Literary Pixie

Ah, It’s here, it’s here. The year it all fell about apart. The year humpty dumpty finally fell off the wall and cracked her head. I feel awash with anxiety as I think about this year.

But I’m going to get a cup of tea before I go into it.

I’m back, and I just want this to be over, thinking about what happened to me. I want to never think about it again, but I have to in order to process what happened so I can understand why I am acting this way. I am going to write this out – one big flowwww, and try not to think about what I am writing. I am just going to let go just for one day, just for right now. And then it’s back on the box.

Well, eventually I will have to edit this. Wah! That’s for later Sammy to handle. Okay, let’s do this. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and this will be written, and I can move forward with my life focusing on gratitude and gratefulness. I’m grateful that I survived. I’m grateful that it’s over.

So I went on my annual trip to the UK, and gave my self two weeks before the one week optional PD to prepare my curriculums for the next year. Thus, really I had three weeks until school started to prepare everything. I thought this should be plenty of time since I’d already done this job three times and had less time and less resources before. I thought I was being generous since it was my summer and technically, I wasn’t even paid for those hours. Like we’re not. They don’t pay us, they just divide our salary between 12 months instead of 9 months, so technically we are not paid during that time to work. However, because the workload is so unrealistic with a lack of support, many teachers often spend the whole summer working and attending professional developments, and many don’t.

I got through a lot of my 9th and 12th grade curriculum planning, but slowly I realized that it didn’t matter if I worked every day for 10 hours straight before school started, I would not be able to get everything prepared for the year or even just the fall semester in order to make sure that what happened in Year 3 didn’t happen again.

Teaching ELD 10, 9th Honors, and 12th Honors was just too much for me to teach in the quality that my students deserved and that my co-teachers needed in order to be able to give me feedback and provide interventions.

After I had that realization, it was impossible to work. I would start crying and a panic would take over me. I’d begin hyperventilating and my hands would start to tingle. Then I would have to stop working, and just go home and nap for a bit. It felt like PTSD, but I wasn’t a veteran. Every day for the first week of three trying to prepare for the year, I cried. Thus, I decided to talk to my doctor.

At the doctors, I shared about my weird headache and fatigue, and asked about how to get FMLA since one of my administrators had told me to get it. She said I had to go to a psychiatrist to get the FMLA and said she wasn’t sure about the headaches and whatnot, but they were probably nothing. She said they were probably psychosomatic and to call the Kaiser number to get assigned a therapist.

From my own independent research, I learned about the symptoms of nervous system dysregulation and realized that was what I was experiencing. After nearly five years of being on high alert (ever since I had witnessed Grenfell Towers burn, which eventually led to a rape experience, and then COVID, and then my first three years of teaching and my Masters), I was stuck in the yellow zone, and would quickly switch to red zone if anything felt overwhelming or triggered past memories.

Thus I called the Kaiser number, got an appointment with a psychiatrist and was assigned a social worker. The psychiatrist I met on Zoom for a brief ten minutes where I described everything going on. Thankfully, she said she would sign off on two days off a month with FMLA. I felt a bit of relief. I tried to tell myself that not working twice a month, I could use those days to do the work that I wasn’t able to do, and that at least I was still employed and had healthcare and income and a permanent job. I wanted to do the work, I just didn’t have enough time to do my work and take care of my health. I thought this might help.

Then I met with my social worker on Zoom. That was annoying. The first session was 25 minute sessions. We didn’t even finish me explaining the problem I was seeking support on and had to schedule another one for Saturday morning. She checked me off for all kinds of mental health disorders: OCD, Panic, anxiety, depression, PTSD. It felt pointless though, what I needed was my workload to be more reasonable, and the doctor or the social worker could not do that for me, only my administrators and union rep.

At the start of the week fore the optional PD week, I messaged the administrator who had said they were hiring a bunch of new teachers and so my schedule may be changing and emailed my union rep explaining the situation. My union rep said he didn’t think I should file grievance or use my seniority because that would really fuck over the other teacher, and that he was sorry I was having health issues but there was nothing he could do. Essentially he told me the only choices I had was to suck it up and teach the schedule (and then either transfer or pull rank or file grievance during the legal window that I had missed because I did not understand the contract – is that the job of the UTLA rep? I literally pay money for him and he gets a free period every day to do the work, like what was he doing?!?) or resign now.

