Fighting Mental Illness: What I Want You to Understand

Mental illness can be something hard to understand when you haven't experienced it yourself, especially in a society where mental illness stigma runs rampant due to ignorance, misinformation, and (I believe) fear (in the sense of a mindset of "If I blame them for it, then it can't happen to me"). However, thanks at least in part to the internet, people are becoming more and more willing to share their experiences and promote awareness for mental health issues. Every so often, I decide to join in.
Every person's battle with mental illness is different. We can share common threads (and relate to each other some times more than others), but each person's experience is also unique and personal. As I compare my experiences to other people fighting depression and anxiety, I find that there are many things I can relate to, but some things that are unique to me. Furthermore, there are things that I desperately need to share with the world but that the social anxiety disorder that I fight still paralyzes me from saying aloud to most people. So I write and post and continually fight the paralyzing fear that people might judge me negatively for what I post. So here are the things that I'm often too afraid to tell you but want you to understand about my own battle with depression and anxiety.

• While it's called a "mental illness," my anxiety is also a very physical disease. My latest focus with my psychologist has been working through anticipatory anxiety. This means that I'm working to not allow my anxiety take over my life hours, days, and/or weeks before an upcoming event that scares me. Trying to focus myself in the moment has turned out to be the easy part. The problem with my anxiety is how physical the symptoms are. I try to focus on the moment at hand in which I should be enjoying myself, but I cannot seem to rid myself of the tightness in my chest, the pit in my stomach, and/or the adrenaline pulsing through my blood urging every muscle in my body to run away and never turn back. It happens when I fear the future. It happens when I remember an embarrassing event from decades ago. I am convinced that if I could just get rid of that dang physical response, my fight would get much easier.
• The physical symptoms of anxiety sometimes get so bad that I look for whatever it takes to ease them. For years, this has meant allowing myself to get lost in the world of a movie, TV show, or computer game at least long enough to make the physical anxiety symptoms subside so that I can turn my attention to whatever tasks lay ahead of me. In recent months, this coping mechanism has ceased to work. I have however come to understand the people who are so depressed that all they do is sleep. It turns out that the only time that I don't feel like crap is when I'm sleeping. So recently, in the worst of my depression, I've slept a lot.
• As long as we're talking physical symptoms, both depression and anxiety leave me with NO appetite. I'll go entire days where all I eat is a bowl of cereal or a handful of chips or a few mini chocolate bars. And when I do eat the little that I manage to eat, I feel like I have to force feed myself; thanks to parents who never forced me to finish my dinner after I said I was full, my gag reflex tends to start kicking in if I try to eat when I'm not hungry. Then there are the times that I'm hungry but can't find in myself the will to get up off the couch to grab food. Other times yet, usually when hunger begins to kick in after a few days of surviving on one small meal each day, I still don't eat because I feel so crappy mentally and emotionally already that I feel like I may as well let myself just be hungry too - as if I don't deserve the satisfaction of eating when the rest of my being feels as crappy as it does. I have this joke with myself that my weight loss plan for the last 5 years or so has been to have a mental health crisis at least once a year during which I lose 5+ pounds in a couple of weeks by simply ceasing to eat the amount of food that I should. I'm well-aware that this is entirely unhealthy, but it's my reality. And save the lecture telling me how important it is to eat - you will send me into a deeper spiral of depression. Also save the lecture about eating healthier to combat depression - if after days of surviving on almost no food I suddenly crave junk and can eat it without feeling nauseous, I'm going to eat the junk because it means I'm at least eating something.
• Save the lectures in general. And save any advice about what I can do to "fix" myself. The lectures and guilt trips are only damaging. Don't tell me that I have nothing to be depressed about, that I have much to be thankful for - it will only make me feel guilty for not feeling the same way. Don't tell me that I should get out and exercise - it will only make me feel guilty for not managing to muster the energy to walk to the kitchen. Don't tell me to just think more positively - it will only make me feel guilty that I can't find joy in life. Don't tell me that I should focus on other people more than myself - it will only make me feel guilty for wanting to take care of only myself (which is what I need right now). The more the guilt builds up, the more I feel like a horrible person that doesn't deserve to exist on the planet.
• And while we're headed that direction, please don't ever get on a soapbox and preach about the fact that suicide is selfish. (Disclaimer: I am NOT suicidal - it's just a pet peeve of mine). I can see the argument both ways, but I will add that as someone fighting depression, it's taken me a long time to feel comfortable with the idea that to become a fully functioning person, I need to actually be willing to put my own needs ahead of others'. When you berate a person who has committed suicide as nothing but selfish, I feel guilty for needing to be a bit selfish to fight depression, and I, once again, feel like I don't deserve to be allowed to live on this earth because I need to be selfish. (In other words, if you're trying to deter depressed people from suicide by telling them that it's selfish, you might actually be decreasing their will to live, or maybe that one's just me).
• Taking medication for mental illness is not weak. It is not a crutch. It is not pill-popping. It is treatment for a serious, potentially deadly disease. It is no different than my dad taking insulin to treat his Type 1 diabetes. Needing to take daily medication for anything is too often judged harshly by my all-natural, anti-Western-medicine generation. I was shamed by once-close friends for being a "pill-popper" back when I was just taking meds for allergies and vitamins; that was before the antidepressants. The more pressure I feel from the members of my generation to fight any ailment without taking meds, the less of a person I feel for needing antidepressants to keep the chemical balance in my brain in check. And don't tell me that the meds are just a crutch - I even had a health professional tell me this (needless to say, I found someone else to manage my meds).
• Mental illness does not mean that I am mentally weak. I am only starting to believe in the strength that my college counselor kept telling me I had during the two years that I saw her. On a recent workshop day at school, we watched a TED talk about "grit" - that thing inside you that keeps you going through the tough times. On that same day, during which I reached the peak of my most recent mental health crisis, a colleague who I had finally confided in reminded me to have grit. I wanted to scream. Shall we look at my history of grit? Through high school, my lowest grade was a B+, and through my last 5 trimesters of high school, (when my undiagnosed mental health issues continued to spiral downwards) I had straight A's. I also managed a 3.9 GPA in 5 years of college with a double-education major and only ever missed two days of classes for mental health reasons - I forced myself to go to class and take notes even if it meant crying the entire time I was there. And, up until recently, every time I've considered taking a mental health day from work, I force myself to get up and go in to school because I know students will learn more from me as a partially functioning teacher than they will from a sub. (I did recently determine that likely anxiety-caused gastrointestinal issues and the inability to stop crying were enough to keep me home.) I've had grit for a long time. I'm just pretty certain that I've almost completely used it up.
• In my adult life, I'm relearning how to cope with anxiety and depression. In high school and college, I threw myself into schoolwork and ignored the rest of the world in order to get through things. Schoolwork always took priority because it's what kept me functioning. It was the rest of life that was too overwhelming - learning about the politics of the adult world, trying to fit in with friends, etc. But as an adult, working in a school, it is now school that I want to run away from. I recently determined that I want nothing more than to go out and experience life with no pressures or expectations from the outside world. In recent weeks my best two days were the one spent at a corn maze with one of my closest friends and the one that started with a coffee date with another of my closest friends and was then spent expanding my photography hobby at the arboretum with my parents. And the only thing that has given me moments of reprieve from my anxiety and depression in recent weeks is the decision to take a solo trip to Disney World and starting to plan that (because Disney is expensive and I need to figure out how much money I should be saving). I want to live life and not be tied down by a job in a toxic environment (more on that later). In other news, the need for money seriously sucks.
• To my teacher friends: As you work with students and keep an eye out for any warning signs of mental illness, do not let dropping grades be your primary indicator. For all the classes I cried through in high school, half the time for no reason or stupid reasons, it should have been clear that there was something wrong. But my grades never dropped, so no one took notice, or at least no one ever said or did anything. My mental health problems fell through the cracks and went undiagnosed until halfway through college.
• When in mental health crisis, even easy tasks seem difficult. Hygiene goes out the window because I can't bring myself to care enough to shower or brush my teeth or sometimes even brush my hair. My dog goes on fewer walks because it means leaving the isolation of my apartment and risk running into people. My dirty dishes pile up because emptying the dishwasher feels like an impossible task. My garbage goes un-emptied for weeks resulting in yet another fruit fly infestation and I don't even bother taking care of it anymore because everything is crappy, so I may as well just let it be that way.
• Be aware of the generalizations that you make about groups of people who share traits of people who struggle with mental illness. When I see lists of "people you should cut out of your life" and the like, half the types of people listed share commonalities with people who battle depression; I usually quit reading halfway through as I realize that if people actually paid attention to these types of lists, I would have no friends left. And don't be like the pastor who preached that people who actively choose not to attend church don't understand the hope that can be found in Jesus. Hopelessness is a symptom of depression, one that I often feel guilty about because I have no reason to feel hopeless; I don't need other people's judgement as well. That sermon was preached on Christmas Eve. It was a week before Easter before I went to any church again because I felt like I wasn't welcome in a Christian community.
• On a higher note, as of the last month or so, my faith has ceased to be painful and started to feel hopeful again. I actually feel a desire to go to church. Praying doesn't send me to tears. Listening to KTIS on my afternoon commute lifts my spirits after a long day at work. (Though there was last Sunday's Gospel reading that made me feel like a horrible person who should go to hell because I don't want to do anything with my life and that as long as I'm crippled by depression and anxiety, God won't love me anymore. That God won't love me anymore was a new one...)
• Mental health stigma is real. It's rampant. And it's damaging beyond what you imagine. Having depression and anxiety, despite what these diseases try to convince me, do not make me less deserving of living life like a normal person. They make it harder for me to get through everyday tasks, but that doesn't mean that I don't deserve the chance to live in the world with "normal" people. Laughing about the person who left their job because they "had a mental breakdown" is damaging. Would you do the same thing to someone who left their job to relieve stress after a heart attack? Complaining about the person who has anxiety because "they should be able to handle that 'easy' kind of stuff by now" is damaging. Would you do the same thing to someone who had trouble exercising due to asthma? Reprimanding someone for excusing themselves to stabilize through a panic attack (using positive coping strategies) is damaging. Would you do the same thing to someone who excused themselves to deal with food poisoning? (Note: All three of these things have happened at the school I work at). Mental illness should be treated with the same respect, empathy, and understanding as any other disease. But our society takes these people whose diseased brains already tell them "you are worthless" and affirms that lie, worsening the disease and deterring people from getting the help that they need.

