Mental vs FInancial Health Part 2

Well, the final decision is not made yet however, I am not a quitter! I do not see myself walking away from my job....seems like I"ll just have to hike up the pants, tighten the belt and put my bitch face on. Either that or it's back to office work...and I thikn I might rather die in the gutter than work in cubical land again :)

Financial vs. Mental Health

SO I have come to some realizations that I may in fact not be a super hero after all. I hate to admit this, but I may not be able to handle every single thing all at once. I haven't wanted to use this as a woe is me, feel sorry for Suzi forum, but some things have happened in my life recently that I have downplayed, perhaps to my detriment.

For those that don't know this, I was attacked by my ex last March. It was terrifying, and I was in shock, and I didn't handle things as well as I might have, nor did I handle them as badly as I might have. More than anything, I think I tried to live as if it didn't happen while at the same time trying to deal with the court and custody and taking care of david's mental health that happened in the aftermath. It was an impossible thing to do. You can't go on with your life as if this traumatic thing didn't actually happen to you. Even if you aren't actively wallowing in the events that occurred, they affect your life.

I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by the therapist that I was seeing briefly before the big move. Like many people, I have thought to myself, it's not a big deal. I'm a big girl, I am intelligent, I am capable, and I will be fine. I thought that I would move, get a new job, and everything would just be fixed. It turns out that moving across country and telling yourself that you're fine don't actually fix anything. Turns out that the three largest causes of stress in a person's life are moving, new job, and loss of a spouse...throw on some domestic violence and physical and emotional trauma and you've got yourself one major mind fuck. I may not be as ok as I thought I was.

I have lost my mojo as a teacher. I am ineffective, my classroom management sucks, I freeze in the face of confrontation (with a child, even), and I wake up every morning wishing to god I did not have to go to work. I have not felt this way about teaching before. I am at a nicer school with a wonderful and supportive staff. I have predominately sweet kids, but they are in 8th grade, so....and I can't handle it. I don't even think I'm teaching them anything.

Last week, my assistant principal walked in on what can only be described as chaos. It was bad. I was not in control of the situation. And it did not reflect well upon me. I spent the last week deciding whether or not I should try to explain any of what was going on or if I should just try to fake it til I make it. However, I decided that it would be best to tell my AP what happened to me and the difficulties I was having. I'm glad I did, it was the right thing to do, but after talking to her for an hour, she brought up the valid point that perhaps I am not ready to be in a classroom and that maybe I should be spending the next year healing and not trying to be a mentor, mother, teacher, babysitter, disciplinarian, hand holder, shoulder, secretary, and everything else that being a teacher entails. She was the one that pointed out that I had simultaneously undertaken the three top stressful things that can happen to a person while experiencing trauma and beginning my PhD program. She suggested to me that I might be better off resigning from the position. She says that if things don't improve in my classroom I will most likely be fired. She wasn't threatening my job directly. She actually told me that she doesn't want to see something traumatic that happened to me also ruin my career. She says that she's an excellent judge of character, and that she knows that I am a capable teacher. She even played my recommendation voicemail from my old AP for me to hear. She says she understands that I have experienced something horrible. She even said that PTSD gets downplayed too much and that it is serious. SHe feels that I would be doing myself a disservice to try to continue the year if I can't handle it. That maybe I should get some sort of mindless job until I get better.

Now I have a decision to make. Do I chose to quit a job that I love and worked so hard to get in order to take care of my mental health and risk not being able to pay my bills and take care of David; or do I risk it, try to pull it together and possible be fired thereby ruining my career forever. I have to chose and I have no idea what I should do. The work-a-holic, over-achiever in me says "you can't quit your job, you'll be a failure, and a loser, and how will you pay your bills?" The pragmatist in me says "if you fuck up and get fired, you'll never teach again." And I need to make at least $2000 a month to pay for everything, and that means I need to make at least $15 an hour working 40 hours a week. Doing what? and in this economy? She suggested substitute teaching. It isn't as much money, and no benefits, but at least there wouldn't be any lessons or grading to do. It takes some of the stress off. But isn't it really the same thing? My problem is classroom management, I'd still have to do that. ANd I don't even know if they'd hire me to be a sub after all of the work that they put in trying to get me approved to even teach for the district.

I guess what it boils down to is that I have a HUGE decision to make which will affect me greatly and I don't know what to do.

Poetry from my past 1

So I recently moved home and in my trunk at my mom's house was a tattered old composition notebook of my old poems. I mentioned in my last post that I hadn't written for years, so in order to get me into the swing of things and actually writing on this thing in a semi-regular manner, I've decided to share some of my poems with the world...or the 1-2 of you in the world that will be reading this. These are not chronological, and are not what I fee today, or even really totally autobiographical...believe it or not, as an angsty teenager I didn't always write about things that actually happened to me....

