Maybe We Should Go Back

Everything is

I started to title this "Everything is awesome" like that song from the Lego movie because that song is my JAM when everything is going to shit! But by the end of me writing this I didn't have it in me anymore to be all joke-y and sarcastic-y about it, and leaving it as it is feels closer to reality anyway. Everything is... what? Who freaking knows.

I'm home sick again for the second time in two weeks, having been gifted a second wave of this fevery-pukey-achey-coughy-snotty shit that I don't have time for while I'm still coughing through pleurisy from the LAST fucking time. Every time I breathe out it sounds like the demonic noise from the Grudge with all this stuff rattling in my lungs.

Ironically enough, the kids (mine) have not gotten sick (knock on every wood within a 5,000 mile radius). No, this one came from school.

I've always said and thought that January/February/most of March is the absolute pits of the school year. I'm not sure why but it was true even when I was a student. I could feel the shift in the atmosphere of the place. As an adult I've also known a lot of other teachers who agree with me. It's a time when you must abandon all hope, ye who enter the gum-encrusted double doors. There are no more holidays to be happy about. The kids are done and checked out. A lot of days, you are also done and checked out. Illness is like a giant hammer just smashing you and everyone around you over and over and over. It's winter, but not winter enough to be pretty, like lalala look at the twinkly snow under the Christmas lights! It's just winter enough to be brown and depressing. State tests are looming like Trump's pen over a new dictatorial executive order that will fuck over everyone's lives. That thing... oh my God, on top of ALL of it, TRUMP is our goddamn "president" again! I'm still in shock. Just let that sink in allllll the way to the bottom, just like the million-ton anchor it is that holds this shit-ship in its stagnant place.

My country is dying. My marriage is dying. I don't know if I'll be able to keep this amazing job next year, and if that happens where will my own kids go to school? They're only guaranteed entry if I'm working there because (not surprisingly) the wait list is thousands of names long, and I desperately want them there because the quality of instruction, non-tolerance of disruptive behavior and emphasis on creativity and all forms of art is everything I've ever believed in and loved about teaching.

Things are really depressing right now and I guess it's time I acknowledge it. It's been such a great school year and I love the school I'm at so much that it's been hard for me to admit just how dark things have become in the other areas of life. After all, I don't want to complain when I'm finally free from my indentured servitude in the public school system, and I've coasted along on that gratitude for months now, not able to believe my good luck and not letting "the little things" get me down because LOOK AT THIS: I don't hate my career anymore! YAY! But I've got to acknowledge the growing stench of this neglected depression, because just like February and this illness I have, it's obviously not going anywhere anytime soon.

Oh, and that thing about my marriage? I am not sure I can even go there right now. That one is really hurting. The rest of this stuff I can just use humor about and it softens the edges, but not that 15-year-old thing. No way. That's a therapy-worthy complaint, and I have no therapist anymore.

I do tend to complain so much in my writing don't I? I just realized it's the only place these thoughts can go. The happy stuff I can pass around to everyone, but no one likes a complainer. I should probably make this private but even the thought that someone else might be hearing you is better than ruminating about it in your own head yet again. Somehow it helps. Like when prisoners scratch words into prison walls. I can look at it now, come back to it, see the mess, and it helps. It's not so much inside of me now. So I'm sorry about it. I know, I really need a therapist.