I decided to read the contract and at least try to advocate for myself even though the union rep had not been supportive before completely giving up. My mom and I put together an email stating that my role teaching ELD, ELA, and in the full-inclusion academy program with special education co-teachers was not equitable or fair in the division of labor, required too many meetings as mandated in the contract.

I cc’d the union rep, whose idea of support was to highlighted all the flaws in my argument.

The week of the optional PD, I had heard nothing from my administrators still. I questioned whether I should even bother going to those trainings since they were optional, and were often a waste of time. Also my negativity towards them was so high. I felt so taken advantage of and not supported. I didn’t want to go back there and see these people when nothing had been resolved or changed, and thus nothing was going to be improved.

I bribed myself to go. Think about the money. What are you going to do instead? Work at your lesson plans at home unpaid? When these people are the ones forcing you to do this workload. Take the money. Suck it up. And so I did. I radiated anger and resentment, and tried to stay small and quiet and avoid talking to people.

Finally, the admin emailed me and asked me to “volunteer” an hour after school to talk about my line. At the meeting, three of the five administrators were there, minus the principal. The three women. They sat me down and tried to kindly explain to me that it wasn’t personal, this was the system. There was nothing they could do. That teaching three preps was typical in a high school this big, and that this would be my line for as long as I taught at Emily Dickinson High School. All the while, the Head of Department was teaching 5 periods of AP Lang and another teacher was teaching 5 periods of 9th grade. And how I never got to have the two curriculum prep load that is literally in the contract, thus making this workload unreasonable. It was me. My situation was normal, it was me who wasn’t the right fit.

Was this really true? Was there really nothing they could do? I chose to believe it was the system and that we were on the same side with a mutual enemy. I wish in that moment they had told me, if this doesn’t feel doable, here’s how you could transfer right now, but they didn’t.

Instead, I was put in an either/or. Either resign as a teacher or do this workload.

I told them, “Thank you for meeting with me and explaining the situation. I understand it isn’t personal, and that I will consider your advise regarding next year.”

Then I got to my car and cried. I cried to my parents, I cried to my sister, I cried to my boyfriend. But they didn’t really understand.

My Dad quoted Ted Lasso and said, “You just have to believe that this year is going to be better.”

“But I don’t. Why would it! It’s been three years of this. Why would it be any different?”

“You just have to believe, say it, I believe this year is going to be a better year.

“I believe this year is going to be a better year.”

My boyfriend said, “Sammy. My mentor says that sometimes we get stuck worshipping the problem instead of doing the work. Stop fixating on the problem and do the work.”

Couldn’t he see – I had been doing the work! I had been doing the work for four fucking years!! And it wasn’t getting easier or better. Instead, I was getting blamed and shamed for not having improved more over the last four years. Instead my health was declining and I was starting to hate myself and hate my life. My light was being smothered.

I was in a situation designed for failure, and even though I kept trying to explain that to people, they refused to listen and decided to blame me. Only my therapist (a burnt out ELA teacher who had changed to being a therapist) and other English teachers understood. That’s a crazy workload, they said. That’s not reasonable, they said. But it didn’t matter what we thought, we didn’t have the power or authority to control the system.

I kept trying to explain the structural challenges to my boyfriend, and how one day in ten years, I would be in a position of power to prevent new teachers from having the same nightmare experience I had to go through.

He said that I was idealistic and that I needed to focus on the problem, and just do the lesson planning and work Saturday night even though I had already been working all week and I still didn’t get everything done that I wanted to, and that this was the problem. It had been like this for three years, and it was only getting worse.

Either choice I made was a resignation. I either resigned to what they wanted me to do and taught the workload or I resigned and quit my job.

Given that it was a few days before school, and that my whole family and boyfriend thought that I was just being emotional and that this year would be better, given that I wasn’t in my Masters any more and that I was no longer working with Mr. Great, I decided to try to believe that this year would be better.

This year will be better. I believe this year will be better.