I know I've listed a lot of things that are unhelpful, and you may be looking for things that you can do. So here are some that work for me (though, note, this may not be helpful to everyone struggling with mental illness)

• Reach out when you see me struggle. When I spiral into a mental health crisis, I have a tendency to isolate myself just to see who cares enough to pull me back into the world. I've made too many mistakes in seeking out connection and as a result trusting the wrong people.
• Be willing to listen to me vent. Sometimes I just need to get it all out. Sometimes I need to process. Sometimes I just need to talk about all of the reasons that life feels terrible and too difficult to survive in and have someone there to affirm that it's okay to feel that way without telling me all the ways I should fix it.
• Encourage me to take care of myself. Tell me that it's okay to take a break from working and do something fun. Bring me food to eat.
• Recognize my little achievements with me. Sometimes I'm dying to tell people that I actually cooked real food for myself because I'm so proud, but then I realize that normal adults do that all the time, so I don't. Or today I was thankful to have a friend who also struggles with depression to share my excitement of "I made it from my bed to my couch!" because I knew she'd understand.
• Treat me like a normal human being (not a damaged one) while still being aware that my mental health is a huge part of my identity.

So I guess that my hope is that this will help you understand me better. They're things that I wish I could share with the people that I work with. And maybe they're things that will help you understand someone else you know better, or even can relate to yourself. I just felt like sharing.

Trapped And Spiraling

Today marks the first time I've missed a day of work due to depression. I've missed a couple for anxiety, another for physical illness that may have been caused by anxiety (or possibly food poisoning), but never depression. But I've spent the last month and a half letting myself cry for a half hour at a time and then stopping because there were students around, or other teachers around, or because I had grading/prepping/etc. to do. And this morning, when I woke up an hour and a half before my alarm and then nothing after that went right, I couldn't stop crying, and I decided to take a day to just let myself cry. And let's be serious, I've been crying on and off since Friday morning, and trying to stuff those feelings and just go on with life hasn't been working, so I decided to try something different.
Plus, I didn't finish everything I should have since Friday morning when I couldn't stop crying. I honestly forgot about half of it because my memory is pretty much worthless lately, and to-do lists have only made me more anxious and depressed about everything that's not getting done because I'm not a fully functioning person right now. It takes 99% of my energy to get up in front of my students and not burst into tears or have a panic attack for 5 class periods a day. So I'm left with about 1% to actually teach plus prep, grade, contact parents, collaborate with other teachers, etc. Forget about any energy left to take care of the rest of my life. Food doesn't get cooked. Dishes don't get washed. Garbage doesn't get taken out. Nothing gets cleaned. The dog barely gets walked. I go home and sit on my couch until I can mentally handle doing the bare minimum work that I need to do before I go to school the next day, and then hope that I manage to get that done before I fall asleep and/or that I don't sleep through the first 4+ alarms the next morning to finish the stuff that I didn't get done the night before.
I'm a crappy teacher. I'm pretty sure I've sunk so low as to be the kind that society has spent the last number of years bashing. I'm not creative, engaging, or inspiring. In one of my courses, half the students are failing. Collaboration and accountability cause massive levels of anxiety. The actual act of teaching feels meaningless. I feel disconnected from my students. And I can't keep up with the workload that everyone else in my department can manage to handle (including teachers who have been teaching fewer years than I have). I'm a crappy teacher. I'm no good for students. I should just quit. And I've had people telling me for almost a year that if I continue to be unable to handle things, I should choose another profession. I'm pretty sure my principal is trying to convince me to resign before the end of the school year (maybe even the end of the semester). And I should. It would be better for everyone at school - my supervisors, my colleagues, my students. It would be better for me on most every level - for my mental and physical health (I lost enough weight in the two weeks between my last two counseling appointments that my counselor was very concerned). But it's not workable financially. I need to pay rent. I need to pay student loans. I need to buy dog food. I need health insurance. And, on a completely superficial level, I need to be making enough that I can finish saving for the solo trip to Disney World that I'm hoping to take in a couple of years because beginning to plan it is the only thing that has kept me somewhat sane for the last two weeks since I made the decision to do it. So I can't quit my job because I need the money and insurance, but right now those are the only reasons.
I wish I could say there was more than that. That I'd miss the students. That I feel passionate about teaching. But right now depression and anxiety have sucked those things away from me. I go to work each day and feel worthless, hopeless, defeated, and meaningless. And I shouldn't. I work in an upper-middle class school where our state test scores are so high that we don't even prep for state tests. Most other teachers feel like they're lucky to work at my school. But for me, working there only worsens the depression and anxiety that I already feel. That combined with the clear messages that I'm not wanted have left me feeling like I should just leave. But, as stated previously, I can't afford to not have a decent-paying job with benefits.
I thought about taking a leave, but I'm not sure it'd help long term. I've taken a couple of sick days in the last month, and I spent the entirety of the day anxious about what I was missing. Anxious that I would get in trouble when my students don't do well on their next test because I missed a day. Anxious that everyone who knows of my mental health struggles (or who may find out in the future) will judge me for being gone (because the people who know about my depression and anxiety haven't been particularly supportive, and the reason more people don't know is because the stigma at my school is so bad). Anxious that I'll get reprimanded for missing a department meeting this afternoon because the last time I missed a meeting due to mental health issues I got reprimanded for not doing all aspects of my job. If I'm this anxious after one day, how anxious will I be about missing an extended period of time? And the stigma at my school is so bad that if I have to take a leave for mental health, I don't think I'll be able to face people when I go back. When I have to return to a place where people at lunch laugh at the teachers who've left because they had mental breakdowns or where people make stupid comments like "mental illness is what I get when I work with ___________ kids" before attending our mental illness workshop.
I can't just flat out resign. I can't take a temporary leave. And I can't just stay. I don't know how I'm going to get through tomorrow much less the rest of this week (and we have the entire week of Thanksgiving off) much less the rest of the calendar year or semester or school year. But every moment I stay I feel guilty for being a less than functional teacher. So I keep spiraling downward. I feel so trapped.

How Can We Support You?

The number of times I've heard this question at my school is numerous, but no one really listens to what I have to say. I know that they want to help me be a better teacher. But as someone fighting a constant battle with depression and social anxiety, I need a place to be safe before I can handle constructive criticism. I need to be supported on an emotional level before I can even think about getting support on a career level. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs, people. Love and Acceptance and Self Esteem are the two tiers before Self Actualization. If the lower-tiered needs aren't being met, I don't give a crap about the higher ones. I've tried to express this multiple times over the past year, and it gets ignored every time.
But I shouldn't be surprised. I work in an academic institution, not a community. I had the privilege of working in a school that was a community during my first year of teaching. While I didn't want to discuss any of my mental health battles at first, I didn't have much a choice after a teacher walked in on me having a panic attack in our teacher office. (Okay, technically I had talked to one of the school counselors first, because we had actual counselors there who spent much of their time supporting students' mental health needs versus deans who deal with students' academic and behavioral issues). But once I had talked to one teacher, I wound up talking to others, and I had their support. I could walk into another teacher's classroom having a panic attack when they were on prep and ask if they could cover my class until I could hold things together. The message was always that I needed to take care of myself if I wanted to be of any use to my students. I didn't always listen, but they were there telling it to me all the same. And any discussion of students with mental health issues was one of sympathy and support. We were a community. While things didn't end well there, and I've never been convinced that my end-of-year mental health breakdowns didn't play into that, I felt supported both as a person and as a teacher for the vast majority of the time that I was at that school.
Here's the thing that, for lack of a better wording, pisses me off. If a teacher were to have to take time off to get treatment for a physical disease such as cancer, they'd be showered with support the whole time. People would bring dinners, donate sick days, etc. But if a teacher takes time off to seek treatment for mental health issues (or more likely just leaves because of the stigma attached), they become the fodder for lunchtime jokes. I never fully understood mental health stigma until I came to work where I do. In a place where people condescendingly talk about the math teachers that didn't last long and left "because they had a mental breakdown." Or who complain that their own children dealing with mental health issues who just can't deal with life like a normal person. So outside of the untimely panic attacks in my principal's office last year, I haven't breathed a word of my mental health issues to anyone. And I avoid talking about it with the principal who doesn't get it despite my efforts to explain. But it's no wonder that this is an issue - I work at an academic institution, not a community. We only care about supporting academics, not people's overall well-being. My word, the place could use a NAMI seminar. And if I was in a better place mental health-wise right now, I'd suggest it.
All last year, people kept telling me that the second year would be better. That adjusting to a new school takes time. That getting into a classroom with a window would help. That new meds would help to solve my problems. Things were good for maybe a week or two in there, but have quickly spiraled to the worst they've been since college. I haven't felt this depressed, worthless, and hopeless since my darkest times in college. But those times were easier because I was surrounded by friends fighting battles similar to my own. I even had professors that I could confide in. For as much as Concordia's fickle music people helped to lead me toward deeper depressions at times, they were also the ones who I could tell early on "I was just diagnosed with depression" to which so many replied "I have it too." Dealing with depression and anxiety was so much easier as a college student. But it also helped that Concordia was a community. We were there to support each other as people in all parts of life, not just academically.
If things don't change, I don't think that I'll be sticking around beyond this year. Right now, I don't even know how I'm going to manage to teach my first class tomorrow, much less all five of them, much less make it through an informal post-observation meeting, much less deal with conferences tomorrow night. I shouldn't have even gone to school today; but it's much harder to take a mental health day when you have to prep for a sub. Plus, I know that if I decide to stay home one day, I'll have an even harder time going back later. Because, right now, I have no desire to go back.
And I'm starting to think long and hard about what I really want to do for a living. As hard as it would be logistically, I'm seriously thinking about trying to focus on finding a music teaching job. I honestly feel much more passionate about teaching music, and, speaking at least from my clinical and student teaching experience, teaching music takes a lot less outside of school work; it requires more time working with extracurriculars, but at least those are more fun. And when I taught music I ended the day exhausted but satisfied, which I've never been able to say about math.
But because music jobs are so few and far between (especially as I know it would be best for my mental health to stay in the Twin Cities area), I'm also trying to figure out if there's any other career path I'd be interested in. All I've figured out so far is that I'd prefer to be connected with the arts - I miss the arts. I miss the humanity of the arts. I want back in.
Any prayers you could offer as I attempt to discern my future would be much appreciated. And prayers that I can survive the next 8 months too (as mentioned previously, I don't know how I'm even going to get through one class period tomorrow, much less the rest of the school year). But I must at least say that there's a certain level of peace that comes with accepting that, despite how much I long for stability, I need to seek out a change in the future. Because if I stay longer than this year, I forsee myself being one of the teachers who is fodder for lunchtime jokes for leaving due to a mental breakdown.

