Retrieving the Madonna

I got Basya to go and get the statue of the Virgin back out of my old classroom for me. Yes, this was nutty as hell, but it had to happen.

Brief explanation: last year, a friend was kind enough to make me a long-term loan of a statue of Mary from his late mother's collection of such things, to put into my classroom. I installed her lovingly, imagining all kinds of things that did not happen, because as you may recall, this past fall was a nightmare from hell.

When I bailed, I left her there, mostly because it felt weird to take her out of the classroom in the middle of the year. But as this summer wore to an end, I knew I had to get the statue back.

Why? Well, I've been freaking out again about that last job, and how it ended. I am dreaming about it, and thinking about it, and generally not in such a good place, emotionally. I felt that I'd already given that school plenty, and this particular beautiful thing wasn't going to be a part of it.

Problem was, in my present mental state, I didn't dare set foot inside the damn building. So I called on Basya, my bridesmaid and general mainstay of existence, and because she is awesome, she came over and collected Mary from the office at St. Attracta's.

Basya ended up spending the night, due to the 580 being closed, and today we went to Target to get her some camping gear. We're walking along, me and Basya and the Husband, and lo and behold, who do I see coming but the Mom From Hell, my worst parent from this fall, and her darling boy.

There was a long sort of pass by when I couldn't figure out if they were going to recognize me at all, and then we spotted each other, and I smiled, and was gracious. She smiled, but when I said, "Well, fancy meeting you here?" she kept going, and then said, "What?"

And then I had to steer the whole party around to avoid running into them again, in school supplies.

I want St. Attracta's out of my life and out of my system, and it's not easy. I feel wrong in my skin these days, too apologetic, and too tentative for a woman in her late thirties. I feel as though I've failed, and should apologize for everything, all the time, at least until I have a job where I'm succeeding at such a high level that even I can't find fault with myself--a situation which is probably impossible, so maybe I should find an alternate route right now.

This last fall messed me up. This coming fall had better be better.

Surviving On My Own Terms

Today, I mostly stared into space. I have things to do, I just didn't do them. And then, while rummaging through a box, looking for some spare printer paper, I found a holy card, given to me at a funeral at the beginning of the school year.

I met this woman only once or twice. Our only connections were these: I had taught her son at St. Dympnha's for a quarter, when his regular English teacher was on maternity leave, and we had met in a few planning meeting at St. Attracta's, where I went to work this fall, and she was also employed.

She killed herself the night before school began. It seems ridiculous to say that perhaps my tenure at St. Attracta was cursed--it seems like a pathetic attempt to make drama out of someone else's tragedy--but I will remember always meeting the principal at the door of that first school day, and the words tumbling out of her mouth. I didn't remember who this woman was, at first. I was surrounded by her grieving friends, people who had worked with her for many years. I was responsible for children who'd known her their whole lives.

I have no idea, finally, exactly what pushed her past breaking. She'd struggled with depression for years, a bad, deep, depression that put her in the hospital at one point. It seemed terrifying to me that she did it the night before school started. Was it an attempt not to start the school year, not to begin anything she didn't plan to finish? Was it coincidence? Was the thought of being surrounded by the children again too much? She loved her job, I was told. The kids said they could see when the depression began to get the better of her...she stopped laughing, she stopped playing with them on the playground.

The first year I taught, I was so overwhelmed that I had no idea what was going on around me, but I did notice in February when I got an e-mail saying that one of the eighth-grade English teachers was taking the rest of the year off for health reasons. I barely knew this woman. I assumed she was getting cancer treatment, or going for back surgery. It was the next year that I learned that a combination of terrible job circumstances forced on her by the administration had pushed her depression and other heath issues to the point that, on Valentines' Day, she ended up in a locked psychiatric ward. A forty-year teacher, this woman. An acknowledged giant at what she did.

She came back in the fall to finish off her last year before retirement, and when people asked how she was, at the staff meeting in the fall, she smiled and said, "I'm on three very powerful psychoactive medications, thank you, so I feel fine."

This last winter I was so deep under the depression that I stopped eating. I have never stopped eating in all my life. I lost fifteen pounds. I had them to spare, but it was deeply frightening. I eat when I'm sad, I don't fast. I was so deeply stressed that I was responding to stress in ways I had never done before.

And I thought of them, the woman who killed herself, the woman who was hospitalized.