Just one more year, I told myself. This year we will have completed our four years and graduate. Now I know all about the contract and I have made a few friends. Next year, I will be able to get myself a reasonable workload. I will do the best I can with the three curriculums, stay quiet, and transfer at the end of the year. Plus, I had just signed a new lease and hadn’t saved enough money to quit immediately. I’ll focus on having fun outside of school and getting balance.

Plus, now you’ll have the money to fly to Scotland for my friend’s wedding in October. I had missed so many weddings because of work, this time I wouldn’t. I’d call in sick and use my money, because I had money and could afford it because I didn’t quit. I bribed myself.

I would be miserable for one more year, and then it would be better.

At the same time, I knew deeply that I hated my life and I hated who I had become to be a teacher. I hated that I was complaining all the time and crying all the time and how angry and resentful and bitter I was.

I felt jealous of people who were parents. Here I was sacrificing my health and happiness and ability to nurture my own family one day to teach your kids, and nobody even cared. They didn’t thank me. They just told me that I didn’t care enough about the kids; that I wasn’t working hard enough; and that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher.

While suffering from health (hernias, cancer, cysts, back pain) and relationship (divorces, cheating, death) issues themselves. To me, they were just as miserable as me, but they had resigned to their misery and now were weaponizing it against hopeful young people.

On the first day of school, I took a quiz called  “How Burned Out Are You? A Scale for Teachers” by Kevin Leichtman, and realized I was somewhere between a three and a four.

Stage 1: Passionate but Overwhelmed

• Low feelings of self-efficacy (I’m not good enough)
• Negative coping strategies (addictions, unhealthy habits)
• Limited pursuit of passions or hobbies outside of work

Stage 2: Overwhelmed and becoming cynical

• High levels of stress
• quick to become irritated (at work and home)
• Bringing work home and not completing it
• Feeling like there is never enough time for friends or family
• Guilt from not doing enough for students

Stage 3: Cynical and approaching exhaustion

• Isolation (in and out of work)
• Feelings of paranoia (every school policy, program, etc., is out to get you and make your teaching day harder)
• Constant feeling that school goals and your goals will not be met
• A refusal to engage in professional development

Stage 4: Complete exhaustion and breakdown

• Feelings of exhaustion every day (including holidays and summer)
• Drastic increase in sick days/ mental health days
• Lack of optimism for career and personal life
• Unusually frequent physical symptoms (colds/flus, stress-related illnesses, hospitalizations).

I knew then, in order to get through this year I had to resign to my misery, too. I would do what needed to be done to get to the end of the year. I told myself, this will be your last year at this school! You might even leave teaching all together. I would be working with the 9th graders from Year 1. It would be beautiful to see them grow up and be at their graduation.

This is your last year as a teacher ever! If this was the rest of my life, then doing something meaningful had a price that was too high for me, and I’d go back to marketing. Or I’d started to fantasize about becoming a yoga teacher and working at Erewhon. (FYI – as I was editing this, I applied to three jobs at Erewhon! LOL).

And so I set off to make the most of the year.

I did what I had been doing for the last three years that had allowed me to survive. I woke at 6am and started working at 7am – 1.5 hours before school started. I prepared the lessons for all my classes, and I led the conversations with my two co-teachers and sent the meeting agendas every week.

Things were going better. I was much more organized, I knew what I was doing. Mrs. Mom and Ms. Please and I were working well. I was disappointed that I only had two out of my original 30 9th grade students in my ELA class, but alas. It was what it was.

And then, as the first grading period arrived, I realized I had a lot of things to grade. I began to panic, so I used my FMLA and called in sick for Monday. Then I worked and graded everything Saturday, Sunday, and Monday working for ten hours a day. By the Monday, I had everything graded and ready for the week, and the lesson plans for all my classes until Friday.

But the week after that, still not ready. I was exhausted, and yet, it still was not enough. I was surviving week to week, but it was exhausting and I was trapped in the yellow zone. I was frustrated and not sleeping well.

But I kept going, kept doing the work needed to keep up with the demands of my co-teachers, the students, administrators, and their parents.

I became in a grumpy mood and would complain and vent all the time. I became embarrassed to talk openly with my teacher friend because I hated how negative I was. I tried to share and get support from my boyfriend, but he would react negatively and pull away and I felt ashamed and judged, so I stopped sharing with him.

