Crying in the car on the way home. Jeez, I thought I was done with that. Evidently not. At our Wednesday planning meeting, we were hit with the one-two punch of more expectations and paperwork piled on us and even less accomplished on our next week’s lesson plans (read “nothing”). Yet again, we are overloaded even more, if that’s possible. I had to leave because I was going to lose it if I didn’t. I just keep thinking, “Hold it together till you get in the car.” And what truly burns is that all this work we are expected to do – much of it pointless – would be overwhelming for someone who actually wanted to do this, who still believed in this worthless profession. So to me, it is salt in the wound. I already hate teaching, loathe being around kids. So right there is a large measure of necessary energy missing, and I need every last bit of it for all the work required of teachers, let alone all the extra work required of us at
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I had already begun losing the ability to go day by day, beginning to see with dreaded clarity the sheer length of this school year, thanks to that discussion about license renewal. So today just compounded that inward groan I had been feeling for days. And as I got in the car and began my commute out of this passionately hated city, I alternated between squeezing tears and dull hopelessness. It seems incomprehensible to me that the year is not even half over, that I still have seven months left. I cannot fathom that, let alone another two years, God forbid.
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I’m stuck. I’m so terribly stuck. There’s no way out. Obviously. I can’t even use the Secret because I think it’s become quite clear that this is where I’m supposed to be. It made sense that TowneBank didn’t work out, but I can’t even comfort myself with the thought of how staying where I am is going to help me focus on attracting the future I really want, because I can’t feel, see, hear, sense that future anymore. I’ve gone dead. My transmission tower has shorted out. Flat cardboard cut-outs are all I have left of the vivid, beautiful future I envisioned. And it’s not even like I’m giving the lie to all the belief I had in that siren call out to my perfect mate. It’s just that I’ve fallen silent and can’t sing out to him anymore.
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And I could understand the reasoning that TowneBank would have really diffused my energies and diverted my attention from marriage and family. But would all new jobs have done that? At this point, I would leap at the chance to work in another school or district, even as a classroom teaching. Just anything in another building, out of the smoke of the burning ship I’m on. But no school or district will touch me without me losing my license. I’m under contract. So there is not even the prospect of me getting a job I could do easily so it wouldn’t divert my attention too much.
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And you know, that reasoning only goes so far. The silver lining of losing TowneBank was that I had a job I could coast through so I could focus on attracting my perfect mate. That only goes so far as my spirit remains intact. And this school and this job are crushing my spirit. So how does that reasoning make sense?
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So there’s no way out. And for a year, I’m trapped – and the year timeline is only IF marriage or a book contract pan out by August. I can’t help but think that I did such a good job for four years in this position. I worked extra hours, worked hard to become proficient and learn and hone my craft, took so many opportunities that I could easily have let slip by to mold and understand my students. I spent so much time and energy and heart to do good and make a difference, and for that I have earned a year in the pen? What did I do that I must be punished? Because that is what this feels like. Punishment. Retribution for a crime not committed. I don’t understand why I must go through this.
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It is draining me, and therefore my focus on my desired future. It is solidifying racial prejudice which could have been avoided if I had just been allowed to get out. And my loathing for children would have been able to stay at a distant, occasional frustration or distaste.
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I just don’t understand why I must stay here for another seven months, God help me. More to the point, I don’t understand how I can stay. Things are reaching a critical mass; they have to so somewhere. There has to be some resolution. And I thought on the way home, “God, you have to help me. You can’t possibly, you couldn’t possibly mean to just leave me here for a whole year!” And I thought, yes, he can. He can intend exactly that.
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I don’t know how I am going to go in tomorrow and teach all these different things to kids who won’t get it anyway, insist upon beating my head against a wall with them, and deal with all their shit, when I don’t even want to teach. I don’t want to be around children. I am sick of being around these children who have no self-control or home training. School is not a place for learning; it is merely the receptacle for any shit a child might be amused enough to throw. And I’m saying this after I’ve already finally built relationships with all of them and I basically like them, and yet I hate them. If I never had to see one of their faces again, I would rejoice. I just don’t want to do this with any of my time, resources, or energy. It is just an unending, frustrating, completely pointless repetition of rules, consequences, and concepts. I hate this job! I hate this job, I hate the building, I hate the kids, I hate the administration. And I just don’t know what to do, because there is no way out. I’m in prison.
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And I can’t go back to the way things were at the beginning of the year. I can’t. Not just I won’t; I can’t. I know part of that hell was my own making – my choices, m y reactions, my refusal to invest anything in my students. But most of it was not me. Most of it was just that it is a miserable profession to me, that it has become a horrible place to work, with incompetence laying out more work for teachers to do. I can’t go through that hell again, with crying at home and at work, never smiling, dreading every minute, having to work so much harder than I’m capable of. I got undressed today and thought, I wish there was a way I can wear khakis, my school shirt, and tennis shoes every day. I just don’t want to try anymore. I just want to pull my hair in a ponytail every day and wear minimal makeup and no jewelry, and just be comfortable. Because there’s no point in looking cute. There’s no point in being anything but comfortable because there’s too much crap to deal with. Yeah, another way keeping this job is preparing me for meeting a man – female-dominated, sucking my energy dry, crushing my spirit, and finally making me actually look like a teacher. Yeah, great plan.
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And when I finish this journal entry, what will have changed? I’ll be just as dead as I was before, and just as trapped. Will God come? Will help come? I certainly hope so, but if it does, it won’t be with my help, because I’m sinking. And I so wish I weren’t. I wish some way would show itself to get me out of this hell. Is there no hope for me? Am I destined to have to complete this year-long sentence? Is there nothing can be done?
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It just boggles me that there is no possibility. In this whole big, bright world, in this amazing modern world of millions of opportunities, there’s nothing for me? I really must stay the rest of this year? I just can’t fathom it, can’t wrap my brain around it. What happened that all my opportunities, all my possibilities, got taken away? All these years of working so hard to do the right thing, live a responsible life, get education and train, learn and learn and learn, only led me to a dead-end? How did this happen? How was it that I did all I was supposed to do, was such a good student of life, and all that did was drop me off in the middle of nowhere? How can I be left like this, with nowhere to go? Was it all a waste?
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