I told everyone, and laughed, that I quit because I didn't want to end up in the psych ward like my old coworker. But it was deeper than that. I was afraid I wouldn't be hospitalized, that I wouldn't break, that I would become sicker and sicker but never let go of the rope, never give up, and let my self-loathing take over from the inside out, while I kept going to school every day, and pretending I could get the situation under control.

I was pretty sure that something horrifying would happen if I tried to do that until summer.

It's really hard for me to remember how important it was to let go, to let myself find a place to hide and heal. I'm scrabbling for work right now, and my finances are just a mess. It's easy to tell myself that I should never have left a perfectly good job. (Perfectly good=pays the rent).

But I was in serious emotional and physical danger, and I could not stay. I had to start over. I had to be serious about my own survival.

The woman who killed herself left behind a sixteen year old son, one of the best kids I have ever met.

The woman who had the breakdown retired to the Russian River with her husband and took up flyfishing.

And I am going to go on to the next thing, and thank God for the strength to get myself out of harm's way.

Paxil, Rebellion, and Talkin' Bout My Generation

Allow me to discuss my experience with anti-depressants, and my current feelings about them.

I started taking Paxil back in the spring of 2006.

I started taking Paxil because work, my first teaching job, was becoming intolerable, and I was having panic attacks every time the principal walked into my room. So I took the Paxil, which smoothed my depression over work and such over remarkably, and all was well.

Well, not exactly, because the jerky, problematic arc of my teaching career continued to be both jerky and problematic, but I was very emotionally contained while several different jobs went to hell in a handbasket. Relatively speaking.

Now, I had been in therapy for a number of years, with a marvellous woman, and had gotten through a lot of stuff, and, in fact, learned quite a bit about managing my depression. My therapist never mentioned drugs, and when I brought it up once, she discussed it with me, but did not seem to think I needed anti-depressants, unless I felt they would seriously improve my quality of life. Which, at the time, I did not.

I fell a bit through the cracks with the Paxil, to be honest. It was some doctor at the ER who put me on it, and when I had to get a doctor to approve a refill a while back, she was fairly horrified that I'd just been casually left on it for four years with no follow-up. She did manage to make it seem as though it was my fault, which I resented.

I tried to get off the Paxil a couple of times, only to discover that getting off Paxil is not exactly easy or fun. I went online when I was first put on the Paxil to read up on it, and was immediately bombarded with all sorts of dreadful warnings from sites with names like paxilsurvivor and mypaxilnightmare. Most of these sites were overblown, at least from my experience, but they did warn me of some things that Kaiser failed to. One of these was 'the zaps', a sensation of electric shock that often accompanies withdrawal from the Paxil. If I hadn't know about the damn zaps, I would have thought I was losing my mind when they started. The problem with getting off the Paxil was that it could be done, but once it WAS done, I started crying again, so I went back on. And stayed on.

Paxil is just plain hard to get off of. I've been told by a couple of doctors that the intense resistance that the medical community has had to labeling it addictive is that they're not actually sure why it's physically habituating. The chemical reason for whatever leads to the zaps and such isn't clear. And so, doctors being doctors, they simply resist the idea that people are actually having symptoms. Doctors are like that.

It was this past fall, though, four and a half years after I went on the Paxil that I finally got off it, with medical assistance. This time, I got a doctor who was an actual psychiatrist, as opposed to the genprac guy who told me to go on a half dose for a week before cutting it out, and I'd be fine. We did an elaborate dance of getting me off the Paxil, and onto Prozac, and then off Prozac.

I did this for two reasons. First, and most immediately, I wanted to get pregnant, and Paxil is strongly, strongly counterindicated for pregnancy. The other reason was a little more complicated--I had had two good years at St. Dymphna's, and I expected a good year at St. Attracta's (HAH!), and I thought maybe it was time to face the world unmedicated. I thought, at the time, that if it didn't go smoothly, I could go back on anti-depressants, but it seemed worth while to experiment.

Of course, St. Attracta's was a housefire of a disaster, and after a pleasant summer and early fall, I simply detonated, and fell down the rabbit hole of my own depression. It was in those days that I ranted to a teacher blog about how miserable I was, mentioning that I was off my meds, and was roundly scolded and told to get right back on the Paxil, pronto. "You know that you need to take your medicine, so do it!" one lady snapped.