I couldn’t vent to my co-teachers because they were equally as overwhelmed as I was and just trying to survive. Mrs. Mom had a crazy schedule with so many co-teachers, on top of being a mom of two kids and a wife! I had asked if she wanted to meet each week to go over the plans and collaborate, but she said she was too busy, so we didn’t schedule a time-slot in.

One of my co-teachers had a really challenging relationship with the student she was assigned to support, and had been threatened by the student in a recent IEP. She said after that she did not want to talk to the student, even though that was her job to prompt the student because the student had been so hostile and disrespectful towards her. Thus, instead of prompting the student to do her work, she would prompt me to prompt the student. While I wanted to help, I found this frustrating because I was literally planning, teaching, and grading everything for all of the students in the entire class and she was only responsible for supporting three of the students, and two of them didn’t need support. The one who did she didn’t work well with, but was forced to work with.

It was a horrible situation for everyone, and I tried to support her, but I was already overwhelmed with my own workload. I didn’t know how best to talk to her about the situation, especially because I hadn’t been in the IEP, and also she was a married woman with two kids and a Masters who was 15 years older than who I respected a lot and looked up to. I didn’t feel I had the authority to speak back to her.

It became clear to me that what happened last year was happening again. I worried that if I did not speak to admin, that Mrs. Mom would do what Mr. Great did and start to complain about me to all the other special education teachers and eventually administration, and that I would be written up again.

I decided to speak to the coach I had been assigned about the situation and seek her advise or some kind of intervention now in the Fall semester of week 6 instead in Spring semester of week 15.

I described the situation to my coach, the overwhelm from the amount of the work from the three preps was causing stress on my relationships again and I didn’t know what to do; I kept being left out of IEPs and important conversations about academy students that are in my class that were causing me to do more work, and I wasn’t sure what was the role of the ELA teacher vs the special education teacher in the co-teacher relationship.

The coach validated me and then said she wasn’t sure what she could do and would get back to me. I submitted my five week grades on time.

After the ten straight days of 10 hour days grading and planning to meet the five week grade deadline, I panicked and started to cry. I realized this was too much. If I continued like this, things would not be good. I decided to just lower the expectations and quality of teaching. I would just be a bad teacher, it didn’t have to be amazing or even good, I just needed to survive.

I decided to have the students work on iReady and IXL practice for 30 minutes twice a week and then made a weekly homework time on Fridays, thus I would have way less to plan. Even though the kids constantly complained about the apps and most of the time clicked random buttons, and I myself saw no improvement from using them – the district had paid for them and praised teachers who used them in class. One year they even mandated that all students use the apps for an hour a week, and then tracked the usage.

I also added an independent reading book so they would have to do that for 30 minutes twice a week, and then I decided to have the students watch a movie in two of my classes while I planned the rest of the semester, to give myself some space to do the work at work instead of cutting into my personal life and health.

I knew the curriculum was boring and could be better, but I just needed to survive. I didn’t care anymore. I just needed to get to the end of the school year.

On top of my planning, teaching, grading and managing my relationships with colleagues, the school district had passed a policy that phones needed to be off and away all day, or else! While we teachers had been trying to keep kids off their phones in class for years already, now it was an official policy. This meant that if teachers did not successfully keep kids off their phones, we were the ones at fault and could be punished for not fulfilling our jobs. They pitched it as now the administrators had to enforce the policies, and they had invested in tools to help students keep their phones away, but that was not what happened in practice.

Given that I was already overwhelmed and I myself had grown up with a phone and would often keep it on my desk and didn’t think that my phone prevented me from learning. If anything, all the teachers and admin used text and calls to cell-phones to communicate with each other, so like – we had to use our phones, so why would it make sense that they couldn’t use their phones? Thus, I was pretty lax about the cell phones.

Mrs. Mom didn’t like that and wanted me to be more on top of it. After class one day during Week 7, she said, “Ms. Ginsberg, you need to be on the students more especially my one student with the phone. This is a school policy and you are not implementing it.”

This comment had crossed my line, and I lost it. “”I literally woke up at 6am this morning to make the lesson I taught today because I am so far behind planning and grading my other five classes. I am really overwhelmed and I am having to prepare the lessons day by day, we have the field trip to the Geffen so trying to organize all of that for two different teachers, so I don’t really care about the phones. If you want to enforce the phone policy better, you can, but I am just trying to get through the day.”

