A Confessional Window

I used to be a good friend, but then I started teaching.

Sitting on the couch, surrounded by piles of half-graded vocabulary quizzes, family fables and one big, orange cat, I remember the days when I used to answer the telephone when it rang. I used to be the friend that would talk to you at any hour, come over at any hour, ready to snuggle and talk until it was all better. Along the way, some friends grew out of my friendship, but I never grew out of theirs.

Until I started teaching.

Now, friendship only happens when it doesn't really require effort. My good friend, the Taiwanese Superhero, and I chat each day during our mutual planning, grade together occasionally after-school, and always walk out together to our cars long after the sun has gone down, rush hour forgotten. Every Friday, we suggest getting together to do a little shopping over the weekend. Every Monday, we smile at each other, knowing we were both too tired, too lazy to pick up the phone, much less leave the house.

And I see her everyday. What about my other friends?

They're out there. Especially the ones who blog. It allows us a semblance of keeping up, but without real contact.

I miss them, but I don't do anything about it. They leave messages. And then they leave more messages.

Recently, the partner of one of my close friends from college wrote me an email. Why hadn't I returned any of M's calls or emails? Did M do something? She didn't like to get involved in her partner's friendships, but she knows how important I am to M, and she just wants to see if there is anything she can do to help. M even came by the school and dropped off a little Christmas present for me, but still I didn't pick up the phone.

I'm not mad. No one did anything wrong. I swear I want my friends. But I feel like there isn't any room in my head, or my heart. I haven't even had a date with my hubby in months.

This has been one of the strangest byproducts of my new career.

Comments

[momacress]

My husband and I are both teachers. He is a fourth year English teacher, I'm currently student teaching in Social Studies. I've been on both sides of the teacher marriage and I can honestly say that it has taken four years, but I'm happy to report that its Sunday and Mr. Momacress is sitting next to me on the couch reading a Stephen King novel and drining coffee. It can happen, I promise. His mentor teacher when he was first starting out gave him a very important piece of information: The only cure for the first year is the second year. Though in our case it took about three years. But it happened.

Here's the main thing: At first in teaching you're going on pure adrenaline and fear. Fear that you aren't doing enough, fear that you're a fraud, fear that there is some student who really does need that one last comment on their paper that you were thinking of skipping. Fear that you'll be called in by administration and reprimanded. That's a lot of fear and it can mask the mental and physical fatigue. For a while. But in the end, you can only really be there for your students if you take care of your own physical, spiritual and intellectual needs. After that adrenaline rush subsides a bit, you need something else to keep you going and that something else is your *life*. Live it. If you don't, you will burn out and will not be able to be there for the students five years from now.

I know that in my case my husband being a beginning teacher almost caused us to seperate after only being married a year. He became so wrapped up in his own personal hell, there was no room for me, our marriage or our friendship. It was a shame and I'll continue to blame not him but a system that teaches us that to be a great teacher you have to sacrifice everything for your students. Which is, in a word, BS. Neither of us signed up to be a martyr. A teacher, yes. But not a martyr.