Maybe There's Hope

Most of my life, I haven't considered myself much of a feminist, but I discovered over the past year or so that I'm naturally more of one than I realized. This all came about through my continually growing fanaticism for WNBA and women's basketball in general.
My dad's company used to have such high-level MN Timberwolves season tickets that they got Lynx season tickets for free. At the time, the tickets for both teams were in the high-level then-Cambria suites, and it was there, in a near-empty suite that is always filled for a Wolves game, that I experienced my first WNBA basketball game which was one of Katie Smith's last with the Lynx. At that age I enjoyed going to sporting events, but I didn't have a huge appreciation for them. But few people at my dad's work ever wanted to use the tickets, so my dad and I made it to a few games each summer for a number of years.
It wasn't until I had spent a few years away from Lynx games (working at summer camp doesn't allow much time for summer sporting events) and having my dad's company's seats move down to a row back from courtside that I began to truly appreciate watching the games. And being that close to the court, you discover that these players have personalities much different from the ego-driven male athletes we are used to seeing. These women were competitive, but also loved the game. Once I began to see the athletes as people, I was hooked. And as a result, I started learning more about the game as well. (That, mind you, was the summer of 2010, a year before the Lynx drafted Maya Moore and won their first championship.)
Part of the reason it was hard for me to really follow the Lynx early on was the lack of coverage. In the newspaper, you'd get a box score the day after a game. There were maybe one or two televised games in a season. The only way to really follow the team was to have season tickets, which wasn't a workable option for my family.
Coverage has gotten better over the years. The WNBA added Live Access, which has admittedly gone up in price a couple of times (starting at Free), but $15 for every WNBA game all season to be watched any time through the season is a pretty reasonable deal. TV coverage has improved not only with the WNBA's contract with ESPN but with NBATV and Fox Sports stations. Lucky to live in Minnesota, the Lynx are one of two teams in the league that has radio coverage for EVERY game (most teams just have home games) and one of the local papers has pretty good coverage. This year added was the impressive free online periodical MinnPost coverage of the Lynx, posting weekly in-depth articles.
Between increased coverage and becoming a Lynx season ticket member upon getting my first grown-up job, I've become a full-blown WNBA fanatic. I watch every game that I can (and don't know what to do with myself nights like last night when there are no WNBA games to watch). Last year I even started watching NCAA women's basketball (and had a relatively successful tournament bracket). I tend to call myself a women's basketball junkie these days, and I'm totally proud of that identity.
It is for this reason that I can't wrap my mind around the disparity between the WNBA and the NBA. And it's not just the people who like men's basketball better. It's the people who actively put down the WNBA as worthless. The ones who say that any boy's high school basketball team could beat even the best WNBA teams. The ones who say that the WNBA is a joke and the sooner the league realizes this and dissolves itself, the better. Look at almost any WNBA news article's comment section, and you find these kinds of statements, or worse. And it's not necessarily just the internet trolls. I've worked with people who make these kinds of comments. I have relatives who have made these kinds of comments. The likely only reason that I can't think of friends who have made these comments is that most of my friends are music geeks or math geeks who generally don't acknowledge the existence of sports in general. It irks me.
On a personal level, I don't understand why people would prefer other sports over the WNBA. I walk through the skyway between Target Field (home of the MN Twins) and Target Center (home of the MN Wolves & MN Lynx) and shake my head at the people going to sit outside and watch a slow-paced game when they could sit  inside and watch a fast-paced exciting game (that also happens to include the defending WNBA champions - just sayin'). I don't understand why people want to watch a game of ego-centered, one-on-one, flashy basketball when they could watch a game of fundamentally sound, TEAM basketball.
I get some arguments. No, the WNBA isn't the fancy dunkfest that you see in the NBA. I accept that. But it's solid, fundamental basketball. And some days I'm convinced that the WNBA is more physical (last Thursday's game between MN and Phoenix, for instance). It's a solid product. It's solid basketball. And it has value. At least as much as all of the male sports leagues in the US. But people refuse to acknowledge the WNBA as a valid sports league simply because its athletes are WOMEN.
Last week I read an article about the struggles faced by an WNBA player who I believe has the potential to be one of the best guards in the league, and it brought me to tears. It broke my heart to learn just how difficult the decisions she's had to make this year have been. And many of her struggles are shared by most players in the WNBA. You see, the salary cap in the WNBA is just over $100,000. So to really make a living long-term (since athletes frequently retire between the ages of 35 and 40), they go play overseas in the "off"-season where they make much better money. Making a living this way often means making sacrifices: sacrificing physical health, time with family, and sometimes loyalties to their US teams. It's not easy, but it's what they have to do. I understand that financially, the league can't afford to pay the players any better. I don't blame the WNBA for these difficulties. I blame the American people.
You see, I understand that genetically, female athletes aren't able to be as athletic as their male counterparts. What I don't understand is why across the world there are countries whose citizens wholly support women's basketball, and the United States is not one of them. I don't understand why in Brazil, and France, and Spain, and Italy, and Poland, and Russia, and Turkey, and Israel, and South Korea, and Australia, and China, and other countries I'm sure I've missed, the citizens support women's basketball enough that leagues can provide reasonable wages when in the United States the citizens won't. For all the ideals we say we uphold as Americans, I don't understand why so many countries across the world, including numerous ones we as Americans consider much less progressive than we are, support women's basketball wholeheartedly. I don't understand. And it makes me incredibly angry.
Today I read another article that brought me to tears. Last week perennial All-Star Becky Hammon (who entered the WNBA as an undrafted rookie), announced that she would retire at the end of the season. To me at least, the announcement did not come as a complete surprise given Hammon's long tenure in the league and the fact that she hasn't seemed to come back to 100% of her previous playing level after missing all but one game last season due to injury. While working back from injury, she took some time to work with the San Antonio Spurs (Hammon plays for the San Antonio Stars), sitting in on some practices and even on the bench at some games with the intent to learn about being a good coach. These two events together lead me to cross my fingers that maybe in the next few years the Spurs would make the monumental move of hiring her on as an assistant. To see those hopes become a reality today was incredible - I didn't expect it to happen so soon. Hammon will be the first full-time female assistant coach in NBA history (though Lisa Boyer worked as an assistant in Cleveland, she was not paid by the NBA team; Natalie Nakase was hired by the Clippers as an assistant coach this year but only for the summer league). This is made more exciting by the fact that she'll be working with the defending NBA champions. Becky Hammon was trending #1 nationally on Twitter in the hours following the announcement. I've seen more news coverage on the hire than I've seen of any other single event in women's basketball all season. This is a big deal. A great big huge deal. It brings legitimacy to a female basketball player in the NBA. And it brings me hope.
It's just a little step. The misogynist internet trolls are already at work in comments sections of any article posted to a mainstream news page (and some of the statements would probably be considered sexual harassment if said to her face), but it's a start. We'll let her work this NBA season do the talking. Because I truly believe that she'll be successful. Not every WNBA player could be; not even every WNBA point guard could be. But I think Becky will. And I hope that she helps bring some doubters over to the side of women's basketball, if not women's sports as a whole. Every little bit helps.
At the end of last week I came to a conclusion: Sexism is real, and it's alive and well in American women's sports. And though I was resolved to do as much as I could to change it, I felt angry, depressed, and hopeless. But today I'm feeling like maybe there's hope.

Can't We Let Them Be Kids?

