An Open Letter for Back to School…

I get it.

I feel that specific back-to-school dread in my body every year when August rolls around. Some ghosts leave their little fingerprints.

If you’re like me, there is a distinct kind of knot in your stomach this time of year. Or maybe it’s a lump in your throat, an unsettling fluttering in your chest, a general nervousness? For me, it’s that knot, though, and it feels like dread, like fear, like anxiety, like maybe there’s a small voice of hope in there, but mainly it feels like foreboding doom.

The back-to-school time when I was growing up was very different: We did not have long lists of supplies and it certainly didn’t start in July. School started after Labor Day and our supplies were very basic compared to today; I’m pretty sure we didn’t work off an actual list. I just know we bought some pencils, Mead notebooks, binders, glue and not much else. It is a fuzzy cluster of memories but the feeling of dread is something I can remember very distinctly, something I recall viscerally — literally — every year around this time. Vestigial echoes of that dread reemerge when I see the back-to-school displays set up; I have to consciously remind myself that I am safe now but the feeling of doom still bobs around inside me.

Before fifth grade, I actually enjoyed going back to school. I had been a pretty happy…