Overwhelmed, overloaded, crushed. These words describe not just the fuse that services my classroom, but my overall situation.
(It’s okay. The fuses are just in the hallway. And half the time, the teachers in the other classroom I share power with go flip it.)
Swamped. Submerged. Inundated. These words describe not just what happened to my canoe three times a couple of summers ago, but my current circumstances.
Muddling through with a brain that’s misfiring like you put diesel in the tank.
(Happily, the diesel spout is often incompatible with the mouth of your hungry unleaded car.)
(Remember when there was leaded gas? Fully disappeared for cars in the U.S. in 1996.)
I was waking up with too-sharp senses, and shaking hands.
I was spending weekends deciding how to gamble on my brain’s state: go out and risk a panic attack, or stay in and maybe be a little depressed.
Making little charts on sticky notes on my desk at work, listing the hours of the day, 1, 2, 3, 4, lunch, 5, 6, 7.
Waking Wednesdays with overwhelming dread: every Wednesday I might have a meeting that would set me off.
Or I might not.
Then a call on a Saturday. The loved one who’s been sick for five years, this is actually the last year. It’s actually the last day. Today.
Taking my guitar over to my mom’s to play some Beatles songs for her.
Going to my aunt and uncle’s to sit in a sort of cross formation, some of us on each side of the room, looking at each other, and at the exact moment I had two sisters, a mom, three uncles, and three aunts seated, we got the text.
It was over. Someone cried. I felt myself solidify, an asphalt.
Well, maybe it was over. Looking back at that text, it wasn’t totally clear….
We laughed because you have to laugh at something in death times.
When my Aunt Bettie died, years ago, I laughed because I realized the nametag they’d printed for me at the nursing home did not have my picture or name on it.
When one of my grandmas died, we laughed because the priest tried to give her a communion wafer, but she kept spitting it out.
When another grandma died, we laughed because I came in very quietly and whispered, “How’s she doing?” when she was already dead.
October is our designated death month.
I can think of four people I’ve known who died in October.
This afternoon, when a kid told me he was “so hot” he had to stand by the air conditioner instead of in his assigned seat, and another kid told me he wanted scissors because “some cunt” had put gum on the desk, I realized I was frustrated with them in a normal way.
I hadn’t been counting the hours. Health as the absence of disease. (A controversial definition.) Health as “I didn’t notice” pain was gone.
Maybe it won’t last.
The president tells the military to practice violence on citizens of our own cities.
He shares information about the conspiracy theory “medbed”: somewhere, there are beds that have incredible healing capabilities, and someone is keeping them from us.
This does make me laugh, as pictures of the president do not portray a man in great health, and if anyone could get the Most Expensive Secret Thing, why wouldn’t the president get it?
I have a new drug, buspar, and a higher dose of my good friend zoloft. Is something working? Would this fever have broken regardless? We don’t know much about brains. We just throw things at the wall.
Our students are remarkably amenable to the “two minute” rule. After being asked to do something simple and reasonable, I set the timer for two minutes. I’d say 95% of the time, the kid does what I asked.
I get it.
I’m a very rebellious spirit.
If I don’t wake up anxious, I’d likely wake up angry.
“Ms Schurman, did you see my sweatshirt?” a kid said. This kid had just refused to sit down. (I know it may sound draconian, but having kids seated is the foundation of my classroom management. It’s much harder to get in trouble when you’re sitting down. Not impossible. But harder.)
“No, I didn’t see it.” This kid had, after a minute, gone to sit down.
“When did you start working at Worlds of Fun?” I said.
“You know I been working there. For months.”
“I didn’t know that. Or I forgot. What is your job?”
“I’m a ride operator. They have a store full of all these sweaters and jackets that say Worlds of Fun, and you can take any of them, you don’t have to pay for it, but they’ll take it out of your paycheck.”
“That’s cool.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you run the Bounce-a-Roos?”
“The what?”
“The Bounce-a-Roos used to be my favorite ride. You got into the pouch of a kangaroo and bounced around.”
“Nah, we don’t got that.”
“It was a long time ago.”
I walked downstairs for the fourth time that day, to print and copy in the office. As I saw the office and descended the last set of stairs, I remembered the death. That it would never be all of us together, ever again.
There will be a new all of us, including the baby one of my cousins just have. He got the name passed down now through four generations of my family, this time as a middle name: Valentine.
Going On 