Today I made a newsletter for my students. While that may seem like a normal thing a teacher would do, it hasn’t been for me. For the last three years, I have been fighting to clear my head of the head fog left from postpartum depression. I knew something was wrong with me, but it wasn’t until December that I realized I was going through the motions and being a shell of my former self.
The year prior, I stopped taking the antidepressants. They were leaving me numb to the world. I didn’t want to hold and cuddle my baby; I sought no joy in life. All the things they were supposed to fix, they didn’t. What they did was add on weight and affect my ability to feel. The only thing they stopped me from was killing myself. Now I wanted to die because the world was gray and I had lost the spark, even the spark to take my life. To most, it would seem crazy to stop taking the pills that were “keeping me alive”. However, this was not how I wanted to live.
For the next year, I would go through the most challenging time of my life. I wish I could go back and apologize to my children and husband. My emotions and nerves were kindling waiting for a match to strike, and most of the time I came home from work a bonfire lit by my students. I would lash out at anyone who stepped wrong. Not because they did anything so outlandish that it deserved my ire, but I was so over-stimulated from keeping myself under control at work that I exploded at home.
Over the summer, I promised myself things would change. I wouldn’t allow my students to get under my skin. But I failed. I failed so miserably. After a horrible interaction with a parent who screamed in my face during open house, my classroom became a place of nightmares. Everything was grating on me. Students who usually listened, weren’t. Senioritis cursed the students I trusted to execute projects at a higher skilled level to underperform. But the blatant disrespect broke me at my core.
It had me questioning every bit of my soul. Any other job, I would have left to find something that would bring me peace. But I didn’t want to abandon these kids. Kids who mostly didn’t give a shit until tears were streaming down my face. Some of those who brought on that response were too self absorb to understand they’d fucked up. I looked for other jobs. I went to several interviews, but none could match the salary I needed to earn to send my kids to camp when I no longer had summers off. Eventually I walked into my classroom with a fuck mentality. If the kids learned, awesome. If they didn’t, oh well. I understand that was a terrible way to think, but I had to stop being a doormat.
Oddly enough, once I did that, the students changed.
It was like being surrounded by a room of narcissists. Once they lost power, they had to find new ways to get attention. Their negative tactics weren’t working anymore, so they had to earn praise to earn my attention. And by the grace of God, my students started doing their work. It’s weird to sit and watch students work silently when for months you had been asking them to just lock in and do the work.
The tension I carried with me started to fade. Enough so, I started to feel creative. For the last six months, I have been revising an old manuscript that may never see the light of day. It holds too many emotions that whenever I work on it I am taken back to dark places. I wanted to work on something new and fresh, so I partook in the 50k novel writing challenge that takes place in November. A spark had been lit, and I could write book two of Ravenmaster. For years I had been playing and doing research but never felt clear headed enough to write. By the time we reached Thanksgiving break, I had typed just under 24 thousand words. With everything going smoothly, I thought I could reach 50 thousand words and start revising over the Christmas break.
But life isn’t a Hallmark movie, like I was teaching in class. Or maybe it is because I am facing the possibility of cancer before forty.
The 18 school days of December flew by, marked with appointments and biopsies that just led to more doctors. While I was in class, I looked at these groups of teens and was jealous. They had so much time to dream and learn, and I didn’t. Or maybe I did. I picked up a freelance job and edited a few podcasts. Nothing exciting, but it felt good to use my talents again.
Between writing something fresh and original and editing, I felt alive again. The spark of creativity that died when I got pregnant with my youngest son was back. It was a feeling I had been chasing for years. There had been moments where I thought the veil had been lifted, but I think my toes were just skimming the bottom of the pool, allowing me to take a break from threading water.
It wasn’t until I had two weeks off with my family did I finally see the light. Only this time it wasn’t a tunnel trying to kill me. My soul felt free. We spent our days carefree. I didn’t answer emails or texts from students. Some nights I wrote, other things I cuddled my babies. My husband and I took a trip with the older two and lived with no pressure. We emptied my bedroom and my husband laid new flooring. As we put things back I purged what I didn’t need anymore and I let feelings go along with it.
I came back to school for the first time in three years excited. I had ideas about what I wanted to do differently. My inbox was filled with emails from industry professionals about the film world. I love reading them and now I know how to share them with the students. I’m going to kill myself and fight tooth and nail for them to preform. They aren’t a trick pony. But I will lead them with crumbs. Social media posts about topics I want them to learn. A newsletter beautifully designed with information that they’ll need once they leave this campus. All of it feels fresh.
I woke up on the new year feeling as if I could breathe for the first time. I always laugh because authors write about characters letting go of a breath they didn’t know they were holding. I think I understand what it means now. It may not be an actual breath but an emotion or fear that was keeping them down is now gone.