SO here goes...

This one was actually published in an anthology back in 1993....

The Pain (4-1-92)

In your eyes I see the pain
of a thousand souls in anguish
Yet you are just one soul
screaming in agony
In your smile I see the pain
of convincing yourself all is well
When the demons of the night
come knock on your door
In your laughter I see the pain
of feeling the irony
Of the hysteria you share
with the whole of the world
In your solemn glance I see the pain
of wondering if all will be well
And believing it will not
for it never has
And in your quiet states I see the pain
of feeling you are alone
in a world full of strangers
But I am by your side



The second poem of today is one I wrote about my great- grandmother


The Visit (4-15-94)

A silent caress
her eyes seem to cast
upon my soul

Wisp of a woman
skin dry and thin as paper
sitting across from me

We do not speak
she does not know who I am
babe that she cradled in those arms
so long ago

And the daisies I brought her
fall to her feet
as she drifts into sleep

I'll see you next weekend, Grandma.

Thoughts on Nature

So I hadn't written anything that wasn't an academic paper in several years, and I do mean several....but last December I wrote this one.

Thoughts on Nature

I think that I will never see
A poem lovely as a tree
A thing that soon may cease to be
A victim of man's monstrosity

If we don't mend our careless ways
Will nature see her final days
And all consumed in destructive blaze
Screaming through a toxic haze

And who wil mourn our tragic pass
From distant skies through looking glass
A sigh escapes, a breath relax
A menace gone to its repass

Or will we rise to meet the call
Of desperate pleas and deathly pall
To change the path before the fall
To find The Way and Hope for all

Feeling good about myself

Ever have those moments when a little voice inside your head tells you you should do something? I had that this afternoon. My friend is getting married later today (it is 2am after all), and for some reason, I had a feeling that I really needed to call her today and see if she needed anything. I am so glad I listened to that little voice because she needed three dresses altered tonight, including the wedding dress. I am so glad I called. I was able to fix all of the dresses, and I am feeling so glad that I was able to help. It makes me feel useful. It's a good feeling to be able to help someone out that really needed it. So now off to bed cause David has the dentist first thing this morning, and I have a wedding to go to inthe afternoon.

Just cause I'm supposed to

I made myself a promise that I would try to post to this every day, even if I didn't have anything important to talk about....so, today, I got a hair cut, gave myself highlights....felling pretty good about my hair. Other than that, I'm pretty tired, and I think I'm goin to bed. Nothing really exciting or introspective today, just very sleepy....nite nite.

Just when I thought life had gotten strange enough...

It got even stranger tonight. Ever have one of those moments that is so incredibly surreal you can't even believe it happened to you?

Today, I had one of those moments...now I am not going to name names, but I was minding my own business on facebook, being my typical boring self, when all of a sudden out of nowhere, a popular boy from my high school messages me that I was his high school crush. Now those of you that know me now might think to yourselves "so?", but if you knew me then, you would understand that this is bizzarre. I wasn't exactly what you'd call popular. I had a lot of friends, but I wasn't one of the in-crowd by any stretch of the imagination. And I was a brainiac (shocking I know) and I was shy, and awkward and a wall flower, academic, book worm. And he was a football player! And he never spoke to me. He wanted me, but he was afraid to talk to me because I might think he was stupid cause he was a jock....of course, if I take the time to think about it, which I'm pretty much doing, I never talked to him either...cause I was afraid that he would have thought I was a dork.

And so here we are, approaching 20 years later, both divorced, both with kids, and he tells me that I was his high school crush. Of course I was instantly transported back to high school for a few moments and it was like "Oh my gawd!!!! A football player thinks I'm hot!!! No way!!!!" But then I remembered that I am a sucessful, reasonably attractive, intelligent charming woman and of course men find me attractive....just not, you know, the good ones usually, and not generally speaking, the popular guys from high school....I still see myself as that shy, awkward, wall flower, academic, book worm. So it's exciting that someone like that would think I was interesting. And it's strange that we had so much in common...and that he remembered me after all these years.

I was memorable. To someone that I didn't even know knew I existed.

And maybe all these years I was wrong about what I thought people thought of me. Maybe I wasn't the big giant loser geek that I thought they thought I was. Maybe I was just so shy that I didn't realize there were lots of people out there that wanted to know me.

Maybe it's time to start tearing down the walls I built to protect myself, and maybe I'm someone that the someone's would want to know.