Listening to Linkin Park

When you were standing in the wake of devastation
When you were waiting on the edge of the unknown
And with the cataclysm raining down
Insides crying, "Save me now!"
You were there, impossibly alone

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation?
You build up hope, but failure’s all you’ve known
Remember all the sadness and frustration
And let it go. Let it go

-Linkin Park  "Iridescent"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYiIBCN9ec&index=11&list=RDdxytyRy-O1k

I was ruminating again this morning about teaching and the years I've put into it. Going over once again my reasons for leaving. Last week I handed in my letter that says I'm not coming back next year and told Dawn to not call me for any more positions. It was too overwhelming, which it has been. Trying to juggle Bri, renovating this house and building up my stained glass inventory has not been managable with "interruptions" to substitute classes.

This year it was mostly babysitting anyway.

I remembered the witch hunt after me at Maritime, being pushed out of Jamestown because the dept chair simply didn't like me, and the two years in Elmira that put me into therapy. I still don't know if that last marking period was a result of the principal wanting to push me out by making it impossible to stay or if he really thought I could pull off some kind of miracle with those crazies. You can't put 12 special ed kids from 8:1:1 classes into a general ed class and think they'll just adjust.

The emotional problems that followed were worse than any I have ever had in my life. I've been depressed and even rageful to the point of self-harm before but never to that level. And not only did that experience bring on suicidal thoughts but resentment over the fact that I was having suicidal thoughts and thus transferring that into homicidal thoughts.

Hence the therapy to survive without warranting a prison sentence.

I've still had residual trauma reactions since then. It took three years of substituting and four years total to really get to a point where I'm okay. I went from an emotional panic attack at just the sight of Elmira letterhead on the envelope in the mail a few months after I left, out of place reactions to students, to a place where I feel much more in control of my actions. I'm not reactive and losing my head in anger and just the word school or driving passed a school building.

Besides there being not jobs for the last 6-7 years, they're laying off again this year, it's not emotionally healthy for me to stay in that environment, even at a good school.

This year there was one student I was ready to nail to the wall. He put his hands on me twice this year. The classroom teacher wrote him up for it the first time in the fall and I wrote him up for it this spring.  He's getting physically bigger too so this is going to be a problem into his future. He's in 7th grade now and taller than me. I'm not saying I'm leaving because of him.

I am going to point out that they way he treated me brought many of the old rage and out of control emotion back. I had some emotional flashbacks where the desire to hurt someone popped back into my head. Not a good place to be when my reactiveness kicks in, surrounded by teenagers who's primary goal is to test adults to the breaking point. My point is closer than it used to be.

The passed two weeks without teaching or waiting for calls have actually been relaxing. I feel like I'm gettings things done for a change. I have a schedule that I'm able to mostly keep up with as far as woodworking and soldering is concerned. I'm hopeful about the house we're looking at on Tuesday. It doesn't need any major work done to it. I'm considering a masterbedroom suite addition in the future on the first floor but it's move-in ready and so we can just relax a few years before we make any big changes and be perfectly happy on over two acres of land.

I think two songs really hit me this morning because of the passed five years and how much has changed. Maybe part of the reason why I was able to move passed a lot of the Elmira bullshit had to do with so many deaths, the birth of my child and the loss of my mother in particular. Career shit just wasn't all that important in the face of so much loss and grief.

"Lost in the Echo" was the first song that hit me. I got out of it a need to let the ghosts go. Not holding onto the past and those who have left so you get stuck in one place and become a ghost yourself. A bit of crying with that one.

The second song "Iridescent" speaks to being alone and surrounded by devastation. Being able to stand strong and give your experiences their proper respect. It's not okay to just forget they ever happened. It's a part of you, what makes you stronger, and you need to face and accept those experiences in order to let them go. That's where healing and strength comes from. Not denial or forgetting but accepting and incorporating those things into who you will become.

A lot of Optimus Prime dying.

Since accepting the past and incorporating those lessons is where I'm at right now, it makes sense this kind of thing would strike me hard. I've been needing to be reminded of the purpose of this journey lately. I've been off the calendar for a couple of months

Things are still happening in the background and in my subconscious. I've noticed I'm acting more from a place of solid foundation, of calmness and steadiness that I don't remember having before.

I still get manic occasionally though.