There's no pretty way to word what I need to get out. This is a painful post for me to write, and it has been even more painful to experience.
The dream is dead.
I have been back and forth. I have loved teaching. I know that it truly is a calling, and for so long it was my passion and it consumed me. That's not the case.
Now, I come home in the evenings and I spend all of my spare time searching job postings to find something that I am qualified for that has a comparable salary. That, and crying.
I spent a long time before this staring blankly in the evenings or absentmindedly scrolling through facebook posts that I didn't care enough to read.
I'm pretty sure this is what depression feels like.
I wake up in the morning, every morning, sick at my stomach because I have to go to work in my own personal purgatory. I'm not sure what I'm paying penance for, but every bit of joy has drained from all but the couple of hours I get to spend with Zoe.
She is my heart.
But my soul is crushed.
My marriage is crumbling. I struggle to make myself care some days. Other days, I just wish I could convince him of how desperately I need to get out of this job. I fault him when he doesn't see how it breaks me. I don't want sex. I don't want food. I don't want much of anything except for this year to end.
I spend every Monday wishing it was Friday, and every break wishing it was summer. When we come back from a break, I always wish it was the next one.
I am wishing my life away.
And if this is life, well, why not?
I do not teach.
I don't know what this job is.
I am disrespected by students, pressured by parents, insulted by district level supervisors, and am NEVER supported by administration. I have had students who are almost my size ball up their fists at me, and I have jumped between them and another student because if not, I would have been held responsible for the injuries that would have occurred. I have called parents to tell them that their child almost started a fight with another student but that I jumped between them to keep their child from being suspended, only to have the parents verbally attack me over the phone because their child has a right to defend himself and accuse me of allowing him to be bullied for the past 2 months despite the parent catching the child in a lie while we are on the phone. I am told that students running across the classroom, hitting each other while screaming at the top of their lungs is "not a referable offense unless someone got hurt" while less than 24 hours later being told that I am responsible for improving these students' test scores using an incredibly ineffective teaching method that is micromanaged at the district level with little to no room for autonomy to meet my own students' needs and learning styles. I spend hundreds of dollars each year on supplies for my students to steal and break "accidentally." Teachers in my building face death threats and are told to have lunch with those students to "heal the relationship" with the student, who faces no consequence. Last year, a teacher in my building committed suicide after being WRONGLY accused of "inappropriate behavior" with a student and having his career ruined, while the student and her family face NO consequence for the slander AND libel they committed. During the entire ordeal, we the staff were told not to communicate with this teacher at all. How different would his story have turned out if he had been able to face this ordeal with the support of his friends and colleagues by his side?
I don't know what the exact definition of PTSD is, but I'm pretty sure there are several of us who at least have some of the symptoms.
Again, this is not teaching.
I don't know what this is.
But somehow there has to be a way out of it. Because I can't do this job for too much longer.