There are so many arguments out there about what's wrong with the educational system today. It's kids' faults, it's parents' faults, it's teachers' faults, it's politicians' faults, etc. We don't test enough. We test too little. There isn't enough math/science/reading. There isn't enough arts education. I think that truths can be found with many of these arguments, but there's one thing that seems more and more left by the wayside. There's too much focus on academics.
Now, don't get me wrong. I appreciate that in the present, it is essential to prepare students with the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful college students. It's getting harder and harder to get any job without a college degree. In among this, too, has been born a competition. Which kids are the most college ready? Which of them can complete college the fastest? And the burden has been placed on students to be all academics all the time and to be perfect at this. But I ask, at what cost?
At what cost? The question first occurred to me when I was taking Comparative Education in college. We each had to choose a country to research and present on regarding its educational system, and I chose Japan. My reason? Recently, everyone has lauded the educational systems of countries like Japan and China where students test so highly (given, their weakest students aren't tested, but I'll save that rant for another day). But by that point in my college career I had heard enough horror stories of what students in those countries experienced to find myself continually asking the question: "At what cost?" A number of years later, I don't remember the specifics of the educational system anymore (perhaps because, due to the current events portion of the project, my later research turned to merely trying to keep up with the events of the earthquake and tsunami that had hit the country days before the project was due), but I do remember thinking that it was one that would have likely pushed an overachieving perfectionist student like myself over the edge.
At the end of the project I held on to the positivity I found in the fact that in the United States we valued more than core academics. We value the whole child. Sure, there have been pushes to make K-12 education more rigorous, but there were enough people with level heads to keep the system from jumping off the deep end. These days, I'm not so sure.
My first year of teaching I was in a school that still got it. Recognizing that not all students identified with the academic side of school, there was a continual focus on helping students find their place any combination of academics, athletics, arts, and activities. And the school recognized the priority of balancing all of these. Academics are important, yes, but so other the other aspects of students' lives. High school is a time where they can still explore their interests and try different things. I learned the hard way that sometimes by the time you get to college, you're already to behind and inexperienced to have a real shot at trying something new. But more importantly, one of the core ideals of my personal educational philosophy is education of the whole child. Education is about more than reading, writing, and arithmetic (or any STEM field). It's about helping kids to become well-rounded people. It's about teaching them to be physically healthy. It's about teaching them to be emotionally healthy. And it's about teaching them to be socially healthy. And part of that is letting them be kids.
There was a time when my ideal of whole child education was only challenged by the frequency in which arts programs were being cut in schools across the nation. These days, it reaches deeper.
The school I'm at right now focuses on only academics. Yes, there are other opportunities for students, but the institution itself seems to only care about academics. The recognition of non-academic events and achievements happens, but is usually buried or talked about as if going through the motions. I feel like a member of an educational institution, but not of a community. And while I finally feel settled in enough to be comfortable, it's almost a daily occurrence that I am reminded that my own educational philosophy doesn't mesh with the school's.
I will say again, that a focus on academics isn't necessarily a bad thing. But there has to be balance, and I'm not seeing it right now. There's great pressure from the school, parents, and even the students' themselves to take on more and more difficult courses so that they are more well-prepared for college or so that they can have as many college credits as possible before they've even graduated from high school. I have had countless students drop some or all of their extracurricular activities this year just to try to keep up with their academics. Others were never even aloud to participate in activities in the first place. I see my high school freshmen and sophomores getting less sleep than I did as a college student because of their difficult course load. It's become almost a weekly tradition to have at least one lunch conversation with my colleagues about how many students are being pushed to do too much too fast in mathematics courses when they don't have the maturity and/or study skills to take on that kind of challenge. Heck, as a teacher, I feel guilty every time I take time out of class to have non-math related discussions with my students because I know how much content I have to cram in to a short period of time.
And it's not just my school. Conversations I had with teachers across the district when I was in a variety show reflected some of the same occurrences, and those teachers didn't always feel great about it either. My colleagues who have kids talk about the amount of homework their children do every night, and it's comparable to what we see with our own students. And tonight I read a news article about a Kindergarten program being canceled to allow more time for the students to learning to be able to be "college and career ready." And somehow this was the final straw.
I'm not saying that academics aren't important. And I'm not saying that being college and career ready aren't important. I'm just saying that there needs to be balance. It's no wonder that we're developing into a nation of workaholics who don't know when to take time for themselves and their families because that's what we're training kids to do from such an early age. They've got the majority of their lives to work. And I'm not saying that they shouldn't do any work at all. But there has to be balance. And it's not always about time management skills or laziness. Sometimes it's about trying to much, and being pressured to carry that load or more.
Can't we just let them be kids? Can't we let them have time to play? Can't we let them explore new things? Can't we let them have the time to spend with their families? Their friends? Can't we let them have some time to relax? Or at least to get the recommended amount of sleep each night?
I get it. Part of growing up is learning. So we can teach them academics, critical thinking, study skills, organizational skills, and whatever other college and workforce life skills they need. We spend decades of our lives working. We get only 18 years to be carefree, or relatively carefree, kids. It's not that long, and once it's gone, it's gone. And when we have our stressed-out, overworked days, don't we tend to wish we could return to the days when we were younger? So can't we also remember to just let them be kids. Because they've still got some of that time left, and when it's gone, it's gone, and there's no going back.

Faith, Depression, and Anxiety

Growing up, my faith was super important to me. Though many might say that my faith and involvement in church could be credited to my parents, I felt ownership of my faith from a very young age. It was always something deep and meaningful to me, though exactly what "deep" and "meaningful" meant continually evolved as I got older. All in all, outside of the time I spent at AWANA at a close friend's church, I felt like I had an abnormally strong faith in comparison to my peers. I mean, I was the preschooler who on car rides to anywhere would ask my parents to "tell me about Moses," the middle schooler who worked my faith into every school project possible, and the high schooler who carried my Bible around in my backpack and took it out whenever I was having a bad day.
But as I reached the end of high school and moved on to college and young adulthood, I became more and more like my peers. It started out as a time thing. So over-involved in other aspects of my life, especially academically, time with God fell to the wayside. And when I tried to build time for Christian community back into my life, I found that it was uninviting. The different groups on campus were often highly exclusive, where people only really reached out to the people who were involved in most every aspect of campus ministry. In the meantime, the church I grew up in was experiencing a culmination of turmoil that had been building up for several years, and going to church at home became a high-anxiety, sometimes high-anger experience. And while there was a church I loved near my college where some family friends attended, I had no transportation to get there for my first three years of college. And by the time I had the transportation, I had other barriers to deal with.
During my fourth year of college, for whatever reason, Sundays became my worst mental health day of the week. I got to this point where I would practically wake up in tears and not be able to stop crying for almost the entire day. And there was no way I was leaving my dorm room where other people might see me for anything more than to go to the bathroom down the hall. Which usually meant no church. And somewhere in the midst of all this, my faith became a painful thing. While I never doubted that God was there for me and loved me, I had a greater tendency to fall apart when I reached out to Him. Even having a good-intentioned friend or family member tell me that they were praying for me was enough to send my straight to tears and into a day of depression. And when many times in the last few years I've struggled to stay barely functional, opening myself up to falling apart for even a moment meant risking the loss of my functionality for a day or more, and I quite frankly couldn't afford that. So my faith fell by the wayside not because I didn't want it or didn't have time for it but because I was at least functional without it.
Last fall/winter (I don't remember which), I listened to a sermon where the pastor who declared in their sermon that people who didn't want to go to church didn't understand what church was all about, that these people hadn't heard and/or understood the message of hope that church brings. I walked out of church royally ticked off that day at the broad generalization. I know the message of hope. I felt that hope for the majority of my life. But one day I woke up, and I couldn't feel that hope anymore. And when people around me who struggle with depression and/or anxiety still find hope in their faith, when people across the internet with depression and/or anxiety still find hope in their faith, when my counselor refers to other patients (as a generalization) who are able to find hope in their faith in an attempt to offer me a place of positivity in my life, and I for reasons I cannot understand find no hope, no comfort, only pain in my faith, I feel more alone than ever. I felt flawed. And that sermon made me feel even worse because it was a finger pointing at me saying "there's something wrong with you!" which, by the way, didn't make me want to re-strengthen my faith nor go back to attending church even occasionally.
There were times when I could make it through. Outside of the anxiety-inducing chaos of set-up and take-down, I was able to reconnect with my faith when helping to lead a handful of youth retreats. And I somehow managed to lead a youth group for almost a year at the church where I grew up. And I was starting to feel like I might be ready to find a new faith community closer to where I lived. But situations that led me to feel rejected in both of those settings became the straws that broke this camel's back, and I am still rather gun-shy about faith communities in general. It wasn't necessarily even situations that would have affected a normal person so deeply, but to someone with social anxiety who already has massive trust issues, the situations were the final driving force that led me to have no desire to be part of a Christian community.
Between the pain of my faith and the fear of other believers, I avoided church almost completely, and half the time that I made it there, I wouldn't manage to stay more than 5 minutes without retreating to the bathroom to have a panic attack for the entirety of worship. It took worshiping with a bunch of Lynx fans and a couple of my favorite Lynx players at Faith and Family night after one of the Lynx games last summer to realize how much I missed worship - not the going-through-the-motions worship that Sunday mornings at my home church usually felt like but a group of people worshiping with their hearts and souls and focusing on nothing else. It was the most authentic worship I'd experienced in a long time. And I realized that I missed that type of worship.
So suddenly I fell into the group of many of my peers: the ones who believe wholeheartedly but want nothing to do with the Church. Who describe themselves as spiritual, not religious. Of whom it is said "They love Jesus, but not the Church." I had spent most of my life not understanding that viewpoint, but suddenly I found myself right in the midst of it. But not for all of the same reasons. While it was my disgust at the corruption that happens behind closed doors at churches that led me to decide that I didn't want to work at a church, it wasn't this that drove me away. And it wasn't the holier-than-thou snobs that made me feel unwelcome. It was feeling rejected by people who were supposed to be my friends, who I had claimed as family, who became the final push out the door. But it was also more than that.
After having three weeks straight of feeling generally happy for the first time since I don't even know when, I decided to finally check out a new church on Sunday. I realized when I got there that it's the first time I've ever gone to a completely new church completely by myself, and that alone was a big step for me. And after months of trying to convince myself to show up, I finally made it on Sunday. And it was fantastic. And I'm excited to go back. This could be the fit I've been looking for which, at least from what I've seen so far, is the church that's Lutheran in theology but non-denominational (or similar) in worship that I've been searching for for years. And I experienced worship that was authentic and relevant, what I've been looking for, rather than ritualistic and tied to tradition for tradition's sake, what I've been trying to get away from for a number of years. But I cried almost the entire time I was there.
And I suddenly realized why all things faith-related have become so painful. Because it requires opening up. And when you have depression and anxiety (especially social anxiety), you close yourself off from everything and everyone because it's the only way you know how to function anymore. It's taken the last few days of reflection to realize how closed off I've been. Outside of some blog posts and Facebook statuses, I've frequently avoided other people as a general rule. I've ignored phone calls and texts and Facebook messages/wall posts from nearly everyone but my parents (whom I still shut out when they're saying or doing things that only make me feel worse). I eat lunch with other teachers but avoid talking at all costs. I've come to avoid conversing with students when I can. I've even avoided emotional movies and TV shows for fear of opening myself to the emotions those might bring and not being able to turn the emotions off. Because more often than not lately I've felt anxious or depressed, and the realization that moments of happiness have been so fleeting over the past year leaves me even further depressed as if long-term happiness was no longer a possibility for me. So I closed myself off from people and emotion because it was the only way I could get through the day.
But having faith means fully opening up to God. Prayer, worship, reading the Bible, being in community with other Christians, all of these things require you to open yourself fully. It's a risky business when you're feeling pretty good about your life. It becomes riskier when your life feels like a load of crap. I've closed myself off so fully that opening up even a little bit means releasing those emotions that I've been bottling up inside for months, some even for years. It's like a shaken can of pop that you've avoided opening that proceeds to explode even when you just barely open it. And once opened, it doesn't stop until it's done exploding.
I haven't really been ready for that. I still don't know that I'm quite ready for that. But identifying it helps. And the fact that I've been a relatively happy person for about 3 weeks straight also helps. And having a place that I can go to worship and be surrounded by other believers but not be smothered by the concerns of people who know me well and know of all of my struggles is also a comfort. I can go and focus on God and me and be reminded that there are others there when I'm ready for them, but that doesn't have to be right now. And I know that being a Christ-follower isn't just about God and me but should include others as well, but that's not where I am right now. Right now I need the renewal on a God-and-me level before I can include others in that. Even Jesus left the crowds, sometimes even his disciples, in order to refresh and regroup sometimes. I try to keep reminding myself of that and not feel guilty for taking care of me right now. (Growing up in the Church has not helped my self-care skills, but I'll save that rant for some other time)
I've been thinking about writing a post like this for quite some time, now. I've felt this deep need to just explain to the world that, while I know my faith is supposed to make life feel better and that other people's faith usually works that way, in recent years even acknowledging my faith has been more painful than the pain of life, so I've shut it away. But at least I'm starting to figure out why it's so painful. So maybe I can start finding a way through the pain and find the hope again.

