Resignations, discoveries, money

I wanted to be a professor, and then I ambled around in academia before landing with high school students, then middle schoolers in American public schools.
This past year, I have taught middle school. This school is a dreamy school for a progressive, project-and-inquiry driven educator like me, and my colleagues, my students, and the philosophies of the school are fantastic, and still it’s been much too much.
Middle school, even without the added socio-economic/political/virus-related tensions at play in America is much too much.

For me, at least.

Managing my medical care (complicated and expensive because “cancer”), and managing my work with the American Healthcare and American Education systems crumbling all around us has become too much for me, and far too much for me to do “alone.”
While I know I am not “alone” in Arizona, I know I am far too far (abusing my “too’s” toonight) away from my family and closest friends, the people who can help in the ways I need help. And I do need help, and this is often so hard for me to talk about. I want to do it all by myself. I always do. Hell, if there was a self-surgery theater, I would choose that operating room. I have, how do you say it in Spanish, “trust issues.” Working on this, reader. Workin’ on it.

Been spending the last little while with friends, mostly Mike.
I try to go to work when I can.
I can’t fall asleep (and yes, melatonin, yes cannabis, yes trazodone, and mindfulness, and and and there’s just no help for the insomnia that grows up, like a weed, from this muddy bog of grief), and when my brain finally calls “uncle” it’s usually 2 or 3 in the morning. It’s miserable. It’s crazy making. You know what always made me sleep? Booze. And I am still very much of the mind that I have a drinking problem. And while I know alcohol would knock me out, I am willing to sacrifice some sleep for life as a non-drinker. This is difficult right now, and I can do it. I will be okay.

I wanted to write about how it was to tell my students I will be leaving. I wanted to write about what that looked like and felt like and tasted like, and I can’t because it’s too sad, and I will need some perspective before I can write about this awful time in my life.

None of this shit that I am in, right now, can be contextualized because I lack perspective. Some lessons are appearing hazily to me (good and bad), but I won’t really be able to make sense until I move further away from the situation/s.

And then, reader, I should have some good insights for you.

What I know right now: I am well on my way to establishing healthcare in Illinois. I am well on my way to lining up lucrative, fulfilling, work that I can do well given my limitations as a person living with cancer, living with mental health struggles, and as a person with person problems.

And I will be stepping away — perhaps temporarily, perhaps forever — from teaching in a full-time capacity. I will always want a class or two somewhere, for teaching has historically (and still) brought me such joy. To share what I know with an audience that wishes to hear it is a magnificent thing. To hear what students know, when they are willing to share, is a magnificent thing.
And it’s not about money. Yes, teachers are underpaid, as are adjuncts, and it is horrible, unforgivable because when you underpay teachers (specifically public school teachers), you are endangering, at best deeply complicating, the lives and futures of actual human beings. Yeah, kids are human beings. If only the American Right could start acknowledging that maybe schools would get more funding for their teachers and staff. I don’t know. What I do know is that, for me, it’s never been about the money. Never chased money. I’ve only ever chased the things I loved. Money never was one of the things I loved.

And maybe that was dumb. Certainly it was financially dumb. I just never pursued money. I pursued my dreams. I pursued love. I made a lot of fucking mistakes along the way, and I also did a lot of things right-or-better than I had hoped. The universe has jilted me, and the universe has gifted me. As it has you, too, reader.

So I never went into teaching with money in mind. A comfortable, safe, just life, yes, but I was much dumber then and still sorta believed America was comfortable, safe, and just. And I get frustrated when I see people talking about how paying teachers more will make “things” in American Education better, and while, yes, certainly given what we do, teachers should be paid more — a comfortable, safe, and just wage — but money will not fix what’s happening in American education right now because money cannot fix what is happening in America now.

My decision to step away feels, on some level, cowardly to me; however, without family and only a handful of friends scattered throughout the state, my current situation (cancer being but a piece of the situation) feels intolerably lonely. And I’m done punishing myself by denying myself the few comforts we have in this life: family dinners, friends’ laughter, real lakes and creeks, fresh tomatoes . . .

I’m optimistic. I’m sad, frightened, a bit disoriented, but optimistic. As I learn more about the legal details of my divorce, my appetite decreases further. With this in mind, I did something truly barf-inducing, and started a GoFundMe to help with travel/relocations costs at the end of this month. The link is here: https://gofund.me/a2b7eefe

Don’t love money, but sure do need it to move my sad-self back “home” to Chicago. And yes, if public school teachers were paid commensurate to their efforts (no American public school teacher is, that I am aware of), perhaps I wouldn’t have to do a GoFundMe, but life’s been expensive.

That said, I’m looking forward to starting over financially as a sober, solo, “middle-aged,” woman with some more life experience under her belt. I know better now how to live with my truths. That’s tough stuff, reader — how to live with your truths, the good and bad.

Safe, comfortable, just. That’s it. And I think maybe, back again in the Midwest, I can find this, or at least an approximation of these qualities.

Be good, hooligans.