I felt so much embarrassment and shame. I couldn’t believe I had lost my temper and been so irritable. And yet, I was so angry. I was doing everything. After she left my classroom, I cried, and then I kept working.

I got through the day. When I got home, I sat on the couch and watched Desperate Housewives with olives and pickles and nuts (my favorite post-wrok Sammy Snack). I was so tired. I never wanted to leave the couch. I just wanted to be a stay at home wife and never leave the house. I was done. That was my new fantasy.

That night my boyfriend and I had planned a fun date night, to see Dodgers and Orioles game because he was a big fan. Like a really big fan. He had a long day at work too, and even had to take a phone call while we were together. I was understanding. I was just glad we were going out to do something fun together. I was tired, but I felt like I had been so negative recently and doing something fun that he loved would be good, and make me feel like a better girlfriend.

Before we left, he told me that his Dad was visiting, and that he wanted us to have dinner together. I was thrilled! While my boyfriend had been in six boyfriend/girlfriend relationships and was 32, no one had ever met his parents. I was going to be the first one! This meant something, and I was so excited.

Then we left for the baseball game. It was a fun evening, but we got back late and didn’t sleep well.

The next morning, I woke as usual at 6am to go to work. I felt exhausted but pushed through. I did what I needed to get through the day, and then drove home. While driving back, I felt so tired and my eyes kept closing. I had to blast the music and fiddle with my phone for stimulation. I told myself, “I’m gonna take a nap when I get home. Almost there.”

Finally I got off the freeway and was coming up Hollywood Blvd (a straight shot) passing a nail salon that I was curios about, so I searched it quickly while driving, to keep me wake, to my house, when – crack! A car pulled out from being parallel parked on Hollywood Blvd and hit me from the side. I was stunned.

I pulled over, and got out. I wasn’t sure whose fault it was since I had been distracted, but also it was a straight shot and I was simply driving in my lane. Perhaps I could have noticed and paused for him, but I had missed his signal. Ugh, I was overwhelmed.

“What do you want to do about it?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Me too.”

And so we both drove away.

I got home, and climbed into bed. After my nap, I crawled downstairs to watch Desperate Housewives. I watched episode after episode, not telling anyone about what happened, and then went to bed.

The next day at work, it was clear things were not going well. I googled Burnt Out teachers LA online, and found nothing. Then I found this Burnt In Teacher Program, an online course by an elementary school teacher in like Indiana or something. It was $99 so I bought it. I knew the problem was teacher burn out, this woman and this course must know the solution. So I bought it. And started watching the videos.

On the Friday, as usual, I went to yoga and then had dinner with my boyfriend. At dinner I shared about the car accident. He was shocked, and concerned that I hadn’t told him sooner. I said, “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to accept that my tiredness is a real problem, and that I have to do something about it. I don’t want to see you less or not have sleepovers during the week to get my work done, but you living in Venice and me in Los Feliz, with mostly me driving to your house isn’t working.”

I had already sacrificed so much for this job, and I wasn’t even happy there. My boyfriend made me happy. I didn’t want to lose him for because of this job.

The next Tuesday (we usually hung out on Tuesdays and Fridays), my boyfriend and I planned to have dinner. The traffic took so long, and I had to eat at 5:30pm or it would affect my sleep, so I ate dinner while watching Desperate Housewives waiting for him. Immediately as he walked in, I could tell something was wrong, but I was right at the end of the episode. He waited for it to finish, and then said he wanted to talk about somethings and to go for a walk.

On the walk, he said he’d been having doubts about our relationship, and thought we might be better as friends. This conversation had been my fear. I had tried not to push him too hard and let our relationship grow at the pace he felt most comfortable with. It had been a year of dating, and we were hanging out a lot. I was about to meet his Dad in three days! I thought he might tell me that he loved me soon. I had been waiting for him to say it first, because I didn’t want to scare him away and also I was so anxious from work that the idea of not saying it back felt overwhelming, and I decided to wait until he brought it up.

