A Familiar Feeling

It goes bone deep. The ache. The all-too familiar whole body response to times of extreme or prolonged stress. You, too, may know the feeling. The muscle tension that rises in your traps, neck, between your shoulder blades. The ache in your lower back, the stomach pain, headache, dry eyes, malaise, and sometimes even chills. Some may mistake it for an illness, an infection, a virus. It isn’t that. This feeling is unique to itself, and one with which I have intimate knowledge.

Sometimes this dull ache is a good feeling, as strange as that sounds. It can be a feeling of relief, the post-stress/ trauma response one has when the danger is over….for now. It is a comfort, in a way. A signal to let go, hibernate, find comfort in blankets and pillows, in hammocks, sunlight, puppies. I have dealt with various individual traumas, collective traumas, and numerous severe crisis situations in my lifetime. I have alot of practice of what to do in a crisis. I become calm, and jump into action. But the post-crisis ache, as much as it can offer a sense of relief from active danger, can be a delicate time and dangerous time. A time where the seeking comfort in the pain, can lead to deep depression and anxiety if you are not careful.

This is where I find myself currently, the familiar soreness, exhaustion, the potential looming depression that comes after times of stress. Some of the stress I have experienced recently is good stress: a move, graduating with my Masters, husband finding a new job where he is happier, child about to graduate from high school. But some of it? Some of it has to do with teaching, a profession I was called to do.

Teachers are not ok. Administrators are not ok. Our children, students, are not ok.

Today, in the aftermath of yet another school shooting, I find myself in a unique place. While I am feeling that post-stress pain as the toughest year I have experienced in my 11 years of teaching closes, I am also feeling that heightened sense of awareness that comes in times of crisis, simultaneously. The pain that I experience post-crisis rolled right into another crisis. This is especially true since I had a minor tenuous situation occur in my own classroom last week, one that I realized as news poured in last night, affected me more than I thought. So the overall feeling that I am experiencing is one of profound exhaustion. One where I am hyper-aware of my surroundings, yet numb. I am experiencing a resigned acceptance that this is…. what? Reality? The job?

No. It cannot be. This cannot be our sustained reality.

Today, I experience this resigned acceptance, but I cannot survive here. Today, I nurse this mixed state of crisis and post-crisis. I wrap myself in sunlight, and fresh air, and tend to my mind and body in the attempt to heal, sweep away the jaded feelings, the depression creeping in.

I am not sure where I was going with this post when I started. There is no distinct end to this post. Honestly, it feels like the job right now. No distinct end, moving from semi-crisis to semi-crisis, to looming full-blown crisis. I don’t have anything poignant or inspirational or call to action to insert here, as much as I want to. I don’t have it to give right now.

Just know, fellow teachers, you are not alone. Reach out if you need, and care for yourself. Nurse your feelings.

And rest.