 

She stopped, abruptly.  The room stayed quiet… everyone stared at the ground, uncomfortable, unsure. 

It only stopped because he moved away… my parents don’t know… she stopped again.  the room stayed quiet.

I cheated on my AP test last year…

My parents are getting a divorce because my dad gave my mom chlamydia… he didn’t have it when they got married…
 

I’ve been using steroids to bulk up…
 

My best friend starves herself…
 

I’m a kleptomaniac… but I only steal shoes...
 

My boyfriend hits me…
 

I really like this girl in my math class… but I think she likes my best friend...

My parents sent me to therapy because I’m gay...

I tried to kill myself last week… for the fourth time this year…

They shared their pain, slowly, in short outbursts, quick admissions of sorrow and loss, scattered among the silence… they sat in silence once more, when everyone was done. 

But the silence had changed this time.  It was no longer awkward; it had become the silence of people who understood and who empathized.  Rather than the angry silence from before, it became a comfort of sorts, a soft expression of understanding after each heartbreaking admission.  It became the welcoming silence of people who cared.