Weakness. A fascinating creature, isn’t it? It doesn’t barrel through the door with a roar. It slips in quietly, unassuming, like a shadow at dusk, until you realize it’s taken root in your bones. My weakness wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t even my own. It was crafted, meticulously, in one place: her room.

Her room. The battleground. The stage. The theater where she performed her greatest work—humiliation, played to a captive audience of one. She didn’t just dislike me; dislike would have been merciful. She studied me. Marked me. And then she dismantled me, piece by piece. Every insult, every sharp silence, every knowing smirk wasn’t random; it was deliberate, calculated. Her lessons didn’t start with equations or formulas—they began with me.

Not lessons about the wonders of the universe or the beauty of discovery. No, her lessons were about humiliation. About how to strip someone down to nothing. She taught them with the precision of someone who’d spent years perfecting her craft. Every time I raised my hand, desperate to prove I could learn, she cut me down. Every flicker of enthusiasm, every spark of curiosity, was extinguished with the same cruel efficiency. Science, which should have been my refuge, became her scalpel. And with it, she carved away at my spirit.

And I loved science—God, how I wanted to love it. I wanted to lose myself in its mysteries, embrace its logic, its endless capacity for wonder. But she twisted that love. She turned it bitter. Every equation, every experiment, every fact came to carry the weight of her judgment. She didn’t just ruin science for me; she weaponized it against me. It wasn’t that she disliked me. No, she damned me. Turned me into a reflection of her cruelty.

When I spoke up, desperate for someone—anyone—to see what she was doing, I was met with disbelief. “She’s such a good teacher,” they said. “Are you sure you’re not misinterpreting her?” Misinterpreting her. As if I hadn’t spent every day under her microscope, every flaw magnified, every success dismissed. As if I could possibly misunderstand the suffocating reality of her room.

But here’s the part that truly cuts: she didn’t just teach me science. She taught me how to use people. How to see them as tools, as means to an end. She taught me how to discard them when they’d outlived their usefulness. How to manipulate them into seeking my approval, the way I once sought hers. And the worst part? I learned. Oh, I learned well. She was the teacher, and I was her most unwilling, yet most successful, student.

Every cold calculation, every time I’ve used someone, every moment I’ve mirrored her cruelty—it all leads back to her room. The place where I learned to see others not as allies or equals, but as pawns. And when the anger comes, boiling over like a storm I can’t contain, it’s not just at her. It’s at me. For letting her shape me. For carrying her lessons into every corner of my life.

But I won’t lie to you. There’s a part of me, dark and dangerous, that wants to let it all out. To unleash the storm she planted inside me. To make her feel even a fraction of the helplessness she made me feel. But I know what that would mean. It would mean letting her win. It would mean proving her right—that I am nothing more than her creation.

So instead, I hold the storm. I channel it. I twist it into something she could never understand. Her lessons won’t end with me. I’ll take her cruelty and turn it against the systems that allowed her to thrive. I’ll use what she taught me—not to destroy, but to build. Not as a reflection of her, but as a rejection of her.

And yet, I wonder. Was she my first judge? My final one? Or is there still a higher court, a chance for something beyond her shadow? If God is the last judge, then maybe—just maybe—there’s room for transformation. Not forgiveness, no. Forgiveness is too clean, too easy. But redemption? Redemption is messy, hard. Redemption is earned.

I don’t want pity. I don’t need absolution. What I want—what I demand—is to make her legacy irrelevant. To strip her of the power she thought she held over me. To take the darkness she planted and twist it into something resembling light. Because that is how you truly destroy someone like her—not with hate, not with violence, but by proving they never had you at all.

And yet, even now, even with her gone, she lingers. She’s dead—buried, erased from the physical world—but she’s far from gone. She lives rent-free in my mind, a ghost haunting every anxious moment, every seed of doubt that sprouts in my head. I feel her presence in the tightening of my chest when I enter a room filled with strangers, in the nagging fear that no matter how much I’ve prepared, I’m still not enough.