Well, on the one hand, that seemed like someone being quite concerned about my wellbeing--and it was followed by many exhortations not be ashamed of NEEDING my medication (I wasn't, but apparently even thinking that you might not need it forever was suspect), and on the other hand, I started thinking of all those movies about 50s housewives drugged out of their minds on tranquilizers. I started wondering how you told the difference between taking a medication that addressed your psychiatric needs, and taking a medication that was covering up for your actual needs in life.

And thinking this sort of thing through sensibly while you're in the grip of a crippling major depression is harder than you might think.

Anyway, I finally did something that was either eminently sensible, or completely missing the point--instead of numbing myself down further, I gave two weeks notice to the source of stress. And I immediately felt much, much better.

I've felt much, much better ever since. Even with the worry of finding money to live on, and a new job, and health insurance, and many, many other things, I'm now back on the barest trace of Zoloft, and I'm FINE.

This is not meant to be a rant against anti-depressants, because God knows, they have been there for me, and great, when I needed them. But anti-depressants are meant to balance your chemistry so you're OK, not up your tolerance so you can handle things that are by no means OK.

Most of my work life for the past five years has been by no means OK. And I am going to fight like hell to get to a place where I am OK.

Catching Everyone Up, Finally

OK, here it goes. I quit the job at St. Attracta's.

Mid-year.

I have never done such a thing in the years I've been teaching. Wanted to, yes, wanted to very badly, but I have never done it.

I did it. I told the principal, and I told no one else, and on the last day before Christmas break I let all the kids run out screaming, and that was it.

Now I am hunting for work, and trying to get a student loan, and taking classes for an online MFT program, and seeing what happens next.

I feel a hundred and seventy-five percent better. I had gone down into a deep, ugly whirlpool of depression, and despair at my inability to do a good job.

I quit, and I feel better.

There it is.

SantaGate

So, right here at St. Attracta, we have a major Christmastide scandal underway.

Apparently, last week, the Spanish teacher was asked by some little darling in the fourth grade if she 'believed in Santa'.

This is the point at which, in a nice Catholic school, one is supposed to smile and say "Of course I do!" But Sra. is a devout apostolic evangelical of some sort, and apparently she went into some considerable detail about how not only did she not believe in Santa, but there is only one person whom one is supposed to show worship to and expect things from, and that Christmas is about Jesus, and that belief in Santa Claus is a form of idolatry.

Now, this gets into some deep theological divides in Christianity, having to do with the veneration of the saints, and toy shopping and such, but that's sort of beside the point. The point is that the fourth graders were traumatized, and they told their parents, and their parents called the principal, and it was all fairly insane for a few days.

So, Sra. was told that while she did not have to lie and say she did believe in Santa Claus, she should not lecture the children on the subject, or say that Santa was bad. Good enough.

Yesterday, my own sixth-graders had Spanish class, and I left to go have a cup of coffee. When I returned, some of the kids were polling one another about wehter they believed in Santa Claus, but since I didn't know about the fourth-grade episode, I thought little of it.

ANYWAY, today the principal shows up, and tells me that apparently one of MY little darlings, last night, at bedtime, turns to her mother and says, "Mom, something happened today, and Sra. said not to tell anyone she said it or we'd be in trouble, but I have to tell you. She said there's no Santa Claus!"

Now, I have to say that my own feeling is that a family in which a sixth-grader believes in Santa is perhaps in need of some sharp talk from a Spanish teacher, but anyway, there were more furious phone calls, and I had to pull kids out of class to give testimony about what was said. (The witness kid I called says they were NOT told to keep the whole thing secret, and that Sra. simply said no when asked if she was a Santa believer.)

Such is life in middle school, such is life at St. Attracta.

I have some more I need to tell you about what's going on, but that will have to wait for tomorrow. 

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.

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.

Sixth Grade Is Hard. And I'm In Mourning.

OK. My mother-in-law died today, I found out after school, so this is a day that will live in memory, but before that...

My sixth graders, who I have for English, religion and social studies, are in revolt. I started using the vocabulary book that was given to me by the school, which is rigorous but good.

They can't pass the tests. They do lousy on them. After the third one with too many Fs and no As, I decided, OK, we have to adapt. So I told them, and read them a note saying, that we would keep using the book, but we would do a unit over two weeks instead of one, taking the spelling test one week and the vocabulary the next. We would make flashcards, do word studies, more in-depth stuff. I just came from high school, where even my freshmen would look at a list, sort of shrug, and learn it. So, I tell the kids, we'll do it slow, with more care and more activities, and they WILL get better grades, and they WILL learn more.

