I am telling myself that it is normal for a new teacher to feel this overwhelmed. This exhausted and delirious. But part of me knows that I can't enjoy my life if I work full time. I was so excited for the weekend and to be with my family but now I can barely stand to hear their voices, all of them hurt and grate on my frayed nerves.
Mothers day is here again, Kirrily wrote about it, I've had the post open waiting for my comment for days but I haven't found the string of words that rightly shows my feeling. So instead of the annual fuck off Hallmark and fuck my mother too, read her words and know my better self agrees.
My students begged all week to make mothers day cards, so we did, their messages to their mothers were devastating. One girl wrote that she loves her mum and is "so sorry for being naughty", another included a message of hatred for her father and one little boy ended the day crying that nobody wants him, not me his teacher, not his father, not his own mother. And while he cried I shook inside because I knew all his judgements were true, except for the one about me, I would take him home any day.
Apparently I have the hardest class in a hard school. I think there are others equally hard, but perhaps the children are smaller and more easily manoeuvred.
I am fucking exhausted. I need a self-care checklist; one that shows me how to take care of myself.
But each day I arrive home and my husband cooks me dinner. My eyes rest on a newly clean patch of our house and I am thankful for him and my brother too, who kindly helps him each day. I want to snuggle up to my own boys who are quickly growing past the point of easily fitting in my arms. I am so in love with them but I have nothing left to give them, I am hiding in the dark with my glass of wine and NCIS on DVD.
I started a new blog, did I forget to tell you? It's a baby one, a place for me to put all my mother related writing, Motherlessly is linked at the bottom of the page, in another world I blogged something spectacular about mothers day over there... but in this world I'm pouring a Merlot.
xxx