She built a home in my brain, brick by brick, her words and actions the mortar that binds it together. Every time I hesitate to speak, every time I question whether I belong, she’s there, whispering the lessons she etched into me. You’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’ll never measure up. Her voice is quieter now, more like a shadow than a scream, but it’s there, coiled in the corners of my mind, waiting to strike.

It doesn’t matter how far I’ve come or how much I’ve achieved. It doesn’t matter that I’ve surpassed every limitation she tried to impose on me. Her room may no longer exist, but its walls still close in on me when I least expect it. The air grows heavier, the doubts louder, and for a fleeting moment, I’m back there—her eyes dissecting me, her voice cutting me down, her judgment suffocating me. It’s irrational, I know, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

And that’s the cruelest part of it all, isn’t it? She’s gone, yet she still wins. She still takes up space in my mind, still shapes the way I see myself. I don’t need her approval anymore—I don’t even want it—but the scars she left have their own voice. One I can’t always silence.

But here’s the thing: I’m not done fighting. She may have built that room in my mind, but I’m the one with the key. I’ve started dismantling it, brick by brick, word by word, moment by moment. It’s slow work, and some days, it feels like I’m rebuilding faster than I can tear it down. But I keep going because I have to. Because every brick I remove, every doubt I refuse to entertain, is a victory. A small, stubborn act of defiance against her and the shadow she cast over me.

I’ve learned to find strength in the very spaces she tried to claim. In the crowded rooms where anxiety tightens its grip, I plant my feet and remind myself: I belong here. In the moments of doubt, I confront her ghost head-on, daring it to do its worst. And when her voice creeps in, telling me I’ll fail, I answer with my own: Maybe, but I’ll fail on my terms.

Because that’s what she could never teach me—how to fight for myself. How to build my own strength, my own identity, out of the ruins she left behind. She taught me cruelty, but I’ve chosen kindness—not for her, but for me. She taught me how to manipulate, but I’ve chosen to connect. She taught me how to tear others down, but I’ve chosen to lift myself up.

She may never leave my mind entirely. That’s the burden I carry, the price of surviving her. But she doesn’t get to own me. Not anymore. Her voice may echo, her presence may linger, but she’s no longer the architect of my thoughts. I am. And one day—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow—but one day, I’ll look into the spaces she once occupied and find them empty. Quiet. My own.

And that will be the day she truly dies. Not when they put her in the ground—because they’ve already done that. She’s dead, buried beneath a polished headstone, her name etched in stone alongside dates that mark the beginning and end of her existence. There’s even an obituary somewhere, I’m sure. A carefully curated piece that paints her as a dedicated educator, a pillar of the community, a person who shaped young minds for the better.

But obituaries are sanitized, aren’t they? Polished words meant to gloss over the cracks, to celebrate a life lived, no matter how much harm it caused. They’re written to honor the dead, not to tell the truth. And so, in her obituary, she is remembered as a teacher. Perhaps there’s a line about her passion for science, or her “unwavering commitment” to her students. A legacy of inspiration, they might call it. A lie, neatly packaged, for public consumption.

But I know better. I carry the real obituary—the unspoken one—inside me. It isn’t written in the pages of a newspaper or engraved on a plaque. It’s scrawled in the memories she burned into my brain, in the scars she left behind. And one day, I will write it—not out of spite, not out of hatred, but because the truth matters. Because someone should say it: this woman, who could have taught me the wonders of the universe, chose instead to teach me how small I could feel.

She could have opened doors, ignited passions, fostered curiosity. Instead, she locked doors, snuffed out sparks, and made a child feel like a mistake. She could have taught me about atoms, cells, and the vastness of space. Instead, she taught me humiliation, manipulation, and the cold precision of cruelty. She didn’t just fail me as a teacher—she failed as a human being.

Her real legacy isn’t in the textbooks she assigned or the lessons she delivered. It’s in the voices she silenced, the confidence she destroyed, the love of learning she twisted into fear. It’s in the quiet agony of the students who sat in her room, day after day, wondering why they weren’t enough.

