We're back in. 7am til 4pm, five days a week. Nights and weekends too, when you count Open House, extra duties, grading papers, and then trying to have energy for family activities. All day, every day, there's something either going on or about to go on, and when the odd moments of down-time occur, I just collapse in a heap on a piece of furniture and wish I was asleep. When I do sleep, it's fitful and short, not restful and energizing. I think my missionary position as a teacher is over. I think I'm hanging in there out of habit, indecisiveness, poverty, and fear of the future.
I used to take special pleasure in looking out into the seas of faces each period and finding the students who are half-asleep or glaring at me, so that I could find a way to reach them - to show them that learning can be applicable and fun and even necessary. Those people just make me sad now. The ones who don't care are not going to be suddenly converted by a tired, sad, aging lady at the front of the room, who's droning on about history and literature and philosophy. Sometimes I can't even stand the sound of my own voice. It's like I'm up there, and I suddenly hear myself like an outsider might, and I just want to grab a few of my favorite things, head for the door, and never come back.
Reality is rarely what real - it's only our perception of what's going on; and my perception is that I've hit the proverbial brick wall. It's not that I need to find a different path; it's that the path has ended. There's nowhere else to go. I'm standing here shouting into the abyss, hearing only the rapid thumping of my own, defective heart, muffled inside my fluid-filled ear drum. Thumping, beating, skipping, and then ... nothing.
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