survival; surviving; survivor

It wasn't snowing a goddamned flake on my way to school this morning. The storm was in Mankato, and the familiar MPR meterologist voice said it was moving on East, moving on over to Rochester. And move it did. The windows in the classroom were white all day--all I could do was watch that shit fall--and after school I walked my 3 1/4 inch heels right on through that at least 7 inches of fucking snow, and it wrapped around my ankle and melted right on through the tights. And isn't it so odd after such a big fucking snowfall, how you get in your car and you are certain you are trapped in a tomb. You'll close the doors and they'll freeze shut, you'll start the car and instead of being able to drive forward the ground will open to darkness below you and the car will descend--slowly, of course, because that's how it works--and then close on the top and you'll be trapped forever. But it will be warm, so you'll kind of like it at first. Until you run out of air.

The day ended today, and I was locked out of my office; I ran around to find my way back in for awhile, graded some papers (I think I graded a total of 160-some papers today from 9:30 to 3:30--not bad, considering I was teaching 4 of those hours at school.) And I finished looking at that last student "I'd Rather" sonnet and stared into space for awhile. After a minute of staring, I realized I was wasting time--60 more giant projects to grade tonight, woot, and then I went up to grab my coat and head out into the snow/car tomb.

But then something happened. I felt like I had dry heaves, but my stomach wasn't sick-feeling--my body jerked a couple of times--and that was it--I burst into tears and just openly wept for a good 10 minutes straight. I had to run to my desk chair to catch myself from falling to the ground to weep. Rich, heavy sobs, enough tears to Christen the desk calendar on my desk, snot and sniffling and red eyes. The whole bit. How odd what a physical reaction these tears were--just like your body throws up to reject what you've eaten. I dry heaved tears, and then I fucking "threw up" everywhere.

It felt good, like throwing up feels good, but of course it still left me with a taste in my mouth. And after crying you don't get to say Yeah, I threw up in your secret way of telling people you're really sick. I can't convince people of my mental state by saying yeah, I cry-barfed in my office yesterday. Yeah, it's that bad.

Ha. Cry-barfed. Feel free to use that. Weep-puked. Sob-hurled.

Two quizzes went poorly today. Meaning: I didn't prepare them good enough. I didn't cover the material to the best of my potential, didn't convey it in the most effective way. I threw a shitload of terms at the freshman on Friday and expected them to know the terms. 13 in one day? Nice, Jean. That's really practical. Of course, on Sunday, in the 6th hour of your 8 hours at school Mr. O came in to do some work and said, so, what would you say about that vocabulary student-presentation you did on Friday?

Uh, well, Mr. O, it sucked some big ass.

So what would you change about it?

Well. Pretty much everything. Yup.

Then I stayed at school for another couple of hours, and then I came home and did work for another four, and then I thought that I sealed Sunday with a nice sense of relief and finality, and then I got 120 papers from the freshman today, and then the quiz sucked, and then the 11th grade quiz really fucking sucked, and then I let the student-teacher helper grade the quiz for me, and then I realized that so many of the answers were objective that I'd pretty much have to grade it myself--no fault of hers, of course!--and then I realized that I'd have to do that in my prep hours tomorrow, meaning that all of my planning needs to happen tonight, but I also have 60 huge projects to grade, and I might explode, or I might cry-barf again, but my body knows there is no time for this. There was no time for the first cry-barf. That was 10 minutes. That was 2 projects. Jesus Christ.

I talked to Kris, who so kindly returned my venting phone call today, thank God. And the miserable drive home to Elgin was a relief even though the roads were a slick mess, because I could concentrate on not-dying instead of how much I suck ass in the classroom.

To Kris, I said: I just know that our mentor teachers were told "let them make mistakes--you have to let them make mistakes" and it pisses me off. I haven't not-failed at anything for the last 3 weeks.

I know, she said.

I should shovel the driveway, because it is the only way I will get out tomorrow, but my bruised tailbone and a shovelfull of snow do not make good companions. I'm a piece of shit for making James do it, and I'm sure he's really regretting not actually fixing the snowblower. Sigh.

Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh. I suppose if he gets home after 10:00 tonight, I'll have to go do it.

I know my blogs for the last couple of days--weeks--months? have been horribly cynical. It's hard not to be this way--not about teaching--I love teaching, still. But I have never, ever, ever, so consistently failed at anything in my life. And I am not good at failing. Well, I'm okay at failing the first time, and then picking myself up, then putting extra and extra hours into it the next time--but in this--in high school, in this program--extra hours do not equal extra success. Or, is it that I'm exhausting my hours, and would have to physically stop sleep to literally work on something for those extra hours to find success? Also, I like to procrastinate, which is fine on your own watch. But now I'm working on my students' watch. On Mr. O's watch. Now I'm writing shit in his gradebook and fucking it up and driving him crazy.

I want so fucking bad to be good at this. I don't think I've ever wanted something more, and I don't think I've ever tried so hard for something that I haven't yet gotten. How else would my body physically weep when my mind didn't even take the time to stop and think about how much I needed it.