More than just a number

Just a day or two before I graduated high school I was given a copy of my high school transcript, complete with my GPA.

I graduated high school (and later college) with honors. I had those chords to tout it and all.

I was the president of NHS.

But I had a GPA of something like 3.89 or equally ridiculous.

I was devastated.

Freaking devastated.

Mostly because no one had ever told me that I was more than just a number. That I mattered more than a test score or my GPA.

I remember my dad told me I was being silly for being upset. I was smart and had done well and besides, it didn't make a difference for my college or anything.

And in retrospect it was silly.

But at that moment, it wasn't. To me, it was failure. Utter failure.

I had failed.

It didn't help that I wasn't graduating in the top 10. I was 11.

Eleventh. In a class of 200.

But I was only eleventh.

Failure.

When I was in early elementary school I vividly remember receiving my report card on the last day of school and breaking down in tears. I told my teacher I couldn't see my mom, I didn't want her to pick me up from school because she wouldn't love me anymore (and no, my mom never once said her love was contingent on my grades, ha).

I had a B+ in math for the last quarter.

In math. My least favorite subject. The greatest thorn in my side.

I was like 7. And all ready I was so choked up and freaked out over grades.

If I collected one single tear from each crying session I had over grades during the first 18 years of my life - just one tear from each session - I could fill the Black Sea and then some.

I wish that someone had told me the truth. That somewhere in the midst of all that stress and heartache someone had whisper words of wisdom into my ear and said, "Ki, it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, none of this will matter."

If only I'd known.

Yes, yes, of course, if you are in a school system you have to make the grades up to x for college, yadda yadda yadda. I get all that. But a B+ in the second grade wasn't going to make or break me.

A 99% on a history test instead of 100% wouldn't prevent me from being a history major.

An 84% on a chemistry paper wouldn't affect my overall grade if I did well on everything else.

I wish I'd known.

I see glimpses of my crazy perfectionist self in H sometimes. It scares me.

I've grown so much in the past 5 years. I'm such a better, calm, laid back, go-with-the-flow girl. Occasionally I will feel the anxiety setting in when I get caught up with a kiddo and burn the green beans, and then I take a breath and bring myself back down to earth and remind myself, "It doesn't matter."

Because it doesn't.

I hope H and B never ever feel that overwhelming stress I did as a kid who was less than perfect. I hope they never cry themselves to sleep because they believe wholeheartedly that they've failed. That they're not good enough. That they are anything less than pure perfection in my eyes.

I hope they have no idea that people get graded on asinine things like spelling and math. That instead they simply know that you practice and practice again until you've got it done. No need to make a 6 year old feel like shit. Or a 16 year old.

I hope they know they're so much more important than a number. That they can do anything in the world that they want. And no number can make or break them.

I hope they see that their momma was brilliant. She worked hard, but never too hard or hard enough. That she always put more on her plate than she could swallow, and yet she always swallowed it in half the time anyway. Was always a little more stressed in her school days than was even remotely healthy. And for what?

All just to graduate with honors, and graduate again with honors, and to say "thanks but no thanks" to Law School and career that wouldn't have mattered even a fraction of what they matter to me, but would have deemed me "successful" by everyone else's standards. No one cares that I graduated high school with a 3.89 GPA. No one but J, my mentor, and my professor ever read my college thesis that I spent more hours than there was ever in a day to write.

I hope they realize that the only times any of that was ever worth it was when I looked at myself with my own self-satisfaction. When I was proud of myself. Not when others were.

And I hope they see their papa, who struggled through school and college. Who never had the right grades. Who is dyslexic and plagued with other learning disabilities that no one ever helped him with. I hope that they see that numbers never mattered to him in the make or break your soul way it did to me. That he said "fuck numbers" and became a kick-ass engineer anyway. Because he knew he was so much more than a number. That he worked hard for himself every day. He didn't work hard for a gold star or a high percentage number or because he feared he wouldn't be worthy if he performed less than.

I hope they know they're more than just a number.

No.

I know they will know they are more than just a number.

Because I will never put them in a position where they could possibly think otherwise.