Thursday, November 19, 2020

snapped

Something broke in me today. 

 Most school days, I get up with the alarm and say my prayers and then check my email before I'm really "up." I'm not exactly still in bed but I'm not out of it yet, either. 

Somehow that makes getting bad news even worse, because the opportunity to just give up and go back to sleep is so very present. Of course I didn't. 

 The bad news: one of my students tested positive for Covid. I replied to the mom's email and forwarded same to my admin, asking, "Now what?" because I had no idea. 

 Here: I sent my cohort list and my seating chart and waited to hear what was to happen. (Hours and hours later: apparently nothing, according to the form letter that arrived in my email. We'll see.) 

 I'm not worried about the student, he's already feeling much better. I'm just even more exhausted and attenuated than ever, because I spent all weekend making minerals kits for the 7th grade and electric and magnetic field testing kits for 8th grade in addition to the usual curriculum re-development and I'm just... done. 

The tank is empty. The well is dry. One more thing and I'll ... I don't know what.

 Probably? Nothing. I want to cry but think, sure, go ahead... and then, nothing. It just doesn't happen. It wouldn't help anyway. 

 This morning on my drive to school, I saw a roadkill cat on a street with a 25 mph speed limit and speed bumps every 100 yards. Could anyone explain how a cat gets hit by a car on a street like that? Certainly I can't. It looked like DD's cat and when I saw it I almost burst into tears. 

This afternoon my 7th graders were locked out of their virtual lab by I-don't-know-what monitoring software, because it's certainly not the software I have control over. Supposedly the site has been white-listed so here's hoping it works tomorrow. I have an idea for a work-around but I'm praying I won't need it. The virtual lab itself is already a work-around for the actual, in-person, hands-on lab they should be doing. Having to devise work-arounds for the work-arounds is not helping. 

I see myself existing amidst an ebb and flow of depression throughout this pandemic. This is, I think, the worst so far. I said things in a text conversation with DD this evening that I won't write here. 

I'm sneering at my own cowardice while simultaneously excusing it, redefining it as illness. I wish affirmations worked. I wish I could declare, "I'm fine, really," and have it be true. I think I will be fine, eventually, and maybe even tomorrow I'll feel better. 

I tried, today, to cling to the scraps of good news: new babies coming to friends' lives, the 8th graders' joy "testing" electric and magnetic fields with balloons and magnets, the 7th graders' "Ooo" at the fluorescent blue glow of tonic water under a UV flashlight, hardware that is, at last, more cooperative, if not perfectly so, at school. At home, a quickly prepared and delicious dinner, and sweet snuggles from the cat. 

Objectively I list all these things and see how good they are, but no matter how long I make this list, it still somehow isn't enough to budge me from the bottom of this pit. 

I suppose -- I know -- I'll just "keep doing what we do," as I said at school today. What else is there, in the face of so much uncertainty in the wider world? 

It has very little, nothing, really, to do with me, anyway. (Yet, I think to myself -- hanging there like a threat.) 

Just keep doing what I do, and eventually I'll feel better. The problem is not with the world but with my response to it. One I can control, the other I cannot.

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