Days were you feel bruised, inside and out, for no particular reason? Where you are just edgy and raw and vulnerable to every big or little thing that does or doesn't happen without any rhyme or reason?
These days bite. And not in a good way either.
My mood matches the icky weather - overcast and drizzly.
I have been weepy twice already today and feel like another one is just teetering on the brink.
I want to run away from home.
I want to be surrounded with love and left alone all at the same time.
I want the sun to shine - inside and outside.
*sigh*
Today's Plan: Make it through the day without freaking out the family any more.
Her "placement" will be closed and the end of the day on Tuesday 2/2806.
Whatever happens to her after that will most likely remain a mystery unless she calls us herself and checks in with us. Her county agency will not update us once her placement is closed.
It is the helplessness that is hardest to cope with.
She remains in my thoughts and I hope that, wherever she might be, she is safe.
My best behaved student ran away this last weekend! She lives in a grouphome for girls and she was on an outing to San Francisco where she just bailed out of the van at a stoplight! What was she thinking?!
She is barely 14 years old!
*sigh*
Between worrying about her and Yibbyl being out of town - I just can't sleep.
A long life filled with passion and adventure and love is the ultimate good life but not everyone gets that. Some lives end much too soon and the half-lived life seems to drag on much too long.
In life we don't have to wait for the coach to send us in.
We get to be the one who decides whether we are players or bench warmers.
So I went to a meeting yesterday. It's called the "Leadership Council" and I was asked to represent the teachers and aides by becoming a member of this group a few weeks back and I have felt fairly useless because it always seemed like any ideas that we brought to the meeting would just be shot down by some other meeting of some other group. I was actually ready to go in this week and ask them to pick someone else to participate in this exercise in futility that we called a meeting each week.
As we waited for the principal to arrive we sort of began talking amongst ourselves and clear the air of some frazzled feelings that had been stirred up the week before. It became clear that some of the things we had talked about in our meeting had been presented in another meeting but with some seriously damaging changes that caused someone to feel attacked in the performance of their duties. It made us all feel sick to hear about it directly from the individual and we made a committment to be open and honest and keep all of our agendas on TOP of the table. This is exactly the kind of stuff that has made a job that I loved become more and more difficult with each day. I finally confessed to the group that if morale wasn't better by June then I didn't want to continue working for this agency any longer. I was actually crying by then but it really hurt to hear myself say that when I have been with this company for 15 years and loved my job for most of them. One of the other people in the group admitted that she felt exactly the same.
We ended up clearing so much air and saying how we really felt that we must have been revved up going in to the next phase of the meeting: redesigning our entire school behavior system so that all of the classes will have the same system and the staff won't feel so isolated and unsupported. Our meeting ended up going past the usual 60-90 minutes or so and lasted just over 4 hours. I came out of that meeting feeling more hopeful than I have felt in a very long time. We had another meeting today to introduce our idea to the school and they asked some very good questions, voiced a couple of concerns that I think we answered, and basically really seemed to receive the idea quite well. That's two hopeful days in a row!
We are having a staff BBQ and potluck as soon as the kids leave tomorrow and when the agency heard about it they kicked in and bought steaks and chicken for everyone. The executive director has said that he'll do the grilling for us to show his support. I am thinking that tomorrow might just be day #3 and maybe this will be a new trend!
I really, really want to stay with this company and work with these kids but I know that I have to have some JOY in my work and if backbiting, and undercutting morale issues are draining me of that then I will go somewhere else and work with kids in some other capacity.
Today's Plan: Keep the light of hope burning and find my JOY at work once again.
Work was actually good today. Thankfully. I needed a good day in a bad way.
I think the gall bladder weirdness has finally passed, too. I had a spell of nausea in the late morning but it faded. Now if I could just get my shins to quit itching, I'd be good! I think I'm allergic to something. Work! That's it. I'm allergic to work!
Oh, well, I have to work to pay the bills. I guess I'll just take a Benadryl!
I have no Yibbyl to cuddle. (He's up in Oregon for the week) Maybe I'll take two Benadryl!
Just me. Michelle. Mother of the Goobers (18 year old twin boys) and woman who loves Yibbyl (the man who lights my world). I am currently a special education teacher with a class of 10 students (all boys) in 6th and 7th grade at a small public school for students with special needs. One day I would like to actually sit down and begin to write in earnest so that I may capture the shadows of stories that frolic in the dark places in my mind and bring them into the light.
