Another November

I'm nearly 29 years old. Nineteen days away. I spent the better part of this past year moping through sporadic work assignments, diligent job application submissions, an unsalvageable and unrecognizeable relationship, maintaining a healthy weight, building brief relationships with children and adults in numerous settings, financial uncertainty, deep loneliness, staggering generosity and kindness of others, and dubious personal growth. This time last year I was wallowing in heartbreak.

Having given this idea another run, double the effort, no holds barred in honesty and genuine love and affection and avoiding any resentment, watching it come to an end this time around makes sense and it feels officially final. I know it's my fault; I insisted that we keep this relationship on life support because I simply could not cope with the idea that it would just die, just like that, and I'd have another thing to mourn and grieve over losing. When we broke up a few weeks ago, I braced myself for the rushing wind as the love of my life and everything we've ever had together for over a decade ceased to be the center of my world. I held my breath and waited for the implosion.

At this point, no natural disasters, no floods or fires, but my heart is a heavy weight and I am a fragile shell and I am only just able to tread water. But it still feels final; it really is over and it really needed to end. I'm not embittered, nor am I confused and lost without him. I love him, I respect him, I'm deeply disappointed that things didn't work out the way I had fantasized they would, and I still care about him. I am unable, however, to look him straight in the eye or act like we can be casual friends because for me the cards were on the table: I wanted to have this man forever. He knew that. He kept me far away and reminded me that he didn't want the responsibilities of a relationship and demonstrated how little he would do for the skeletal relationship that he obliged me because I couldn't just let go over the summer. He has his own issues that he has never addressed in a mature, emotionally-sound place. He has so many self-hatred demons to face. I hope he does face them and win. It's growth he's needed for as long as I've known him; it's a blockage I've always known him to possess.

I'm also just really sad. Mine is not the kind of job that finishes influencing me when I leave campus. It follows me home, directs almost everything I talk about, and demands attention in the evenings and on weekends. As I painstakingly assemble a routine and any kind of preparation in advance, I can see the tight grip loosening ever so slightly. I find myself angry and tense, and there's no window I can yell all my problems out of into the gales that would drown them out and take them away from me.

I lack the sense of daily accomplishment that I work so hard for and thrive so much from. I simply chip away at an excavation site filled with papers and glassware and gradebooks and lab preparations and collected homework and pushy emails from parents and copious professional development meetings and difficult and possibly confusing material and endless options for references. Craving a sense of completion each day has brought me to a place of void and bitterness. I could work 24 hours a day and barely be ahead of where I am.

Yes, this is the first year of teaching. The nasty things people in the media say or repeat about teachers having it easy are enough to make my blood boil.

I need a balance in my life desperately. The pendulum is swinging. I have something cresting on the horizon and it's only a matter of time.