Written October, 2023
It starts as I reach toward the coffee pot sitting on my kitchen counter. I’ve been holding it in, just under the surface, until now.
The shaking.
The trembling.
The terror.
My hands move like the hands of a junkie – unsteady, weak, nervous with an unpredictable electric energy.
It’s the moment that I’ve been hiding from myself all morning. It bubbles up and over the top. The knowledge I’ve hidden since last night. Since yesterday afternoon at 3:10pm, when I last left the school building. I realize:
I don’t want to go back.
I’m afraid.
And it terrifies me to recognize this knowledge within me.
I’m afraid of what will happen at school, and if I allowed myself the choice, I would crumple to my kitchen floor right here beneath my feet, allow all the tears to come out, and ask my husband to simply hold me.
But I don’t give myself that option.
“Look,” I say to him softly. “I’m already shaking.”
He looks at my hand, suspended mid-reach over the counter. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
I breathe deeply. I realize I’m doing that more and more often the past few days. It’s like I’m slowly suffocating, the noose growing tighter around my neck, the gag squeezing around over my mouth and nose, my ribcage too tense to fully expand, and I suddenly begin gasping. I break through the surface tension and suck as much air as I can down deep into my lungs. Within moments, the gag begins to coil tighter again, the noose snaking back around my throat, the bindings creeping around my lungs little by little while my attention turns back outward.
It dawns on me that my heart has begun to race. It climbs higher and higher in my chest. My belly suddenly turns and twists, as if gravity has decided to do cartwheels.
“I’m just…”
But I can’t finish. I can’t say all the overwhelming fears in my head. I whisper, “I don’t want to go.”
I know he didn’t hear me. That’s not the point, anyway. I know he can’t do anything.
I’ll make myself go to school, my job, this career I love and nurture – because that’s just who I am. I may cry the whole way there, and barely hold it together when the bell rings for first hour.
But you know what will get me through the day? What will make me forget about all the stupid bureaucratic politically motivated manipulative dehumanizing censorship crap I’m dealing with today?
The kids.
My students.
Their questions. Their faces. The books they are reading, the words they are finding, the sentences they are writing, the emails they are sending, the thoughts they are having, the decisions they are making. Walking among my students and just chatting with them at their desks is the best medicine for what I’m feeling. When I’m working with my students, I’m in the flow. I’m not thinking about anything else but them and what they need.
This is why I continue to work at a job where just about every piece of logic tells me I’m crazy.
Many today seem to believe teachers are teachers because it’s an easy job. “Those who can’t, teach.” Allow me to clear this up. Teaching is probably the most difficult job one could have at this time in our nation’s history. You might think that because we get summers off, it all evens out. I ask you, would your own personal liberty, your freedom of speech, your freedom of religion, and your right to assemble be worthy sacrifices for a couple extra weeks of vacation?
My daily panic attack for the last two weeks says no.
My husband and I have had serious discussions about how it would affect our family if I left my current position. I can’t suffocate myself and censor myself forever, nor should anyone live feeling as though she has a target on her back.
I dream a world where good teachers are safe and supported.
God has a plan for me. I know he will make some good come out of this, if I give him this problem and all my anxieties.
In God I trust.