Renewal

Anyone who's read my blog in the last year or so knows that it's been a really rough journey. After spending a year at a school I loved, though teaching was often stressful (which I'm told generally happens during your first year), and after being told for that entire year that they hoped there would be a place for me after my one-year temporary position contract, I lost out on two open positions to out-of-district teachers with over a decade of experience and didn't even get an interview for another long-term-sub position that I was encouraged to apply for. My summer was one filled with the stress of trying to find a new job, and, after accepting a position with only two weeks before new teacher workshops started, trying to move to the opposite corner of the metro I live in and get ready to teach courses covering material I hadn't looked at since I was a high school student myself. I tried to embrace the new place as much as family and friends were embracing it for me, but it never felt quite right.
The fall was supposed to be a chance at starting over in a happier place. I had a job that had a better chance of being long-term, which eased a lot of stress. And come the end of summer, for the first time for over a year I felt a deep need to reconnect with God, if only just through worship. But nothing ever really came to fruition. The more time I spent in the new school, the more I felt out-of-place. And an unexpected rejection from one of the few faith communities I still felt connected to sent me back to the "faith is painful" stage that I'd been in for most of the preceding year. I kind of held it together through the end of December, and after a brief period where it felt like I was climbing out of the pit of despair, I learned that I had much further to fall, and everything felt like it fell apart.
My parents kept telling me that all I had to do was make it to Spring Break, and then I could spend my entire week-and-a-half off catching up and working ahead so that I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed (which by the way, made me feel so overwhelmed that I could barely function well enough to halfway catch up over break). The day I went back to school, I was surviving on barely a half hour of sleep and trying to figure out how I was going to deal with the upcoming two weeks of rehearsals for Chalkboard Capers (which I will henceforth refer to as "Chalkboard" as everyone in the show does), a district-wide teacher variety show that raises scholarship money for graduating seniors in the district. I almost decided to quit Chalkboard that day, which was the day of our first rehearsal, but some sort of nagging thing within me told me not to. It's the best choice I've made for myself in over a year.
Being a part of Chalkboard was like a new start for me. For the first time, I felt connected to and proud of being a teacher in my district. I got to spend time with a bunch of teachers from around the district that I'd never met before but who welcomed me with open arms and who made continual efforts to include me as I was the token high school teacher (in the choir at least; there was one from the other high school who did skits and an additional handful who were in the band, but they don't count because the band doesn't associate with anyone in the show except for themselves - seriously college all over again). Being surrounded by mostly elementary school teachers and a handful of middle school teachers, I was reminded what it's like to be around teachers who aren't afraid to be a little goofy sometimes. I do love my high school colleagues, but they're very stuffy, formal people a lot of the time who tend to avoid stepping out of their comfort zones. The people at Chalkboard were different. And for the first time in many years, I got to participate in a choir (more of a showchoir, really) that was relaxed, fun, and, while striving to put on a good performance was not focused on perfection and professionalism. It was a fresh breath of air. Yes, for two weeks I was exhausted and fell incredibly behind on grading and posting student resources online, but I haven't felt this good in ages. And I mostly don't care that I'm as behind as I am. Other than a couple of very high-stress days, I've felt fairly happy for almost three weeks. And I don't see an incoming downhill like I experienced at the end of January. We have under two months left in the school year, and I'm actually starting to feel like they'll fly by.
I can't say for sure what hit my reset button. Chalkboard was certainly a part of it, and Chalkboard is where I've sent most of my credit when talking to colleagues, partially as an attempt to get more of them involved next year because, seriously, these people are missing out. (As a sidenote, my positive Chalkboard experience might just be enough to keep me in my current district). A focus on March Madness probably helped me a bit too; I always seem to be happier when I'm emerged in following women's basketball. It could even be the improving weather and the increasing daylight (PS - if I start getting super depressed and anxious come winter next year, someone remind me to talk to my doctor about Seasonal Affective Disorder; I've blamed it on circumstance up to this point, but I'll definitely be watching to see if the pattern repeats next year). Whatever it is, I'm feeling better, and it's exciting and freeing.
And it's allowing me to live my life differently. I can handle challenges differently. It's been a very stressful week for my family as my dad's work life has been turned upside down when he learned Monday that his company sold off the portion of the business that he's worked in the whole time he's been there, laying off everyone in his department except him and selling off all the accounts that he works on. Still having a job is a good thing, but it's also been weird to think of losing all the people he works with, including his customers. And I definitely went through a small grieving process myself, but I feel like I'm going to be okay. Then yesterday I ended my week by having to spent my last-hour prep dealing with an unexpected behavioral issue that a student proceeded to blow completely out of proportion in the last twenty minutes of my last class of a week. It was incredibly annoying, but by the end, instead of feeling anxious and depressed, I felt like things were going to be okay. And, after Chalkboard reminded me that it's okay to do something just for myself sometimes (and my decision to participate had nothing to do with the benefit it provides to anyone else but everything to do with the fact that I thought it would be super fun), I'm trying to take time for myself. I've promised myself that any school day that I get home before 4pm, I'll go for a run (which unfortunately didn't manage to happen this week). I've put sleep ahead of getting things done for school (most nights). I'm planning on doing a full grocery shop for the first time in about three months later today. (As a note: I love grocery shopping. I always get to buy what I want and I don't feel guilty about spending the money because food is necessary to, you know, live). And I'm committing to finding a church to start worshiping at, starting tomorrow.
And I'm actually excited to go to church tomorrow. There's one I've been thinking about checking out since last fall, and I'm planning to actually make it there tomorrow. And, while last fall I had just been looking to find a place to worship, I'm now looking at this church as a place where I could potentially get involved. Maybe not quite yet as I'm still a little nervous about opening up to people, which you're pretty much required to do if you want to be a part of a faith community. But the thought of a future is there. For a while I've thought of this particular church, which is your a multi-campus mega-church, as a place to worship in anonymity until I feel comfortable to be part of a community at which point I figured I'd find a smaller place, the more I've read on their website through the morning, the more I feel like it's a place where the focus fits my own faith focus. Growing up in a smaller church, I've spent time with many people, some of whom I love dearly, who turn their nose up at larger churches as places where people show up to go through the motions of attending church but aren't really involved in their faith. Maybe I've let those opinions get to me as I've thought about finding a new church home. But then I remember that the church I attended through college (and that I wish I could still attend) is a relatively large church, and I absolutely love it there. So I'm excited to try out this new church, and, while I know that I can't judge it just by reading its website, I think it might be a place where I could settle in. And it might be a place that actually challenges me in my faith, which is a scary yet exciting prospect.
So the point of this post, I guess, is that after a really rough year, I'm doing better. A lot better. As in actually feeling like I might manage to be happy for an extended period of time. And I'm actually excited for where life is going to take me, because for the first time in a long time, I think it might actually be good.

Becoming Elsa

I know the world is probably about to the point where a vast number of people are entirely tired of hearing about Disney's Frozen. It's been all over the internet since the movie's release Thanksgiving weekend, "Let it Go" has been covered dozens of times, and young children seem to be watching parts or all of it every moment they get the chance since the movie came out on DVD. And I've pushed the hype as much as many. After seeing the movie once, I sent a close friend a long list of reasons that she should want to go see it. I saw the movie 5 times in theaters (3 times in 2D at a cheap theater near me, 2 times in 3D at pricier establishments). I got the soundtrack only days after first seeing the movie and have listened to it nearly nonstop since, eventually also getting a hold of the piano/vocal music book as well. But all of the hype surrounding the movie regarding how progressive it is, how feminist it is, how amazing the music is, etc. - all of these things play only a minor part in why I love this movie so much.
I love Frozen because of how it parallels my own life - because of how Elsa's journey parallels my own life. While the rest of the world is obsessing over Anna and her loveable quirkiness, awkwardness, and imperfection, I find that there is only one other fictional character in existence that I identify with as much as I identify with Elsa. And it's because both Elsa and the other character parallel my experiences with mental illness.
The first time I saw Frozen, I'd had a rough day, almost didn't even want to go, and spent the first part of the movie just kind of experiencing it and trying to escape from all the emotions that were welling up inside. Then I heard "Let it Go" and basically bawled through the whole song because this character was able to accomplish something that I'd been striving for for a long time and never able to grasp. In the days that followed that first viewing, I reflected on the story I had just seen and realized how much it paralleled mental illness. Not that Disney necessarily intended to do that, but I saw so many of the parallels. I started digging online and found that I wasn't the only person who felt that way, discovering dozens of blog posts where people related to Elsa because of their depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, autism, etc.
Do you want to gain some understanding of what it feels like to have a panic attack? Watch the scene where Elsa loses control of her powers at the end of the coronation ball through when she runs away into the mountains (the portion of the movie that accompanies the portion of the score entitled "Sorcery" - I know too many things...) When a situation gets uncomfortable, I can usually feel the panic attack coming on, and my first instinct is to try to escape whatever the situation is, especially if I'm surrounded by people, even more so when the people around me don't know about my anxiety. When my escape is blocked, the panic attack comes anyway but now in front of everyone else, most of whom don't understand what's going on. Unlike some people with anxiety, I don't fear having panic attacks or not being able to stop them; I had some tension-related breathing issues in high school and use the same relaxation techniques to work myself out of a panic attack that I did back then. But with my social anxiety, I fear having a panic attack with other people around to see it; I even avoid having panic attacks in front of my parents, whom I trust more than even my closest of friends. So starting to have a panic attack in front of other people, especially ones who don't understand what's going on, is a completely mortifying experience for me. All I can think about it getting out as soon as I can. And when people don't understand what's going on, they tend to overreact. Some people bombard me with questions that satisfy their needs but not mine. Some people expect me to be able to just shut it off. Some people look at me awkwardly like I'm a crazy person. I even once had someone ask if they should call an ambulance. And when people overreact, it makes me feel even worse and makes me want to escape more. And the more that I try to escape and fail, the worse it gets. All I can think about is getting away where no one can judge me for what just happened and where my problems won't bother anyone else because if I've learned one thing about people in the last 5 years of my life it's that they don't want you around when you can't at least fake being happy 100% of the time.
The first times I watched Frozen, I was so jealous of Elsa up on her mountain. The opportunity to escape and be completely free of the expectations of others. Is it lonely sometimes? Sure. But it sure as heck beats trying to hide your deepest secret from people or deal with their reactions after they find out. If it weren't for the necessity of making a living, I would probably already be a hermit. As much as I enjoy the presence of others, 90% of the time it's not worth the pain that comes with it.
Soon after watching Frozen, I decided that I was going to embrace "Let it Go" as my anthem for the year. I focused on accepting myself as someone who is less than perfect but tries to do their best. My therapist praised me for this as it's what she'd been encouraging me to do for almost a year where, after hearing about all that my job as a teacher requires, she as a former teacher declared the expectations unrealistic. And the three weeks that the feeling lasted, I felt more amazing than I had in a long time. But it didn't last.
One blog post I read soon after seeing Frozen criticized Elsa's "Let it Go" as a declaration of "screw it all" that left a mess that she really should have paid for. And in a way, I think she kind of did have to answer for her actions when she was captured and brought back to Arendelle to "bring back summer." At the time I was offended and enraged at the post because of how closely I identified with Elsa; understanding at some level the motivations behind her actions, I fiercely defended her (but entirely in my head because getting into internet comment wars is a fruitless waste of time). Except, let's be serious, there are some aspects of the blog post that are kind of right, as I was about to learn the hard way.
In my three weeks of "Let it Go" I pushed myself to do the best I could without sacrificing my personal wellness. And it got me into some seriously sticky situations at work, dealing with which sent me into the worst bout of anxiety I have ever experienced in my life. For about a month I was having multiple panic attacks nearly every day, and, on schooldays, often multiple panic attacks before even making it to school in the morning. There were days when I could barely hold it together teaching, when I would cry or have a panic attack at my desk in the corner during passing time. Certainly days when I probably should have called in sick but knew that if I didn't come one day, it'd be even harder to show up the next. I couldn't focus enough in the evening without having anxiety about not getting everything done, which meant that everything took longer so that everything didn't get done, and it became a vicious circle. And I missed out on other things that I didn't want to miss out on, like dinner celebrating the birthday of one of my closest friends, but I felt like it was better to isolate myself. And, not unlike Elsa, I had people telling me "This is your mess. Fix it. Now." And the only response running through my head was, "Dude, if there were just a switch that I could flip and fix it and be able to function like a normal person, don't you think I would have done that already?" I don't know how to not see other people as threatening presences who will turn on me, think less of me, or hate me for being anything less than perfect. Even when it's a stranger. Even when it's something tiny like not knowing where to find something in a store. If I knew how to do that, my life would be much easier than it is. But I'm trying to get there.
It's a process that I'm working through, that, after spending most of college in more of a "crisis management" mode with my on-campus counselor, I'd actually been working on going through for almost a year with my current counselor at the point that everything exploded. And, outside of the fact that I now feel comfortable going to see a movie by myself, I feel like I've lost all of the accomplishments that I had made. I'm back to having panic attacks every time that I see a parent email show up in my inbox or on nights that I have conferences. I'm convinced that if I make a mistake or can't be as much of a super-teacher as my coworkers, they'll hate me and think I'm dumb and unworthy to be a teacher (which I had just started getting past after my rough end-of-the-year experience last year). And, as I mentioned before, it's not even back to square one but has gone backward further than that - I've never had so many panic attacks in a day before or had panic attacks so many days in a row before. It's defeating. I can't even work to make the improvements I'm being asked to make because I'm so busy just trying to get back to being functional and feeling like a person. Even through Spring Break I couldn't relax because the whole time I felt guilty for not doing all of the school stuff that I should have been doing to both catch up and get ahead.
Right now I'm Elsa trapped in a white-out blizzard of my own accidental creation striving to find a way out. And, while unlike Elsa I do  have some supportive people in my life, I haven't found my Anna figure who can not only accept me for who I am and defend me to other people but who can help me learn to control my anxieties and who has the power to help everyone around me to see past my weaknesses. Not that I can't do it on my own, but mental illness is so much easier to cope with when you have someone who can both support you and help advocate for you when advocating for yourself isn't enough.
Now, while Elsa certainly isn't perfect, I will still defend her to the end because, at least on some level, I understand why she does what she does. And at least her motivations involve protecting the people around her because she's afraid that her power will hurt them. My motivations are based entirely on wanting to protect myself and how other people see me no matter how it affects other people. Where some of her critics judge her as a selfish person who does whatever the heck she wants no matter who it hurts, I see someone who's spent her whole life giving up what she really wants in an attempt to save the people around her from something inside herself that she thinks is dangerous. If she's selfish, than I must be an awful person because when my anxiety gets out of control, I isolate myself for my own sake without caring who it hurts because I spend most of my life trying to live up to other people's expectations of how I should act and sometimes it takes being selfish to turn back into a functional human being. I've been known to sit in one of my church's only two women's bathroom stalls for 20-30 minutes on a Sunday morning not caring about the massive line than I'm causing because I'm trying to calm myself out of a panic attack (or out of having a new one every time I consider leaving the bathroom stall). Others of Elsa's critics criticize the transformation of her appearance during "Let it Go" as anti-feminist and a bad image for little girls where I see someone who discards the style that she's expected to wear (it was her coronation outfit after all) in favor of something that suits the person she feels like she is and that's more comfortable. I do the same thing every day after school when I discard my teacher clothes (which I absolutely hate) and throw on something more casual. In the warmer months, this usually means throwing on a cami and short shorts; at least Elsa still looked classy whereas I'm fairly certain my outfit probably looks pretty trashy.
I say "becoming" Elsa because, as mentioned earlier, I identify with and relate to so many of her struggles, but I'm still waiting on the happy ending. Not that life is all about a "happily-ever-after," which I'm well aware is totally unrealistic. Mental illness is an everyday battle that never goes away. But I'm told that it can be controlled and coped with well enough to live life like a relatively normal person. I'm not there yet. I'm in the worst of the storm. But there's hope.

Anxious Brain

I have had one of my worst anxiety weeks I think since college. As in when my anxiety gets this bad, I cease to really function like a normal human being. I kind of self-destruct. I implode. I think it's because my anxiety triggers are so intertwined with the everyday. Right now this means school. So anytime I attempt to do any schoolwork, I can't focus because I feel so anxious about school. Which means that basically nothing has gotten done for a week now. Even with the unexpected 3-day weekend, I haven't managed to get anything done. Because doing schoolwork means that anxious brain kicks in and after feeling like crap and getting nothing done for a couple of hours, I give up and let avoidance mode kick in. At least then when I'm not getting things done I can feel okay for a short while. And forget keeping my apartment reasonably cleaned up. There are some days that I look at it and think, "Man, I can't wait 'til I have the time and energy to clean this place up." But when anxious brain kicks in, it's more of a "Man, I don't even give a crap that I have to climb over piles of school stuff to get to my couch or that I ran out of cups/spoons/bowls/etc three days ago." I cease to care.
And anxious brain doesn't just mean that I cease to care about the items on my to-do list. It also means I lose all will to do the daily things to take care of myself. I cease to sleep. Sometimes it's because I can't make my brain shut down well enough to sleep. But most of the time it's because I feel this deep-seated need to just not sleep for no other reason than I just don't want to. Because somehow I feel better staying up doing mindless, time-wasting kinds of things than to actually go to sleep. I stop eating too. Sometimes it's because my stomach is just in too many knots to handle eating anything. But more often it's because I've simply lost the desire to eat. I just don't feel like it. So I stop. And I cease to shower. I'm slightly more likely to right now because at school people will notice, but if I'm not going to see anyone I know on a particular day? Showering won't happen.
Anxious brain also deems particular locations or events unsafe. It's the reason that I stepped out of or skipped choir rehearsals multiple times a week for the rest of the school year after the time I had a massive panic attack on choir tour. It's the reason I don't know that I'll ever go back to camp. It's the reason that I avoid ever returning to the church I grew up in. It's the reason that I have no desire to return to my old school for anything and the reason I didn't feel comfortable in my old apartment by the time I left. And right now it's the reason that every time I go near my current school I completely fall apart. It doesn't feel safe anymore. Or, more accurately, it never really felt safe, and now it feels 100% unsafe.
Anxious brain means I can't manage to hold it together. I've about fallen apart in the middle of teaching countless times in the last week. Usually even on bad days I can hold it together from the time I step into the school building to the time I leave it, but not last week. Last week I was usually in tears in between classes and occasionally during student work time, all while attempting to hide it in the corner by my desk. During my prep period I was a wreck. Every single day. I was also a wreck anytime that I wasn't physically inside the school building. And have been a wreck anytime I've thought about school all weekend. I usually feel anxious on Sundays, but today I've had four panic attacks, one of which was the worst I've had since sometime last summer and was the first panic attack I've had in ages that I was convinced wasn't ever going to end.
Anxious brain means I catastrophize. But even though I know that the outside world would say that I'm being pessimistic and worrying about worst-case scenarios that are never going to happen, those scenarios feel very real and very likely to me. Like right now I'm fairly convinced that if all continues as it has been, I'm going to lose my job and probably never get another job in teaching at this rate. Because I'm not a fully functional teacher right now. I can't accomplish as much in as little time as the other teachers that I work with. And I know that my anxiety is getting in the way of certain aspects of my job; I try to do the best I can, but I'm not perfect. I'm trying to work through some of these things with my therapist, but it's a process. Unfortunately this past week I got in trouble for these shortcomings and it was made very clear to me that I had to jump from 0 to 100 in an instant because students' futures are on the line and it's all supposed to be part of my job in the first place. (And the fact that this district puts a massive focus on being good at something that is one of my greatest weaknesses made me extremely uneasy from the time I interviewed for the job, but by the time I got the job offer I was so desperate that desperation won over anxiety - at least for then). It all feels impossible and no matter how many times people say that they want to be supportive and try to help or ask how they can help. The truth is that there is nothing they can do. What I really need is time and understanding, but it's been made pretty clear to me that time to work through things isn't an option and because the majority of the population doesn't really understand anxiety, I don't foresee finding anyone who understands either. After having a panic attack in my principal's office last week, when I then wound up sharing briefly about my mental health stuff and that I am seeing a therapist to try to work through it, he asked me if I'm going to be able to work through it in order to make teaching a career. My response? That I'm trying. That I'm hoping to get there. And that's the truth. Because in the midst of all my anxiety in the past week, I realized for the first time in ages that I really do love working with kids. But I can't take the pressure. I'm trying to get to a point where I can, but I don't know that I can hit that point fast enough, not just for my own sanity in hopes of feeling less stressed out, but also fast enough for others' time tables. Because when your job involves working with kids, you have to have yourself together in the immediate future, not in the distant future at a time that you can't really predict. And suddenly I no longer feel like whether I continue to teach is even my choice - I feel like I'll get let go once again. Because my experience dictates that as soon as people have learned that I have mental health issues, which by definition take time to work through, they don't really want me working with kids anymore. With the exception of the time that I worked for a family that I'm technically blood-related to and who understood mental health issues. So when I catastrophize? My experience makes it feel entirely rational.
And people don't understand anxious brain. Or perhaps I shouldn't generalize too much because some people do. But only the ones who have had close personal experiences with mental illness in some way, shape, or form. The reason that I enjoy blogging is because it allows me to express all of this somewhere that people can see it in what feels like a non-threatening arena. But in the rest of life? The people that I see every day? They don't get it. Sure, they get the basics. But they don't understand what I have to do to cope to get through everyday tasks. They don't understand that how much extra work I have to do mentally to work through the extra roadblocks my brain sets up. And most of all they don't understand that the biggest factor in me getting better. After the panic-attack-in-the-principal's-office incident last week, he asked me how I was doing the next time I saw him, and I fell apart all over again. Which doesn't help how I'm feeling at school right now. I tried to explain that after a really bad day, it just takes me time to get better, but I don't think I had him convinced. And he wants to find ways to fix me. Actually, fixing struggling teachers is kind of a big focus at my school. For a normal person, this is a helpful thing. If a teacher is stressed out or searching for new tools or struggling to find techniques that work, given them the tools to move forward in a more positive direction. But for someone with anxious brain, or, possibly more accurately, anxious/depressed brain, offering teaching tools and advice only makes things worse. Because anxious brain feels overwhelmed by all the new information and depressed brain felt like a failure already and social anxiety brain feels panicked because now everyone knows about the failure. I know that others have this amazing picture of what a great teacher looks like, and I'd like to get there someday. But usually the times that people are trying to give me all the advice are the times that it's taking me every ounce of energy to get through the next five minutes (or less) without completely falling apart emotionally. What anxious brain needs most on the bad days is someone who will be there to listen to the fact that I'm struggling, affirm that in my head the anxieties are real, and above all else to not offer advice and accept it when I'm saying that I'm working through things and in time will be okay. But it's not work that others, outside of trained psychology professionals, can help with. The people that are the most helpful are the ones who realize that they can't help and are just there. No advice, just a non-judgmental listening ear.
I spend most of my life wishing that people understood anxious brain better. How it makes everyday tasks that are easy for the rest of the world feel nearly impossible. How it can't be fixed the way that other problems can be. How what it needs most is support of people who aren't trying to fix it. How it really just needs people to understand what they experience because of it. The word is slowly finding its way out. I think I've seen more articles circulate around the internet about anxiety in the last year than I have any other time in my life (like this article I ran across last week). But it still doesn't feel like enough. The word isn't making it to the right places. A few months ago I sat through a lunch conversation that belittled a co-worker's daughter for her anxiety. So the information still isn't making it out to enough people. There are many days that I wish I could make a career out of being an advocate for mental illness. I know there are volunteer positions like this, and I hope to someday get involved. But for now I write. Because my life would be so much easier if people understood my anxious brain. And I know I'm not the only one.

Conflicted... and Trapped

Today I feel the need to begin with a disclaimer. I write because it's cathartic. It's how I process things. It's how I attempt to come to peace with them. And I write online in hopes that someone might read it and understand - or even relate. (I used to pick trusted people to write "letters to never be sent," but sometimes it's nice to get a response, even if it's seeing that one person at least viewed what I had to say). And I write to express what I can't always manage to say to anyone out loud. When I write, I'm honest. And the honest truth is that I'm not often a super positive and uplifting person, at least not in recent years. It's been a long time since I've managed to be happy more than a day or two at a time. And I can only manage a relaxed, neutral contentment for extended periods of time when I spend days straight binge-watching TV shows on Netflix completely ignoring the existence of the outside world. There was a time in recent months when it felt like I had forgotten how to be happy for more than moments at a time, when the best I remembered feeling for months on end was mild discontentment. My life doesn't feel like a particularly positive experience lately. So if you're looking for something that's positive and uplifting, you're not going to find it here. At least not today. So get out now before I rain any further on your parade. You have been warned.
My life this year seems a sea of opposing emotions - all of which lead nowhere good. And when these are the only thoughts and emotions running through my head, I feel constantly trapped in nearly all aspects of my life.
It probably starts with my job. I miss my old school, but I no longer trust them enough to consider even applying if a position were to open up again. So I took a job at my current school despite a serious feeling of uncertainty regarding it being a good fit because it's a district that most teachers would love to be in and, let's face it, with less than one month of summer left I needed to find a job before the school year started. And it seems that my gut instinct may have been right, but it doesn't leave me with good options now. The idea of looking for a different job is in and of itself is a daunting task, probably because of the less-than-pleasant job-hunting experience I had last summer. And I don't know that switching schools every year until I find the right one will get me anywhere in life either. It's not an ideal option to stay but it's also not an ideal option to leave. So I'm trapped.
I don't know that I'm in the right career path. As much as I love teaching, the only way it's helped my mental health is by providing the benefits and income I need to see a counselor. Most of the time it only makes my anxiety and depression worse. And my anxiety and depression make it increasingly difficult for me to be the kind of teacher I'm supposed to be. And while the improvement of my mental health is a work in progress that has slowly but surely been improving, it's not improving as quickly as it needs to for me to do all aspects of my job, and as long as kids' futures are on the line, my mental health doesn't really mean anything to anyone but me. So maybe I shouldn't be a teacher right now. But that's letting the anxiety win, which I'm told is a bad thing. I've thought about other careers - photography, writing, film music analysis, and mental health awareness advocate are all hobbies that I'm greatly interested in, but none of them bring a stable job with reasonably comfortable income and benefits, likely bringing me greater stress in the long run. No good way to stay. No good way to leave. And while my eventual goal is to be a stay-at-home mom, that option is still years away seeing as I'm not even dating anyone right now... So I'm trapped.
I've about had it with teaching math. It's exacting and cold and feels meaningless most days. I know it's useful, and I spout of the reasons why to my students every time they ask. But it feels meaningless. And with the emphasis on math these days, there's way too much pressure. I miss the arts. I miss including heart and soul and the human experience in everything I teach. I'd much rather talk about symbolism in poetry, the effectiveness of music in film, the framing within a photograph, the realism of a work of literature. I want to share with them the human experience, to talk about experiencing different walks of life through art in any form. To give them a place to express their true emotions and identity without fear. I want to sing patriotic songs with them to honor American soldiers past and present on Veteran's day. I want them to express their thrill to see me after a performance and then ask me if their intense scene made me cry. I miss the moments. I've nearly lost the desire to instill my students with hard, cold facts but instead long to shape them as human beings who appreciate the subjective expressions of other human beings. I miss the arts. But I can't really afford to go back to school to teach literature or photography or film. And finding a full-time music teaching job is difficult most anywhere but especially in the limited region where I want to stay in an attempt to keep the small support system I have. And, having never really fit in with the music crowd, I don't know that I can even get a foot in the door for an interview. As much as I deeply want to teach music, my gut tells me that I probably never will. I don't know how to continue to be passionate with my current subject, but I don't know how to realistically get a position teaching in the arts. So I'm trapped.
And my job isn't the only place I'm feeling conflicted, though it certainly tends to consume my life. I miss my faith being the most important part of my life. I miss when my faith gave me hope, when I found comfort in God. And I miss the extended families that I found in my faith communities. But more often than not, my faith brings me more pain than hope. I look for God's comfort and can't find it (and don't tell me that he's still there because right now it means nothing to me if I can't feel it). And I've lost all trust in faith communities as a whole. The faith community I grew up with, whom I considered my extended family, has pretty well dissipated (at least partially under stress of and in frustration with church politics). And I've felt betrayed by nearly all faith communities I've been a part of since that time. While there are still many Christ-people in my life whom I love and who always support me, I feel no desire to find a church home. Too many politics, too many betrayals. I've built up enough trust issues in recent years of my life, and too many of them have started with church people. I long to attend worship but fear being noticed as a newcomer (which, let's be serious, tends to happen at basically any Minnesotan church, even the big ones - thank you, Minnesota nice...) So I don't show up at all. I never pictured myself as one of the many young adults who have left the church but still feel a connection to God, and I don't identify with all of the reasons that many reasons that people of my generation are leaving the church, but I somehow find myself among them and somehow getting it. I know that Christians are just as human as anyone else, but somehow the bad experiences I've had with Christian communities have left some of the deepest scars - perhaps because I had trusted them more deeply to begin with. And I know that some quality faith communities still exist - I have a great one to return to every time I head back north, but with where I am right now, I don't think I can handle risking trying a new place and learning that it's not one of the good ones. I feel guilty for non-attendance on top of feeling guilty because I'm completely rejecting the idea of being an active part of a church community at this point in my life on top of feeling guilty for having a problem with the imperfections of other Christians. I want my faith to mean what it once did, to bring to my life what it once did, but I don't know how to find my way back - or maybe it just hurts too much to get there. So I feel trapped.
And feeling trapped makes me feel hopeless. Most people say that either high school or college were the best years of their lives. But my first two years of high school pretty much sucked and despite how much better my senior year was, it was rather stressful and sleep-deprived. And outside of fantastic classes my junior year and a truly phenomenal music student teaching experience, college was one of the most emotionally and socially painful experiences of my life. So I feel like I missed out on something. And everyone tells me that being an adult doesn't really get any better. So then I feel even more trapped. And I can't find a way out.

The Things I Miss

When you start teaching at a new school, everyone asks you if you like it there. Who's ever going to answer "No."? The truth is that I've never quite settled in to my new school. Maybe I just got spoiled when I got to spend my first year teaching at a school that would have been one of my top 5 choices if I could have chosen anywhere to teach. My current job I chose more out of desperation than anything else - it was July 31 and I'd had no other offers all summer. But the district had good benefits and the school is considered one of the top-notch public high schools in the state, so I figured myself lucky. Plus I would get to teach higher-level classes, which I considered a perk. But I have yet to settle in. People keep asking me if I'm happy and if I feel like it's a good fit. What am I supposed to say? I seem to be the only person who doesn't think it's the most amazing place in the world to be. So I attempt to be convincing when I politely respond that I enjoy being there, and quickly attempt to end the conversation or at least change the topic. My new district is the kind of place where most teachers dream of being able to teach. So why am I so unhappy? A couple of months ago a mentor whose wisdom I greatly value and trust told me that the first school you teach at will still feel like home long after you've left, and it takes years to adjust to your new school. I tried to hold on to this to survive, but lately I'm finding it less convincing.
You see, I came up with a new analogy last weekend. When I was looking at colleges, in particularly ELCA Lutheran colleges in and around Minnesota, someone once said that if you want a formal environment, you should go to St. Olaf, but if you want to be somewhere where people and faculty are more approachable, you should go to Concordia. This only affirmed and solidified my long-time plans to attend Concordia. The environment was a fit. Now, last week was our "Winter Week" that ended in a Friday afternoon pepfest. As I sat in my assigned supervisory row of bleachers before the pepfest began, I noticed our principal walking through the gym in a full suit on the school spirit day where all were encouraged to wear school colors. This was a far cry from my last school's principal who was known to sport zubaz that displayed the school colors on our school spirit day. It was then that it struck me. My old school was like Concordia. My new school is like St. Olaf. I don't know that it'll ever be a fit. And with that realization, and, honestly, the pepfest that followed, I realized all of the things that I've come to miss.
I miss pepfests, or "community celebrations" as they were called, that existed to celebrate student achievements, share student talent, and make students aware of just all that was going on around the school as compared to pepfests where half the point is for students to act completely crazy. I miss pepfests where teachers didn't have to be assigned to specific rows of bleachers for the purpose of crowd control. To be honest, I miss pepfests where I got to watch a repeat state champion dance team, because I've always admired people who can dance, and once you've seen the best, you also know when what you're watching isn't the best (entirely superficial, but at least I'm being honest). And I miss pepfests where I at least recognized most of the kids involved because the school community was such that I recognized and/or knew names of tons of students who had never stepped foot in my classroom.
I miss the community. Not just the school, but the city. I miss the feel of modern suburbia. I miss the parks and the paths connecting all parts of the neighborhood I lived in. I miss the feeling of "home" that I felt just driving through a neighborhood near the school before my first interview there. And I miss the tradition. I miss the community that wanted to hold on to all of its traditions of over a hundred years (the school as an entity was over 100 years old) while still offering all of the opportunity of the modern world. I miss being part of a community where people still sing the national anthem at sporting events rather than letting it be a diva kind of performance. I miss the tradition that led to the recognition of Veteran's Day at a pepfest which included recognizing staff and community veterans as well as students who were enlisting in the military after graduation. And when the honor guard brought the flags to center court of the gym, you could have heard a pin drop; the kids understood what it was all about.
I miss the school focus. While academics were important, academic excellence wasn't the be-all-end-all. Achievements in academics, athletics, arts, and activities were valued at an equal level. It was made known almost daily what types of activities were going on around the school; at my new school it seems to be an afterthought that I never learn of until the day of when it's too late to plan for it. I miss a place where value was placed on nurturing the whole child. Where, while academics were emphasized as a priority, there was a general consensus that students should be allowed to be kids while they could and not be overburdened with academics. Where students weren't allowed to take AP classes until sophomore year, and even then they were only allowed to take one where they learned the study skills that helped them be successful in future ones. At my new school, many of my freshman and sophomore students are dying under their self-imposed AP/Honors everything course loads, dropping nearly all of their activities and getting minimal sleep in an attempt to keep up. I miss being in a school that supported giving less homework that was more meaningful. Actually, I miss being in a school that supported innovative ways of approaching homework that made life easier on teachers and students alike. I miss the school where kids were allowed to be kids every day because they have the rest of their lives to work. I miss the school where they had counselors who supported not only students' academic/registration needs but also their mental, emotional, and social needs (as well as sometimes my own).
I miss the opportunities to be different. I miss being somewhere where there was support for trying new ideas ideas. My department colleagues were trying all sorts of new things that intrigued me and that I wanted to try before I wound up in a school where those ideas wouldn't be accepted. I miss feeling like I was allowed to be an individual teacher who taught the same objectives and gave the same assessments but wasn't expected to teach nearly identically to others who taught the same course (which is where it feels like my new school is headed). I miss the themed professional development: at the time a multi-year focus on grading practices that started dozens of impromptu conversations among teachers. I miss the opportunity for daily collaboration; given, not all teachers were able to do this, but I miss my common-course prep where two of my Algebra 2 colleagues and I got to share instructional strategies daily and from whom I received daily mental/emotional support as a first-year teacher.
I miss the dumb little things. Like being allowed to make my own copies without getting a guilt-trip for using the expensive copier. Like not having to by things like paper clips and staples out of my own pocket. Like the tablet laptop that I got to use. Like having a large classroom with high ceilings, two walls with windows, and right next to a stairwell surrounded by windows. Like being surrounded by people who had shared the experience of being in a real lock down for over 3 hours. Like having two prep periods. Like having a modified block schedule. Like not being allowed to wear nice flip flops on a casual Friday in warmer months. Like the staff potluck at lunch the day before winter break. Like Turkey Bingo put on for school staff by student council which was one of the must-be-there staff social events of the year. I miss not starting school until after 8am. I miss having a communal teacher office that allowed me to escape from my classroom during my prep or even before or after school when I wasn't working with students (or when I had work to do before working with students who showed up unexpectedly an hour before school started...)
I miss the kids. I miss how they called me by my shortened last name rather than insisting on using my mouthful of a full last name. I miss how they frequently requested that I come support them in their activities. I miss the solid relationships that I built with them that I can't manage to even find a foundation for with my new students.
And I miss the people I worked with. I miss working in the same building as a mentor who'd already known me for over 5 years and who I swear sometimes knows me better than I know myself. I miss the secretary I saw most often who always brightened my day. I miss the colleague that usually stuck her head in my classroom if I was still at school more than an hour after the official school day was done and told me that I needed to go home. I miss the colleague who gave me a hard time for the many (empty) Triscuit boxes on my desk and then gifted me with one box of every type of Triscuit in existence when I left at the end of the year. I miss the colleague who was unafraid to tell it like it was yet who was still open to trying new and different things and who had a huge heart. I miss the colleague who understood that pets are family and with whom I could then share stories about my dog. I miss my office buddy with whom I bonded over a love of chocolate, a shared need to just vent some days, and with whom I always felt comfortable sharing when I was having a rough mental health day without any fear of judgment. And I missed my assigned mentor who helped keep my afloat when I was drowning and who supported not only content-support and task-support but emotional support. Really, I miss the solid support system that I had without even having to try.
Now, I know my year last year was extremely stressful, too. And some of the experiences that I had in the last weeks of the school year made a lot of my positive feelings about my old school come crashing down to a point that if they were to have an opening, I don't know that I'd feel comfortable going back at this point. So is this a case of "the grass is always greener"? Perhaps. Does my new school have things I do prefer? Definitely. For instance, given my personal background, I love that there exists an accelerated math track for students separate from students in regular classes in my new school. I also preferred the new teacher workshops and like actually having new teacher meetings on a periodic basis at my new school. And with a different website service, updating my website takes about a quarter of the time that it did at my old school. Even so, I'm unhappy where I am. Despite my high stress levels last year, I never felt the need to pack up my classroom and leave (which I've felt on numerous occasions in the last two months). So I've got to start wondering, is this really the right fit for me? Though I don't see going back to my old school, I also figure that there has to be another school that fits that environment more closely than the one where I am right now.
But where do I go from here? I feel trapped. I don't feel like another school will want to hire me if I've only ever stayed at a school for one year. And I don't know that I can handle another year in a new school, with a new curriculum, and having to move to another new apartment (I'm still working on unpacking boxes in my current one). But I also don't know if I'm really going to settle into a school where, halfway through the school year, I have no emotional support system and where I'm not sure I quite align with the educational philosophy.
I'm not really sure where I'll go from here. But at least I'm starting to figure out why I feel as miserable as I do where I'm at now.