Depression Sucks

Friday was like an nightmare, and it all starts again tomorrow.

I seriously do not know what do. I hate this job. I absolutely hate it. It's like being back in middle school myself.

I spend my weekends crying because I have to go back on Monday.

Zoloft was mailed to me. It's still not here.

NANOWRIMO

National Novel Writer's Month begins on Monday. I plan to do NANOWRIMO, this year!

NANOWRIMO, for those of you who have not encountered it before, is an annual event where, over the thirty days of November, everyone tries to write a first draft of a novel, from soup to nuts. 50,000 word target. Many Internet forums where people post in to ask what kind of siege engines were used in the Bronze Age, and how many times a week it's really OK to feed your kids cereal instead of cooking.

Right now I feel like hell. I'm depressed, work is cruddy, and I'm not feeling really happy all around. I need a distraction. I need a project. I need something to take me out of myself that doesn't require leaving the house. NANO!!

I have three possible NANO projects in mind. YOU, being someone who reads this blog, get to vote on the project! These are the options:

1. A mystery novel set in Renaissance Florence, the sequel to the recently completed one. In this one, Ginevra's sister Anna, the nun, comes to town, and murder, holiday hilarity and multiple sets of young lovers with murky agendas ensue.

2. A mystery novel set in the medieval English Jewish community. Avigai's cousin's daughter is missing, and as she investigates, long-buried secrets from his escape from the 1190 massacre of York's Jews begin to surface.

3. A sprawly, relationship-driven, Bronze Age chick-lit novel about the women in King David's life. Nitzevet, Michal, Avigayil, Batsheva, Tamar, Avishag...the mother, the wives, the daughter...David's life is filled with women with dramatic stories. And very strong voices.

Please put in your vote for one of these options by midnight on Sunday!

Wouldn't Have Believed It If I Hadn't Seen It

So, today, one of my students dropped a bag of candy on the floor.

It was rather a big bag of candy. He likes to tote lots of it around, even when it is not about to be Halloween. He dropped it. It was an accident. 100 individually wrapped Warheads (little sour things), hit the floor.

I looked up. I said, "Oh, dear, hon, we need to pick those up." I walked toward him.

I saw several kids start to move. I thought, because I am a MORON, "Oh, they'll help."

Then they dived onto the spilled candy, pushing, shoving, screaming, and cramming handfuls into their pockets.

One boy was flat on the floor in front of me, prone, kicking his feet, and protecting his loot with his body.

These are eleven and twelve year olds from middle class families, attending a 'nice' parochial school.

The kindest thing I can say is that they looked like a group of four or five year olds after Dad or Uncle gets fed up and breaks the pinata with a couple of purposeful whacks.

It was far more remiscent of a pack of animals closing in for the kill on the Discovery Channel.

It was, to be honest, disturbing as hell.

I'm goin' back to school

Had a small realization this last week--teaching is not doing it for me. I was fairly happy working at St. Dymphna High, but I was never able to get a normal complement of classes, and frankly, every other place I've worked as a teacher, I've been sad, stressed, and miserable.

I'm done. I'll see if I can do that MFT program I applied for last year, I'm thinking about law school, but I need to do something else, something you can make a little more money at, and not have to deal with classroom management ALL GODDAMN DAY.

How can you tell?

I'm trying to figure out how you can tell if you're just chemically depressed and going through a transition to a new job, or if you actually have realized that you don't like what you're doing for a living much and should change.

Bumping Along

I'm sad. I'm now also on these alarming Vitamin D pills which I'm supposed to take once a week for eight weeks and then once a month. I told the Balebos not to be surprised if sunlight starts to come out of my ears.

But so far, just sad.

I am STRUGGLING with, well, everything. I feel sad about struggling. I have whined too much at my teacher boards and been told to stop. I'm still sad. And frustrated as hell.

There is nothing, nothing at all, like spending ten minutes calming a class down every SINGLE time, when you know that their not calming down at once with a light ring of the chimes is a moral failing of your own. Do it over. And over. And over. And over. And over.

I wanna go back to high school.

Confession is good for the soul, they say

Today was my Weird Bullying Issues day. Won't go into too many details--just spent half the day with the Vice Principal saying, "What would you advise?" and the other half talking to weeping children who didn't think they'd get caught.

This was at the end of a week that started off very badly, after a Friday that dropped the bottom out of my newly not-on-antidepressants state and left me weeping and shaking all weekend. I came back feeling like hell, and rebuilt a little. I still don't feel great, but I'm OK.

Anyway, toward the end of the day, I caught a kid sitting at another kid's desk, going through it. The desk of the kid who's been complaining that his stuff is going missing, and junk being put into his desk when he's away from it. After I spent five minutes this morning talking about the terrible stuff that would happen to any child caught messing with another kid's desk.

I kind of leaped at him, when I registered what I was seeing and said WHATAREYOUDOING, and he started to say something, and I snapped that he was in SOMUCHTROUBLE and sent him back to his own desk...and then didn't get a chance to talk to him after school because he escaped during dismissal--so I talked to the vice principal again instead.

And I realized something.

I am being weird with the kids because being back in middle school is scaring the bejaysus out of me. The last time I was in middle school was a bad, bad year. Around January, I got a GLOWING review from my principal, and literally a week later, a parent wandered into my classroom at a bad moment, and I had a dust-up with the Education Expert, and suddenly I was persona non grata at that school.

And I am so afraid of it happening again. And when the kids misbehave, my blood runs cold, because if ANY child misbehaves EVER, I figure it's going to be 'don't let the door hit your tush on the way out' again. So I'm trying to get them behave by sheer force of will--and getting angry too easily because I'm SCARED TO DEATH.

And I can't do that. I have to teach the kids. Like they are, not like I want them to be in the future. I have to deal with their stuff now. I have to be real with them and their parents now. And if my best isn't good enough, that will have to be too damn bad. I am working hard, I'm being as sane and consistent and strict as I can manage under the new-school, wacky-talky class conditions, and I'll get better. But I can't scream DOYOUKNOWHOWMUCHTROUBLEYOU'REINMISTER at an eleven-year-old boy because I'm afraid other grownups will blame me if he does something wrong. He will, probably do something wrong. He's eleven. And human.

I will probably do a lot of wrong things too. Because I'm thirty-seven and human. I didn't handle it right today. But I need to stop being so afraid.

Also, I need to get my Vitamin D count up to at least fifty from THIRTEEN. My doctor has spoken.

Not feeling so great

Friday was the point at which my post-Paxil calmness plummeted in the face of 28 sixth graders who absolutely refused to shut up.

I cried through a three-day weekend. I went back to school today, and it was lousy, lousy, lousy.

You want to know what the lousiest part was? It was the part where I had to ring the 'attention' signal to get attention in the middle of a transition to math class.Why? Someone's backpack was missing.

So why did they ignore it? Well, it turns out that they HAD to get to math class, because Sister is 'strict'.

I, of course, am chopped liver.

Did I mention it got up to ninety-five degrees by late afternoon?

I have a headache, I want to cry all the time, I am furious with my class, and with myself, and I'm overheated. It's really, really special.

I want to be back at St. Dymphna's.