Today was the first real day back at work. Though I've been in and out, and working hard, hives derailed me...actual hives. Again with the Judy Blume reference (remember Otherwise Known As Sheila The Great?), but I have never seen hives, and obviously never experienced them first-hand. A bumpy rash broke out on my upper chest and on both arms; red welts (which I always spelled "weals" until I did my extensive internet research, which turned up the actual spelling "wheals") covered every available inch of my skin thereabouts and itched. Oh, did they itch. Plenty of friends' diagnoses referred to hives--"stress hives"--but I became convinced it was chicken pox or perhaps shingles, as I did have chicken pox as a child. A visit to the doctor--it's hives all righty, hives with no real cause. Doubtless it's stress. I didn't eat anything odd, and nothing's touched my skin that hasn't in the years my skin and I have coexisted. The wheals made it easy to shave off the mandatory back-to-school meeting, as did my boss's directive to work in my classroom instead. But today we had our first all-school meeting, and I wondered at myself, and my own attitude, and my sophomore slump.
Professionally, I think I'm energized and ready to tackle this year. I have so many goals, and actual strategies to work to put those goals into place. To achieve them, this year, or at least make measurable success toward planning, grading, assessing, tweaking. My classroom looks fantastic. A couple of parent volunteers sweetly cleaned all of my tables and even rearranged the books on the shelves so that they look inviting, exciting, non-traumatizing.
I was just so damn negative in the meeting. I didn't say anything, which is new and exciting for me; I just kept my trap shut and thought mean and nasty thoughts about the several people on staff that I despise. Then for a bit I'd feel guilty for despising them--how twelve-steppy is that, ripping them to shreds in my head?--but it was just so satisfying I'd go back to it almost immediately. It wasn't as if it was a BAD meeting--I've sat through enough of those at work to definitely know the difference--but it was long, and tedious, and the people I don't much like did a lot of talking, which started the whole cycle over again. I started thinking of the folks I dislike as characters from "Sex and the City": there was Charlotte, making precious moues with her mouth, and there was Miranda, who squares her shoulders and juts out her chin whenever she speaks (and, to be fair, if I had any respect for her I would prize those pugnacious qualities). There was Carrie, who moves gracefully but works against me, every time, whether consciously or not. Samantha was cut from the building last year, and I never had anything against Samantha, after all; she was an elementary teacher, and it's the middle school teachers I don't like. Naturally there are more coworkers than there are names in "Sex and the City," but I did nickname one Stanford, though our Stanford is straight as an arrow, he's also malleable and easily dismissed.
My boss-secret-friend did say, while we were throwing back secret beers at the Flying Squirrel that night, that several people on staff had directed their boundless alternative-school-directed rage at me, the new teacher, last year; and that, I clung to. Secret Friend has said a few things that I've treasured, over the past year and a half. One was in reference to the wonderful teacher I displaced, last year. "They [the students] liked Lance," she said. Lance is a tall and gorgeous half-Chinese teacher who taught my students the year before, and was, naturally, the one teacher I probably would have bonded with immediately. "They adore you." This meant so much, because I loved my students wholeheartedly and helplessly; even though they knew how much I loved them, they never took advantage of me, or at least still worked with me as much as teenagers can. To hear her admit that perhaps I was a target for the fury against the two-schools-in-one made me feel a bit better; it's too easy for me to believe that I have it coming, that I did something or many things to create the dissonance.
More, as my shrink says, will be revealed. Now, for the Labor Day holiday, I will attack my to-do list, and try my best not to smoke.
