End of my first week back to teaching full time. First time back in K12 in thirteen years. Testing and standards and benchmarks have completely changed.
There is no way that I will possibly know everything tomorrow. In fact it sorta seems like there is no way I will EVER know everything. Or even the very little part of everything that is involved in K12 education. Here is what I need to remember: I am smart. I just need to allow my brain some time to absorb things and juggle them around and sort them out and it will all make sense. The fact that I have no idea what OLPA and MAP and MCA and ummm... something else stand for does not mean that I will not be able to teach my classes on Monday. Oh-- but the national holiday does mean that I will not be able to teach my classes on Monday. Off to a non-education related flashback tangent. One year ago or thereabouts my kids were in a Chinese New Year performance. That's come around again now. Only last year I was really NOT DOING WELL. Can't remember why. Medication and anxiety. And just the whole blah of the season. The next part is kinda scary, so close your eyes. And I don't think that I blogged about this. Because if I did, that was super brave or kinda stupid of me. Kind of like keeping this blog in the first place. Perhaps I should rename it... www.superbraveorkindastupid.com Ha. Right. So here is the scary part. I was sitting in the balcony. Which is really scary for me anyway. Because I am super scared of heights. Like if I am standing on a chair I need help getting down. I feel faint at the tops of staircases. So here I was on the second or third floor balcony. Alone. The rest of the family attended the morning performance with son number two. I worked, so I attended the second performance with son number one. And as I sat there surrounded by strangers-- in the front row of the balcony-- I kept seeing was myself falling end over end over end right off the balcony. It was TERRIFYING. So literally for the duration of the performance I had my feet braced against the cement wall of the balcony with all my strength, terrified that I was going to spontaneously fall from the balcony. And that people would think that I jumped. Only it wouldn't be jumping. It would be more like being thrown. Being pulled out of my seat and flung to the ground. I guess maybe if you aren't afraid of heights this isn't that scary. And really all my fear of heights revolves around the fact that am fairly certain that I am about to fall to my doom. The difference here was that I could SEE it happening. It felt real and inevitable and horrible. When I heard one of the NAMI speakers with PTSD talking about seeing himself dying about 80 times a day, it reminded me of how I felt in the balcony. I cannot imagine walking around with that every day. It was difficult enough for the duration of the performance. At no point did I ever WANT to fall out of the balcony. It just felt like some horribly inevitable conclusion that I would be plucked from my seat by some unseen hand. Afterwards my legs shook from the effort of tensing for the entire three-hour performance. I am very certain that no one around me realized that I was completely paralyzed by fear or there is no way they would ever have asked me to stand up so they could get around me. I worried (of course) that one of them would accidentally knock me off the balcony since I was no longer anchored to the wall. Looking forward to not being terrified for the duration of the show. It will help that I am not going on my own and the people I am sitting with would easily spot the... anxiety and just having them there is calming and centering. grateful crap: distance, time, and support equatorial actions: got a job that is a good fit taking meds working in regular sleep and exercise eating real food (less coffeeshop "lunch" of cookies and lattes) Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |