I don’t sleep well anymore. I lie in bed thinking about the next day’s lesson or the reading goals I need to write and wake up in the middle of the night wondering how I will manage the ongoing behavioral challenges of the kids in 3rd period and remembering that I forgot to submit the data about the kids in 7th.
My brain won’t turn off. The motor is always running.
Since August, I’ve lost five pounds I didn’t need to lose. My dentist pointed out that I’ve been grinding my teeth at night. When I run my fingers along my scalp I can trace scaly patches and dead skin dusts my shoulder. My doctor says it’s eczema and prescribed steroidal foam that still isn’t working. I’ve never had eczema. I can’t remember if my fingers have always been so intertwined with hair when I wash it. Or if it’s just all falling out. I think it’s just falling out, more and more each day.
This week, the purply rings under my right eye have randomly started twitching. Spasms I can’t control or predict.
I feel as if the quality of my voice has changed. It feels more gravelly, less clear. Like my airways are constricted and pocked.
My whole body feels like the rope of a tire swing that’s been twisted so much it’s squeaking. It’s so taut it will either spiral or snap.
At some point in my childhood, I learned it was better not to share when things got stressful. That it was somehow more noble and graceful to plow through in silence. That stoicism is a sign of fortitude. Strong women shoulder all the loads with dignity and grace. So then it feels shameful and inelegant- weak and self indulgent to even acknowledge how overwhelmed I feel right now. It feels as though I’m not only failing all my roles: Mother, wife, teacher, student, case manager, sister, daughter, friend, citizen- but failing to fulfill my obligation to be all the roles without complaining. Without commenting on how hard it is or how impossible it feels.
But today I need to scream it into the void. This is really hard. And it feels impossible. And I don’t know how I can sustain it.
Nobody told me that getting a job as a special education teacher while taking graduate classes to fulfill licensure requirements while raising three kids would be easy. Not one person. I knew it was going to be challenging. And it is, in fact, challenging. I squeeze productivity out of every second of the day. There are no pauses. No moments to catch my breath. And every second I spend doing anything that feels indulgent- taking a walk with Annie or going to lunch with a friend- my brain is reminding me of the costs. All the things I’m supposed to be doing. The lessons to scaffold, the IEPs to read, the goals to work on, the papers to write, the weeds in the garden, the friends I want to check in on, the therapy appointment I still haven’t made for my own kid who desperately needs it.
From 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. I am doing while also thinking about all that is not getting done. I’m not sure this counts as living.
I messaged my friend the other day that this was the fire. And that a useful metaphor is that I’m being forged into something harder and tougher. But that many days I wonder if I won’t just turn into ash.
It all looks very melodramatic written down that way.
My training inclines me to temper my whining: This is temporary pain. Other people have endured much worse. You are too soft. Your life has been easy. You have so much privilege. At least you aren’t doing this alone. At least you have the ability to go to school and go to work. At least you have children. At least you have a husband. At least you have a home. At least you have your health. At least. At least.
I’ve been listening to the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things” (*snort* that’s what she said *snort*) with Glennon Doyle, her sister, Amanda, and her wife, Abby Wambach. The two most recent two episodes resonated. In the first, Glennon shares about how writing is the one place she feels like her real self can tell the truth, it’s the place she can breathe. In the second, her sister shared about how suffocating her own life had become. “Everything was shoulds and nothing was wants,” she said, before unlocking some big “T” Truths that I attempted to transcribe:
“I am joyless because I’m all duty and I don’t have fun and I don’t have joy because joy and fun are like an answer to something. Desire is an answer to something. And if you don’t leave room and space in your life for the question then you’re never going to get to the answer. And then even joy and desire become … an obligation from you, on you, instead of a need from you.”
She continues, “I’m not going to have a life force in me if there is no room and air and space for a life force to emerge from me … The world is fine with women not living. And that means that we have to decide whether we want to live because not a damn person is going to require it of us because that is how the world turns. I just realized that when I started to think of it that way … that there is just not any oxygen around my fuel and it’s not burning. So I’m either going to smolder with resentment and smolder with bitterness and be all smoke and no fire, or I’m going to have to get some oxygen around my fuel. And either way it’s going to cost my life… I can either spend my time for resenting the world for failing to ignite me or I can give myself some time to heat and the air that I need because nobody else has the heat and the light to light up my life but me.”
Writing has always been a place where my real self in all her warts gets a chance to breathe. And I haven’t had space for it. I haven’t had space for the questions, the curiosity, the creativity. It’s all been doing. It’s all been duty. I am smoldering. I have been for months.
I know the world does not give a damn about any of it. I know this. So today I’m planting my flag in the ground. I’m claiming this space to unburden my heart. To take stock of my wounded body and my weary brain. To acknowledge just for myself that this whole enterprise is really hard. To state in writing, that’s it not OK to expect any person to walk the earth without desire, curiosity, creativity, or joy.
That I get to breathe.
Before I do the grocery shopping. Before I write the paper. Before I begin the progress reports. I’m giving myself oxygen.
Earlier this week in some sort of weird alchemy, the boys in third period with the challenging behaviors wrote a newspaper article. Given that I often can’t get them to write a sentence, it felt miraculous. As a reward, the three of us went outside on the blacktop to kick a soccer ball around. For ten minutes it was just us, the sun on our backs, and the sounds of the ball rolling across blacktop and followed by the satisfying pop of a sneaker sending it sailing through the air. It might have been the best ten minutes of the week. I’d forgotten how much I loved soccer. How joyful it was to stop a ball in midair, gain control and then send it to a target. The boys were calm. They were laughing. They had space to breathe. They were grateful for the break. For the fresh air. They seemed surprised I knew how to play.
“Thanks Ms. Jennings,” one said as we walked back into the building. “That was fun.”
Our lives have to be more than shoulds. We were not put here for shoulds. We were are here to create. To be joyful. To give enough oxygen to our own fires that they share their own unique light, their own unique warmth. To offer solace to the stray souls who wander by. To forge love that is both resilient and delicate.
We get to revel in the sun. We get to marvel at the the things the bodies we inhabit can do. We get to unwind ourselves and send our stored energy out into the great wide open for the next person to collect and create with. We get to surprise those around us. We get to celebrate the things we have shaped from the ether. We get to embrace the joy of novelty. We get to breathe.
We get to make our lives a thing that reflects our souls. And hopefully at the end of all of it. As our hearts slow and our breaths become shallow, we can look back and say, “that was fun.”
Today, I protected my fire. I can feel my body relaxing. My breath deepening. My heart expanding. This is living.