Tag Archives: fibromyalgia

leaving teaching

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Is this really some kind of coconut festooned with this joyful yet tentative message?

I am in the last week, possibly the very last week, probably the very last week of my schoolteaching career.  It makes me sad.  I have also started an online course for dealing with fibromyalgia.  These two things have me facing some of my sadness–that I’m kinda sick, that I’m not really a good teacher anymore, that I might become kinda poor after this, that I am standing before the unknown.  These things make me sad.  It makes me sad to think that I went into teaching to try to be, as my professor said, “an agent of change.”  And for a time I was.  I did good work.  And then came the NCLB and the high stakes standardized testing, and the distrust of creativity in the classroom, and the push to teach non-fiction rather than fiction, and, and, and mean parents, and lawyers, and program improvement and on and on.  And all of that makes me so sad I can’t help but cry.  And I think it’s very possible that the only way to move toward happiness (not that that’s even the right goal,I think it’s betterness I’m aiming for) is to acknowledge how sad this is.  And how much I wanted to help these kids and how I did for a while, and now I feel that I’ve failed.  And so I will try to walk away with my head held high and look toward betterness.

“more richly human”

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Well, it’s hit again…fibromyalgia.  my skin hurts, my joints hurt. I’m exhausted beyond reason. Did I eat the wrong thing or wear the wrong shoes?  Am I just a bad person by nature…oh wait.  That’s the wrong response.  Time to crawl into bed and take good care of myself.  No blaming.

Reading Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life:  How to Finally, Really Grow Up by James Hollis, Jungian Analyst, I find so much to help me understand myself.  One thing he says is “If our work does not support our soul, then the soul will exact its butcher’s bill elsewhere.”  Okay.  My bill is fibro.  What’s yours?  Maybe your work supports your soul?

Also, pertaining to suffering, and how I maybe shouldn’t wish it away out of hand, or reminding me of its value, he says:

In the midst of these psychological dislocations, we frequently consider ourselves victimized, and cannot imagine that there could be some enlarging purpose arising from our suffering.  Often, much later, we are able to recognize that something was moving us purposefully, initiating a new phase of our journey, though it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time.  We may grudgingly admit that even the suffering enlarged us, and made us more richly human.

So I’m going to crawl into bed and become “more richly human.”

impermanence

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our sky at night

Our sky at night is always different.  And we, as humans, are always different.  No two moments alike.  Impermanence is the name of the game.  Is that a planet in the sky?  Is it the reflection of something else?  Is it a tiny, far-away moon? What is it?  That’s another thing, we don’t always see clearly or know what it is we see.

I asked FH (Fabulous Husband) today, “Do you think I have Fibromyalgia or do you think it’s just this crappy job?…Or both?” (I have a diagnosis of FMS and I am an exhausted, overwhelmed teacher.)

Of course the answer is both.  I guess all I need to inch my way toward healing is Five Hundred pounds and a room of my own.  Not a pocket full of rocks and a river.  Well, I’m not there anyway.  I’m here.  Wondering if I really see something glowing in the distance there, in the future, like that little spot of light in the picture.  What is it?  I can’t really see it.

At least I can count on the fact that everything, including me, will change tomorrow, will in fact change by the time I finish this sentence.