Moving.
The oddest feelings come over me during the days. I have so many questions I want answered and so many possibilities floating just out in front of me, unclear and unknown. I don’t know if it’s out of self-preservation or avoidance or my internal self knowing what I need right now in this moment, but I look at the thing in front of me and I do that. Or, as is often the case, I want to do something (for example: run on the elliptical, or sew and use my ironing board), but the place in which I would Do the Thing is cluttered and taken up with various things that have been thrown or piled up over the past year or years. So instead of Doing the Thing, I sink my hands into the Work of cleaning and getting Shit Done.
It feels good.
Really, really good.
And now, after a few days of digging the garage out and then the basement, I find that I can be in those spaces more freely.
And I know there’s work to be done on the inside. I know it. I can feel it. But right now, getting the shit done in the world around me feels almost just as important, if not moreso. (I still think that should be a word, so I’m writing it like one.) I feel like my family has been along for this ride with me, and as such, we are all sort of coming out of the slog or the marathon or whatever it is. The grind?
There’s usually a moment in the summer when I can get back to zero and do similar things to what I’m doing now. But when I did those things in the past, I was resetting for the year to come. I was cleaning up the mess of accumulated shit from not having enough time to care for our family, knowing that I was committing to going back and doing it all again.
But now?
Now I am picking up these pieces and wondering about the possibility of not falling so far behind again. Scared of not knowing what sort of job I will find, nor sure of what sort of job I even want to find just yet, but giving myself permission of hoping for a job that won’t steal my Life.
Looking back at previous posts, I LOVE being a teacher and a director. That hasn’t changed. However, looking back and seeing and feeling the harm done by my administration is real. As I was going through it, I was just bearing it and just getting through it, hopeful that help would come. Hopeful that my appeals for care and consideration would be heard and then responded to.
But that never happened.
Words happened.
But no action was ever taken to actively help me. — And this was just regarding my main responsibilities. I was working between 185-200%, but no one actually understood that, nor did they seem to believe me when I laid it all out for them. It was my job to make it look easy, so no help ever came. Ever.
Add to that the personnel issue and the gaslighting of the past two years and I have been pulverized.
The job by itself was demanding and difficult. Especially so because I was Alone. In so many, many ways. Alone.
Fuck.
And then the personnel issue. Handled with complete bias. No curiosity. No consideration. No one with any actual personnel training. Everyone involved was a stakeholder, and/or held a position of power. The situation was impossible. And it made my actual job all the more impossible.
But I did it.
And I did it fucking well.
…. So all this mistreatment piled up, which led to piles and piles of shit piling up in and around our house. We were all just trying to get from day to day, so there was no time nor energy given to the Stuff. And I’m realizing that means both the stuff in and around me.
Until now.
Which feels good.
As I slowly get these physical pieces to move around me, I am finding spaces inside slowly cracking and opening. I have no idea what I will find. I’m trying to be patient because there are years of hard, protective layers that have built up. I can feel them rumble against one another. Not free and clear, but moving.
Incrementally.
It’s Good.
-HM.
Heya, Monster. 