I tried to fight for our relationship. I told him I thought this was a great relationship, and that this meant that I wasn’t meeting a need of his. What was that need? Maybe I could change and give it to him. He said he didn’t know.

We agreed to take space for one week, and meet the next Thursday to discuss. I had the day off Thursday, so that would give me the space to prepare for this difficult conversation.

That weekend on Sunday I ran in a half-marathon at UCLA for the Didi Hirsch Foundation about suicide awareness and prevention with my sister and family friends. I did not have dinner with my boyfriend’s Dad.

That Tuesday, I got a text from an old friend from college saying if I could jump on a call real quick. I didn’t know what it was, and it had an urgent feel about it, so I hopped on the zoom during my lunch break.

My friend was there, and then another friend. This is odd, I said. Is it my birthday or something? They said, “This is hard to share, but Daihachi passed away on Saturday, and we wanted wanted to let you know.”

It was hard to process, especially given that we were on Zoom and I was in my classroom, so I didn’t. I just put it in a box, and kept working. I didn’t tell my co-teachers because I didn’t know how they would respond. I told one of my teacher-friends, but she was having a hard time, too. North Carolina had been hit hard by the Hurricanes and her family’s house had been flooded and for 48 hours she had not known where her parents were. They were fine and had gotten out early with the dogs, but still. So scary!

I decided to not process Daihachi’s passing yet. I was taking a week off to go to my friends’ wedding in Scotland and would process there with people who knew him, too. I had two more weeks, I had seven more working days. I could do it.

On Thursday, my boyfriend and I met again, and this time we actually broke up. In the moment, I was peaceful and calm. But when I got home, I cried and cried and cried.

Then I woke up at 6am and went to work. During period 2, I got a text from my friends, “Are you coming to the funeral, it’s Wednesday next week.”

I contemplated going or not going, when this thought appeared “I refused to be deumanized by this job when my job is to raise humans.”

After class, my co-teacher came up to me and said, “So when are we meeting with the admin to talk about the phone policy?”

“I haven’t had time to message her, I’ve had a personal emergency. I’m sorry.”

She rolled her eyes and left. When I was alone, I burst into tears, uncontrollable tears and they couldn’t stop. I couldn’t do this, I hated my life.

I decided to go and ask the office manager about how to take a leave of absence, when I did – she asked why? I asked to speak privately.

We went into an office, I burst into tears sharing everything. Then she brought in an administrator, and I burst into tears again. They decided it would best if I went home for the day and that I didn’t drive myself. I called my brother and his wife came to pick me up.

I rested a bit, and then I called my psychiatrist. When I explained the situation, she gave me two weeks off for grieve response.

So I got to be human for two weeks. I flew to New York, stayed with a high school friend, attending Daihachi’s funeral. An open casket. To see my first love, my first everything in a casket dead. Who knew our lives would end up like this. When we were 19, we had so much potential, so much hope.

Then I flew to Scotland, attending the wedding of my friends Hamish and Katherine. They too had met our first year at St Andrews just like Daihachi and I, except they had stayed together and were now getting married.

The parallels of our two love stories haunts me now. Why did our stories end up so differently? Were Daihachi and I really not compatible or were we just two anxious-avoidant attached people trying to love each other but didn’t have the skills? Were Hamish and Katherine securely attached people who had learned the skills to nurture long-term, healthy relationships with themselves and others? I began to wonder.

Then I returned to Los Angeles ready to work through my challenges. I knew that things needed to change and they needed to change now. I could not be miserable one more year, I needed to be happy enough now. Not even happy, just happy enough.

My Dad consulted his HR colleague at work, and helped me write a letter to my Principal about the situation with a proposed solution. Instead of going from AP to AP to AP, I went straight to the Principal. I was done. I requested that he sign for me to transfer or for him to change my workload. I wanted two preps and one co-teacher. That I believed was reasonable and what I needed for my medical condition that had been caused by harm from work.

I went to his office and said, “Instead of talking, I would rather you read this letter and then ask me any questions you have.” He read it in front of me and was neutral and shook my hand after.

The next day he signed the letter to transfer and said that he would see what he could do about the changes.

“Only what is reasonable,” I said.

