ABSTRACT
Last week Assignment 10, “Reading Dying to Teach,” was due. This week we
discussed Assignment 11, “What if Love Doesn’t Work Out?” Beth found it one
of the hardest topics of the semester. “When I asked my mother what she thought
her life would be like without my father, she was actually disturbed by this
idea.” Nor was this a topic Beth felt comfortable writing about; she thought
to herself, “You still haven’t found love, and you don’t know what it is yet.”
Several students remarked in their essays that one of their biggest fears is falling
out of love with the person they marry. “I’m very cautious when it comes to
relationships,” Bianca confessed, “and I never get involved with someone if I
can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with that person.” Addison admitted
that her greatest fear is her boyfriend’s death. “When I think about what would
happen if he died, I cannot look past my immediate actions. I imagine I would
crash to the ground, curl in a ball, cry until my throat went raw and my eyes dried
up. I think I would lie in bed for weeks.”