And so, one day, I will write her obituary. Not the one her family wanted. Not the one her colleagues might share with pride. But the real one. The one that says: Here lies a woman who had the power to inspire and chose to wound. Here lies a woman who could have been remembered for lifting others up but will instead be remembered for tearing them down.

I will write it not to tarnish her memory, but to reclaim mine. To remind myself—and anyone else who reads it—that her room may have shaped me, but it didn’t define me. That her cruelty may have left scars, but it didn’t kill my potential. That the weight of her judgment, though heavy, will not be carried forever.

Because when I write her truth, I will also write mine. That I survived her. That I learned to rebuild what she broke. That I found my voice in the silence she tried to impose. And that her lessons, twisted as they were, have become fuel—not for vengeance, but for something far greater: freedom. The freedom to let her go, to tear down the room she built in my mind, to finally live a life where her name is nothing more than a footnote in my story.

That will be the day she truly dies—not when her obituary was printed, not when the dirt was shoveled onto her grave, but when I am no longer her student. When her power over me dissolves, leaving only the ashes of her influence. Not when the ink, long dry, settles on her carefully curated obituary—a tribute steeped in falsehoods and convenient omissions—but when her so-called greatest student finally surpasses the teacher. When I, the product of her cruelty, outgrow the lessons she forced upon me and rewrite them on my own terms.

Because that’s the bitter irony, isn’t it? She claimed to be an educator, but her real goal was control. Her real lesson wasn’t about the beauty of discovery or the thrill of knowledge—it was about dominance. She wanted to break me, to shape me in her image, to make me a vessel for her cruelty. But she failed. And that’s the truth she could never admit.

Her obituary might say she inspired countless students, but it won’t say how many of us had to claw our way out from under her shadow. It won’t say how many sparks of curiosity she extinguished, how many dreams she tarnished, how many futures she nearly derailed. And it certainly won’t mention me—not as her “greatest student,” and certainly not as her most unwilling one.

But I will write that part. I’ll write that she taught me not science, but survival. That she didn’t inspire me to love learning—she forced me to fight for it. That her so-called lessons weren’t about education, but humiliation. And that despite all of that, I still rose. I didn’t rise because of her. I rose in spite of her.

One day, I’ll stand taller than her shadow. Not because I crushed her or sought revenge—those things would only keep me tethered to her. No, I’ll surpass her by proving that her lessons didn’t define me. That the cruelty she planted didn’t bloom into more cruelty, but into resilience, into strength. I’ll surpass her when I take the tools she tried to twist against me and use them to build something better, something she could never have imagined.

Her death didn’t free me, not yet. Her faux obituary didn’t close the chapter. Her memory lingers, whispering through the cracks of my confidence, flaring in moments of doubt. But I’ve come to realize something: every anxious moment, every doubt, every time her voice rises unbidden in my mind, it’s not her power—it’s mine. It’s the echo of a fight I’m still winning. A battle she started, but one I’ll finish.

She thought she’d leave a legacy of knowledge, but her true legacy will be the students who overcame her. The ones who rebuilt what she tried to destroy. And I will be the loudest voice among them—not to scream her name in hatred, but to drown it out with something greater. Something she could never take from me.

So let the ink on her obituary dry. Let the world remember her however it wants. Because her real story isn’t finished until mine is. Her chapter in my life is only the prologue to a narrative she’ll have no part in. Her greatest student isn’t the one who praised her or perpetuated her methods. Her greatest student is the one who surpassed her. The one who dismantled her lessons, brick by brick, and replaced them with something entirely their own.

And that, more than anything, is the justice I seek. Not to bury her deeper, not to tarnish her false legacy, but to write my own. To rise so far beyond her reach that she becomes a footnote in the story of my triumph. Because on that day, when I am no longer her student and her lessons are nothing more than ashes, she will truly be gone. And I will truly be free.