And they exploded. Some of what came out of our impromptu class meeting:

There is not enough homework. And the homework is too hard.
Can't we go on doing a vocabulary test every week?
It's my fault for not teaching it right.
I don't make learning fun.
Ms. Fifth Grade gave them donuts for getting As on spelling tests. They need motivation. How come no donuts?
I take too long to give directions.
I don't take long enough giving directions.
They don't like the kid they're sitting next to.
If I gave examples, like about money, or fashion, they'd learn.

Then, they complained that it was the way I grade that made them get bad grades. I take off TWO points for every thing they get wrong. If I only took off one point, they'd get good grades!

I showed them the percentages on the board, and explained that I give two points for each correct answer as well, so this is having no impact on their overall grade.

A couple of them came in to talk after school as well. They're mad at the math teacher too, because he says the highest grade in the group is a C-plus, and if he gave them more time, they'd get better grades, also he canceled the test because the people who weren't ready asked for more time. And everyone is saying that they're going to have bad grades at the progress reports, and they're MAD!!!

I tried to treat their concerns with respect, and a little humor. I felt like running away and never coming back.

And then after this, while I'm brainstorming tech projects with the computer guy, my husband walks in, and I know as soon as I see his face that Tante S. is gone.

I'll feel better after I eat a lot of carbs and get a good night's sleep, and cry some more. But DAMN.

And the grief, the real grief, hasn't quite gotten through yet. And my heart is breaking for my husband, and I don't know what in God's name I can do for him.

Me, Without Paxil

So, I'm off the Paxil, and I'm off the Prozac I took to get off the Paxil, and this is me, typing unmedicated for the first time in about five years.

I took the Paxil to get through the horrible time at the first school I taught at, and, as it happens, to get through horrible times at the next two schools I taught at. I never planned to be on it for five years. I never planned to spend nearly that much of my life on antidepressants.

I feel OK.

I'm starting a new year of work. I've done a week and a half with the sixth graders at St. Attracta School, and I think it's going OK--but it's hard, it's always hard, to start off in a new setting. And on a deep, deep level, I am not convinced I can teach successfully, even going into my seventh year of it.

That said, this weekend has been a great success so far. Last night was Niamh's bachelorette party, complete with burlesque dancers, halal barbecue and champagne, and despite my terrible fears about it (the bridal shower was high stress), it went off beautifully, I think. Niamh was lovely, wearing a Statue-of-Liberty-like crown of glow-sticks, and we had a really lovely party.

On family front, stress. The Husband's Tante S., his mom's parter, is in the hospital and the doctors don't think she's coming out. It's hard. The Husband is sad, and stressed. Me too.

I don't feel depressed. I feel different. But I'm going to go on without the Paxil, and I'm going to contact my NP Ob-Gyn to get my Tay-Sachs screening done.

A Long, Good Life

On Saturday, I went to a funeral mass for the mother of a friend of my father's. SHe was eighty-nine, born in Manila in 1920. She was just about to get her degree when the Japanese invaded.

A truly remarkable life. I was able to hear much of it when my father the WWII buff and I took her out to lunch a few years ago.

Right before she died, her son and daughter-in-law presented me with one of her many statues of Mary. It now sits in my classroom, and I plan to send them photos of it in its new home with a thank you and condolence letter.

My Classroom is Gorgeous

I am tired.

There are inspiration posters attached to every object in the room, including a sandwich board on the hamster. (OK, not really. I don't have a hamster yet.)

Did Feminism Succeed? Or Not?

When you can't tell if feminism succeeded beyond its supporters' wildest dreams, or failed miserably:

I'm putting my classroom together with some help from a young lady who was in my high school freshman class a couple of years ago. She attended the school I'm working at now, K-8. She tells me that she told her best friend, a boy who was in my class, and also went through elementary school with her, to come and help out tomorrow.

In passing, I learn that he broke up with his girlfriend, to whom he had been glued for the past two years. "And he was so upset," Mary Kate continues, "and he really needed someone to talk to, and I was there for him. But I was kinda mad, like he gets a girlfriend and we never got to hang out until they broke up? Like, it's supposed to be bros before hos, sorry about my language, Mrs. Bluejeans."