Lessons Learned, Healing Hearts

Overcoming Obstacles (Chapter 19)

Sitting at the table, Marlow closed her textbooks. Then, lifting her school backpack, she pulled out her practice test. Covered with mostly blank answers, a sense of dread rolled through the pit of her stomach, and a tension headache started tightening its hands around her head.

"We'll only go as long as you want," Piero said.

Completely unaware of the anxiety she was already in, Piero instructed Marlow to get a dark-coloured marker and two different coloured highlighters.

Exhaling hard, she pushed herself away from the table. Opening a junk drawer and rummaging through it, she mumbled, "You can do this. Half an hour, that's all you need. You can do this." Pulling out a thin black Sharpie and one yellow and one pink highlighter, she closed the drawer with a hip push. Watching as Piero flipped through her exam, Marlow questioned the stupidity of accepting his help. "Why, Marlow? Why didn't you stick with no?"

Deep down, she immensely appreciated the extra support from teachers, but it always ended up with her in tears. Give him half an hour, and then call it quits.

"OK," Piero said, scooting over closer to her. "I can see you are already anxious." Rubbing her arm, he instructed, "The first thing I want you to do is to calm your breathing. I want you to do what I'm doing." Making sure that Marlow was watching him, Piero inhaled slowly and deeply through his nose, lifting his shoulders as his chest filled. Holding it briefly, he exhaled through his mouth. "Now, you. Just like I did. Nice and slow."

Marlow had to push herself to take in a full, deep breath, hold it, and exhale. However, listening as Piero counted out loud, taking one last good breath, she sighed as she exhaled.

"Good, now, you're ready." Sliding Marlow's test back to her, he stated, "The first thing I want you to do is to pick a question you think you did correctly."

Staring at the page, it didn't matter what question she picked; there was no way to know if it was correct. Choosing the first question, Marlow looked at Piero. Guiding her through his steps of blacking out unimportant information and highlighting only the information she would use, Marlow worked through the problem. Being the voice in her head, he verbalized what he thought she would be thinking, giving praise when she was going in the right direction and subtly guiding her if she got stuck. Discovering that she had, in fact, done it correctly in class, she smiled to herself.

"There you go. Good job," Piero praised, raising his hand to high-five her. "Now, find another one."

"One I already did or a new one?"

"Your choice."

Choosing to do a second already completed question, though Marlow learned that it, too, was correct, it still did nothing to boost her confidence. She had done the ones she knew she could do. It was the other uncompleted ones that worried her.

"OK, let's do one you haven't already done."

Flipping over to the second page, Marlow stared at another full page of sparsely answered questions.

"Just look for what is being asked. What do you have to solve? If you can't find it, move on."

Feeling her breathing becoming more rapid and shallow, she reached for a small textbook. Covering up most of her page, she focused on only the questions she could see.

"OK, now do the same thing we just did with the first ones." Grabbing a blank piece of paper, Piero pulled out his phone. Doing the calculations along with her, he thought he was being helpful.

"Piero, please don't take this the wrong way, but can you not do the questions too. Seeing you punch numbers into your phone's calculator before I have even finished figuring out what to do is not helpful at all."