I had a hard time catching up after my two week break, and was so overwhelmed that I didn’t know what I could ask my co-teachers to do and what I needed to do. I asked for clarity and sent a form for my co-teachers to fill in as well as the AP for the Academy and Special ed. What is it you want? What are your expectations for me?

I finally was able to grade things because I’d been gone for so long, and the students’ grades plummeted. They freaked out! They started yelling and complaining about me and the teaching.

I excused myself to the bathroom and cried some more. Then I went returned to class (I had too!) and sat ay my desk until the class was over. Thankfully my other classes were going better, if not smoothly, but it was still too much.

I called in sick the next day, and then I had a doctors appointment, and then another. Then after waking up at 6am and hoping into my car, my bumper fell off. I lost it and crumbled. I called in sick, and tried to figure out how to get my bumper fixed. My mother suggested a place, so I drove over – passing Champs Charter, the school I had almost worked at- but chose Emily Dickinson High instead. They were able to fix it for only $120 (I had gone to check the price to fix the bumper prior asking $1200, since this had happened from the car accident, and then also been yanked off a few weeks before and Jiffy Lube had zip tied it on – so this was coming, but I was overwhelmed).

I went to work the next day at my usual time, but when I tried to work at 7am – I had a panic attack. When the students arrived and my colleagues were there, I performed. The minute they left, the thoughts would return, and I would start crying.

I started leaving and going to Starbucks for my conference because I couldn’t be in my classroom alone without freaking out.

I tried to work on my health after work, I had found a narrative therapist that was affordable since I had not had success with any Kaiser therapists, that I had started going to in September. Kaiser also said they could provide free therapy, so I decided to get a second one.

I also was finally called in by admin about my workers compl claim, and thus told where to go to see a Workers Comp doctor. I went immediately.

Because it was mental health, they had to refer me to a psychiatrist, which took about a month.

I had been trying to be strong and go to work, but this was a nightmare with no end date, and I didn’t know how to proceed. I was stuck. I was traumatized. I was debilitatingly overwhelmed. At that point, death was starting to seem like a relief, and so I decided, to give myself the end date I needed to feel better. I would stop going to work right now, get another doctors’ note to get medical leave from November 6th to December 17th.

I had enough sick days and half-pay days. If I resigned, as I wanted to do, I would lose all those days anyway, and my insurance, which I needed for my health issues. The best thing was to just call in sick.

Then I wouldn’t have to go back until January, and I could have time to rest, and then make a plan.

Thus from November 6th to November 21st, all I did was rest and remember all the things I loved about living and being human. Mostly I slept in my room, and went to yoga. I got the unlimited at yoga vibes and started going two times a day. I went to therapy twice a week. I enrolled in an improv class that I had been dreaming of taking since I was 18.

Before going on medical leave for the rest of the semester, I had applied for a few teaching positions to transfer to, just to see what would happen and got a few interviews. One felt so perfect. It felt kismet.

Throughout this process, while I didn’t believe that things would improve at Emily Dickinson High with this workload, I did believe that the perfect school was waiting for me, I just needed to apply.

At moments, I doubted whether transferring would solve things and that my health was so bad, that I needed to take a step down for a bit. I needed to rest and do a much easier job, to substitute teach or TA, to work at Erewhon and be a yoga teacher, and then come back the next year.

I wasn’t sure about what to do, so I went to see a psychic. She said that the universe wanted me to decide. Whatever I did would work out, but I had to choose it.

So many people had lit up about how cool the Walt Whitman School when I described it, I lit up when I described it. So I decided to listen to that. I chose it! I called the admin at the school to see how the interview went. When they said they weren’t sure, I said I’d interview a third time and go to their school.

After the third interview, I sent a postcard and a follow up email. I wanted this, I chose this. I channeled my ancestors.

It was out of my hands now! I had done what was in my control.

When they offered me the job at Walt Whitman High School, I was elated. I had solved my problem. I would finally have a more reasonable workload. It was still a lot! I would be teaching 9th, 12th, and AP Literature – but no co-teachers, and it was a bloc schedule so I would only have one or two classes a day instead of five everyday, giving me way more time to plan and prepare in the morning.

Also the school was 10 minutes from my house.

This seemed perfect, everything falling into place. I was ready for the next chapter of my life.

Except it wasn’t.