Drained

Being in love with someone who is not ready for you is the most difficult thing. Going back to a career you gave up years ago because your family forced you to and it was the only way to get out from under them is even harder. Standing up to and breaking up with a narcissistic abuser who wasted 9 years of your life only to end up never wanting to have sex with you, or give you any kind of physical or emotional love is one of the biggest and hardest challenges I've ever faced, and that relationship took everything from me, drained me, right for me to step back into a draining atmosphere with my narcissistic family, and then a draining job. I fell in love with a man who is so drained by his surroundings that he can't be with me, and that drains me. And then it takes everything within me just to deal with and teach this new generation of kids.

Overall, I'm drained. I'm mentally, emotionally, even physically drained right now, because I just started my period but also because I believe stress has a way of putting actual strain on my body. I'm in survival mode all the time. It doesn't feel fair, it doesn't feel right, so then, I just write and write and write and write until my head aches and my students just walked into class and here I am. I told the kids they can work on make-up work or "just chill" today because to be perfectly honest I do not have the mental capacity to deal today, but here I am, here I stay, writing at my desk, pouring my heart and soul into this for you.

It's not like I don't like the students, it's that life becomes much more difficult when you have a laundry list of things to do and admin breathing down your neck about how your lesson plans are not typed up properly, instead of maybe supporting us, understanding us, trusting that we know how to read a room, how to teach the class. My master's degree, bachelor's degree, and measly certificate from being in the National English Honors Society mean absolutely nothing here, because the own admin doesn't really believe in me. So what am I really doing here?

I never have time to grade papers unless I take them home or choose these study blocks once a week for some of my classes because my planning periods are eaten up by meetings and typing out lesson plans that are already written in the district folder, but we have to write them again in our own words for some reason. And to me? I honestly think that's such a waste of time. What a useless task that eats up my real planning time, because for all of my other 4 class preps, I have to make up and come up with all the lessons on my own because I teach 4 electives and 1 core content class.

Teaching has become more about covering your ass than helping the kids, and it shows, and that bothers me, but what you can I do? I've always been a boundary pusher and a rule breaker, and a leader and a phoenix and education right now is not for those kinds of people, let me tell you. Education, right now, is for the compliant. So, day by day now, hour by hour, I'm working on getting out and finding my own path. I want to write and live and breathe and create and express, and that's what I've always been best at, so why shouldn't that be my career?

It's always been a dream, and I'm tired of it being just a dream, I want it to be my reality. I've worked enough terrible jobs; I've made enough mistakes to deserve at this point to be living the life I want with the person I want and love. Right now, I'm drawing a hard line in the sand and I'm putting a protective wall around my heart so that I can step up and take care of myself and not let my job or my relationship troubles chip away at me or drain me out of the energy I need to make my dreams come true.

I've had all this time, and I fell behind because I let an abusive partner, my family, my workplace, tell me what my worth is. I know my worth. I know what I can bring to this world, and I know that I'm here for much, much more than this. So, that's why I'm standing up for myself and being strong. Because I cannot, cannot fall. I cannot, cannot fail. I've come too far. I've fought too many battles. I have to get a grip on my reality, and finally make all my dreams come true, without this job, without a man, without my family. I have to find the ultimate strength in me and never, ever look back, because that's all the fuck I have.