alreadyknewblog

My first year teaching was one of the happiest years of my life.

It was also one of the hardest.

My youngest had just been born.

I was a brand-new teacher.

I had twenty-something five-year-olds looking at me every day as though I knew exactly what I was doing.

Truthfully, I was totally making it up as I went.

But I loved every second of it.

I loved watching kids learn and explore.

I loved watching them make friends.

I loved the tiny wins that only five-year-olds celebrate with their whole being.

For the first time in a long time, I felt good at something.

Like I was doing something that really mattered. 

October arrived.

Parent-teacher conferences.

My first ones ever.

I was terrified.

Not because I didn’t know my students.

I knew them well.

I was terrified because someone was finally going to evaluate me.

Parents would sit across from me and trust me with the most important people in their lives.

I spent days preparing.

Reviewing notes.

Planning what I wanted to say.

Trying to anticipate every question.

Trying to make sure I did everything right.

The night before, I remember telling my husband how nervous I was.

I wasn’t looking for solutions.

I just wanted someone to tell me I’d do great.

That I’d worked hard.

Maybe even that he believed in me.

Instead, I woke up the next morning to text messages.

Not one or two.

A flood of messages.

Apparently, I had moved a bottle of Febreze.

He couldn’t find it before leaving for work and missed his train.

It was my fault.

I was selfish.

Inconsiderate.

Thoughtless.

The messages kept coming.

I hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet.

I was lying there on the morning of the thing I had been anxious about for weeks, reading paragraph after paragraph about what an awful person I was because I had moved a bottle of Febreze.

Looking back, the Febreze isn’t what I remember.

I remember the feeling.

The instant drop in my stomach.

The racing heart.

The calculation.

How quickly can I fix this?

How do I make him feel better before I have to walk into school?

Can I apologize enough to stop this before conferences start?

I apologized.

(of course)

I apologized for moving it.

I apologized for making him late.

I apologized for being inconsiderate.

I promised to do better.

I meant every word.

Not because I believed I was a bad person.

Because if I could make him feel better, maybe I could salvage the rest of my day.

That’s the part I didn’t understand then.

His emotions dictated mine.

If he was angry, my entire world narrowed until making him feel better became the only task that mattered.

Nothing else could begin until that fire was out.

Not my job.

Not my students.

Not the nerves and excitement I should have been feeling before meeting twenty families for the first time.

Just damage control.

Eventually I started dreading mornings.

I never knew what would be waiting on my phone.

If there was a text, there was usually a problem.

Something I had forgotten.

Something I had moved.

Something I had said.

Something I hadn’t said.

Sometimes something I hadn’t even known was important until I was already in trouble for it.

I began waking up afraid.

Not of the day.

Of a notification.

From my husband… of all people.

Looking back now, I don’t think the Febreze mattered.

It could have been anything.

The Febreze.

The milk.

The oil change.

The refrigerator.

The dishes.

There was always something.

Because there was always something, I started trying to study my mistakes.

I began saving screenshots.

Recording conversations.

Not to build some sort of case against him.

Because I honestly thought I was building one against myself.

I believed that if I reread enough text messages…

If I replayed enough conversations…

If I analyzed them carefully enough…

I would finally discover where I kept going wrong.

I thought there had to be a pattern.

There was.

It just wasn’t the one I was looking for.

For years I believed I was collecting evidence of my failures.

What I was actually collecting was evidence that I had stopped trusting my own reality.

And maybe that’s the saddest part.

Not that I moved a bottle of Febreze.

Not even that someone convinced me it was worth hours of shame.

The saddest part is that I woke up every morning believing my first job wasn’t to live my life.

It was to find out what I had done wrong while I was asleep