MISSION STATEMENT
27 NOVEMBER 2019
Not to get all “Tom-Cruise-in-
Jerry-McGuire”, but the time has come to identify those things which are
fundamentally important in life and to proceed from there.
I have been a teacher for 22 years. I have been a parent for 29 years. I was a wife for 22 years. I have supported other people my whole adult
life. My children may not be perfect,
but I love them unconditionally. I have
given love and empathy to students who need it, because my profession has
always been a missionary goal. I listen
to the happiness and sadness and anxiety and depression and epiphanies of
others, all the time. I was a good wife
for a very long time. I helped a man
through drug addiction and depression and criminal behavior and negligent parenting. I saved his life. I secured the lives of my children. I built a career and used that position to
help other people navigate through life, when no one else was else was there to
listen. And in the process, I lost my
self. My soul has grown so thin that I
feel like I am rotting from the inside out.
I feel the word “hate” every day.
Most days that hate is directed at myself, because I truly believe in
the basic goodness of humanity, but somehow I don’t see that goodness in myself
anymore. I am a shell. I used to be full of hope. Now I am full of existential angst. When Albert Camus said, “happiness is the
absence of hope”, I latched onto that statement, because I understand it. To hope for things which may or not happen,
and then to watch most of those things not happen is a crushing blow to my
psyche. I’m not trying to say that all
hoping is bad, but I cannot live my
life waiting for other people. I have
lost who I am. I don’t remember the last
time I felt pure, unadulterated joy. I
self-medicate in order to breathe, but breathing is becoming a struggle. If I don’t stop what’s happening in my life,
I will never recover. I will die, and I
will die empty. I do not want to die
empty.
I want to help other people, but I have to help myself
first. How? There is no magic 8 Ball to tell me what to do. Because I focused so much on being a parent
and a teacher and a wife, I have isolated myself into a room with no windows
and no fresh air and no contact with people who might be able to help me be
better. My friends are superficial at
best, and they are mostly people I only speak to periodically. My days are filled with bells which dictate
when I wake up and when the next group of people want something from me and
when I go to bed. So when I’m not
dictated by those bells, I find myself crawling into a mental time-out zone and
doing nothing. I don’t write
anymore. I don’t make music
anymore. I don’t read books
anymore. I try to do those things, but I
get distracted and weird, and then I just stop trying.
I recently thought I was in love, but it turns out that I
was just confused. Having that hope in
love just caused me more pain. I don’t
like the part of my personality that likes pain. Counter-intuitive, counterproductive, and a
bit sadistic. I serve my heart on a
platter to people I care about, and very often they send it back, because it’s
not “right”. When I give my love, I only
expect acknowledgement, not judgement.
From here on, I will try to refuse to accept other people’s baggage as
being my fault. What happens to people
in life is reality. How we all choose to
deal with reality should be ours alone, not a superimposition of what has
happened out of the scope of “we”.
Honesty is the crucial element of health. I am honest, and I need others to respond
with honesty about themselves. I am not
other people’s medicine.
(Sometimes I feel like
I’m tied to the whipping post. Oh lord, I feel like I’m dying.)
But starting today, I am going to do my best to acknowledge
when my life choices are negatively affecting me and to do something positive
to stop making unconstructive decisions.
I will do my job, but I will look for something else. I will keep trying to love. I will try much harder to love myself. I can’t change the fact that the education
system is antiquated and falling apart, except in my own space at my job. I can’t change the fact that I was totally
upended personally and financially by lawyers and a man who is a professional
victim. I can’t change the fact that
health insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies are robbing me blind,
and not providing the very thing they promise (affordable health, both mental
and physical). I can’t change the toxic
political environment which is blooming both in America and (seemingly) around
the rest of the world. All I can do is
look within myself and try to be a better person. Maybe.
Peace and love,
Yours truly,
Sincerely,
Et cetera.
