Some days I am just captured all over again by my good fortune. I think back to my teaching job, that horrible start to my fifth year. The behavior problems, the sheer number of below grade level students, the drastic change in atmosphere from the year before, the inexorable banding together of the staff in the face of a common enemy in Sherry, the impossible increase in paperwork and expectation of teacher performance. Just a perfect storm, with all the elements coming together at the same time to make a truly miserable time for me.
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I think back on that time and remember the slow, steady influx of the toxicity of my work life creeping into my personal life, tainting everything I had that I swore would never be tainted by my job: my evenings, my runs in my beloved neighborhood, the very walls of my gorgeous new home which had heretofore only had positive associations from summer. I consider all the nights I wept, truly sobbed, even coming to my parents and breaking down more, I think, than they’ve ever seen me. Lord bless them, but they handled it well. I remember desperately using the Secret and expending so much of what little energy I had in being positive and trying to deny the tears that were sogging up my brain. My sweet team members tried whenever they saw me starting to dive in spite of my best efforts, to bring me up with kind words, long hugs, and understanding looks. They were really the only bright spot in the whole of my professional life. I had to always have my music going on my computer throughout the day just to survive. The downward spiral was slow, almost imperceptible but uncompromising. I went from being angry at these circumstances to gritting my teeth and bearing them, to becoming sad and despairing, breaking down at work and at home. I really was nearing the breaking point and began to suspect that I would go the way of Analiese in her first year and have a nervous breakdown and have to be medicated and put on a week’s medical leave.
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And then the sky broke open and manna fell down. On a dizzying rush, I got the call I had been waiting for, put in my two-weeks notice, started my new job, and met the man of my dreams! I’m still processing it, actually, and what I find helps me to process it is reflecting back on how bad and hopeless everything seemed and then how very suddenly all of that changed, turned on its ear, but in a very, very good way. I felt like my whole life, the life I was trying to attract, was contingent upon that call, upon leaving that dreaded school forever.
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And here I sit, writing with an aching arm instead of getting ready for a date that I’m actually – wait for it – excited about, marveling at how my dreaded present so drastically, so dramatically, and so very suddenly became my past.
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I don’t ever have to be there again. I don’t ever have to write another lesson plan or mini-referral. I don’t ever have to grade another paper, fill out another Child Study form, or hold another parent conference. No more interim reports or report cards. No more insults to my professionalism or printing limits. No more staying late to get everything done. No more reading groups and think-alouds or PALS or STARS or comprehension strategies or math manipulatives or lunch and recess duties! I am free and I don’t ever have to go back. I spontaneously break into a smile on my way to work, not only because I’m going somewhere pleasant where I have a reasonable chance of feeling successful and like I’m making progress, but also because I am free and rid forever of that horrible place, that horrible job, that horrible profession. I breathe now. I breathe in and out all day and never feel like I’m about to choke. God, it feels so good to be free!! My life has finally begun! Now, where is that lipstick?
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