Maybe We Should Go Back

The Cold War reaches its climax

My classroom stuff has been moved to the new classroom with the help of my friend. Everyone on my team seems to have forgotten about the fact that I almost died a month ago, so I started doing the move on my own. I moved one desk before my legs started shaking and I felt lightheaded. I had to sit down.

As I was sitting there my friend, who is also the janitor, came in. His name is Chris, and he's one of the few people at work I can be real with. He's a metalhead too, and I have a slight innocent crush on him and I know he does for me too. I can feel it, but I will never act on it. He asked what the hell I was doing just sitting there.

I told him, "Don't mind me. Just trying to get my strength up so I can move the rest of this stuff."

I sounded like somebody's damn grandma trying to move from the front porch into the house. That's how it is these days though. I'm 75% of who I was before I got sick, mentally, physically and spiritually.

He looked around and told me to wait. A few minutes later he returned with carts, dolly's and help. He and this other guy moved it all! All the furniture, all the boxes, all the books, and all my personal shit. I was so grateful I felt like crying. I thanked him as I settled into my new room. It has a much brighter feel than the other room, probably because I am further away from her. You know. Her.

The last few weeks she has been absolutely insufferable to an insane degree. It's been so much worse since I got sick. Or maybe I just have less patience for her shit, I don't know. I told Chris about it as we chilled in my new room.

The last week of school we wanted to combine our classes and do an awards day, pass out awards to every kid and have a party and everything. We blew up floaties for the kids to sit on and did a beach theme with snacks and stuff. And we were planning some games to play with the kids. One was teacher trivia.

Even though she knows I have set a firm boundary to not work at home, she asked if I could come up with some teacher trivia questions that night and I was like, "Fuck it. Don't even feel like fighting her." I spent about an hour coming up with questions like, "What place would Ms. So and So visit if she had unlimited money?" Just silly stuff like that to ask the kids. I did a total of 30 questions, 15 for each of us, and I emailed it to her. No response, but that's typical.

The next day during the game, I realized not only did she not use any of the questions I wasted my time putting together, but she was asking things like, "What does Ms. (me) lose the most during class?" And "Ms. (me) is crying in class again. Why?"

So you need some background info. for both of these. First, antidepressants have done a lot of things to change both my brain and personality. I notice things about myself now that are completely different compared with how I used to be. One thing is I am constantly forgetting things and losing things now. It happens all the time. People just think I'm spacey, but in reality it's my meds and I'm extremely self conscious, embarrassed, and insecure about it. She knows this.

The other thing is I cried once in class this year because we were doing an integrated arts lesson with the song Fire and Rain, which reminds me of my friend who died. I literally can't get through the damn song without crying, and I explained that to the kids. No big deal. But she made sure to bring that up to humiliate me during the game.

I told her she was rude as hell for those questions and she told me she found them on a website, which is total bullshit that I don't buy for a second.

It was the second to last day of school, and I haven't spoken to her since. I'm done. I'm done pretending to be nice. I'm done pretending I'm cool with her. And I'm done pretending that her underhanded comments don't bother me and that she isn't being a total thunder cunt 24/7. Done. Just done.

I am not sure what this woman has against me, why she hates me so much, but I don't have the energy to figure it out anymore. I have been nothing but kind to her since day one because I care about my own karma, so she has no reason to treat me like shit. I can't understand people like this. They are so outside the sphere of how I view and do life. I just can't make sense of them at all. It's hard to believe people like this are even real. Our Cold War has reached its crescendo, and it's over now. Finally. I don't have to work with her next year and I couldn't be happier.

Since then, summer break has begun and I'm busy coming up with ways to mentally stimulate the kids. Ethan scored in the 90th percentile for both reading and math (94% for reading and 92% for math, so in other words only 6% of kids in the entire NATION did better on that reading test than my son), and we have decided to test him next year for being Gifted. He meets all the criteria and I could not be more fucking proud of that child. He graduated kindergarten and I cried like a baby during the ceremony just thinking about the day he was born, how scary it all was, all the unknowns that turned out to be the most amazing experience of my life. It was beautiful, a beautiful end to a good school year (minus her of course lol).