I started work again on Monday. And just like that, it feels like I never left. It was a good week, an uneventful week. Even with that being so, my feet are swollen and sore, my knees are killing me from being on my feet all day. I’m exhausted, I’m breaking out, and I’m realizing how difficult it is to take care of yourself when you are a teacher. Most of all though, I hate what it’s done to my relationships.
I’m the kind of person that will do what it takes to do my job well. Unfortunately, teaching is the kind of job with an infinite to-do list. If you’re like me, and you have to be perfect, there will be an unending list of demands to keep you busy and distant from everyone in your life but your students.
My initial concept for this blog post was a detailed assessment of the aspects of being a teacher that makes this the reality. But I quickly got bored. As shocking as the details are (or should be) to everyone else, they are the mundane reality of my day to day. Instead, I ended up daydreaming about my husband.
You see, on Sunday before I went back to work, my husband admitted to me he had anxiety over me going back to work. He was anxious because he felt like he was losing me. Since I would be going back to work. And he had gotten used to having me around.
I have to admit, this crushed me. And it’s all my fault. I started reflecting on my and my husbands relationship, and really realizing how much my mental health and my job has had an impact on it.
I realized how much I had put my husband through.
I realized how badly I needed to make changes, so my work life could no longer suck the life force out of my physical, mental, and relational health.
So on that note, I will be following up tomorrow with a poetic narration of my own reflections in this vein that ended up in a love story of epic proportions.
And as it goes for everything else, I’m kind of starting to lean into this theme of freeing myself from the mold of how I thought my life should go. So who knows…
An Experiment with Vulnerability 