SavageTimes

Disengaging from what I love doing is harder than I thought it would be.

I also truly believe I can do everything, so even while I am disengaging, there is a voice in the back of my head saying, “You didn’t have to take this time off….you could have managed.”

The last time I fully disengaged from anything of any sort, I was 20, and my boyfriend paid for my expenses that summer so I could just….read. And write. And not work for the first time since I was twelve. It was a gift of the likes that no one had ever given me before, and while he continued to give me gifts of that sort, he started to have expectations of gifts in return. His “gifts” became no longer freely given, but conditions that we swore we’d never put on each other.

But that summer….I was just free. It was scary, trusting someone to pay for your rent and your utilities and your food and your tuition. For your LIFE. Without anything expected in return. And it was weird, not having to BE anywhere that summer. Not having any expectations of me except those I put on myself. Not having to think of anything that I didn’t want to think about. Reading every book I could get my hands on in a single day and then still having time to write.

I left the “world” again when my then-husband and I moved to Seattle from Chicago, but that wasn’t quite the same. I was actively shopping for houses, and then setting up the house, and then being a stay-at-home mother. It wasn’t so much that I had “disengaged” so much as gone from being a paid Corporate Headhunter/Human Resources Administrator to an unpaid CEO of Present and Future Goals.

Since being a mother and wife, and then mother and ex-wife, and then mother and single working parent, I can’t say I’ve ever truly disengaged from….anything.

There’s a voice in my head–I call her Pompous Patty–that has, until now, not allowed me to disengage.

Last Wednesday, I left my classroom to start a four week leave that would, with Winter Break, basically be six weeks. I walked out missing “my” kids and our nerdy History fun already, but knowing this break was needed. My family and I had a fire in our house earlier that month, and then my daughter, already in precarious health due to abdominal pains in part caused by her autoimmune thyroiditis and the medication she was on (we didn’t know that then), spiraled down to a point beyond self-help, and I admitted her to the hospital.

Living in two hotels in two weeks while trying to find a rental house and driving back and forth to the city to stay with my daughter every night while teaching full time and still trying to make sure my son didn’t feel neglected or lost in the shuffle drained me of every last bit of energy I had. And that’s saying a lot, given usually when my bones feel like jelly I just need a day-long nap to restore what even I admit is sometimes a scarily boundless source of energy.

I signed my Request for Leave papers without hesitation. Even if my daughter was released from the hospital earlier than we all expected at that point, she was going to need home care. Some of her spiral had happened because she was alone so much during all the mess. And while her dad did fly up from San Francisco to help while she was in the hospital, and he did offer to stay in Seattle as long as was needed, he had just started a job he’d been wanting for years. I was here. I had leave. And I’d been selfish before when it came to my daughter: when her dad and I had first started down the path to divorce, I wasn’t there for her in the way she needed me to be. I’ve forgiven myself–I was honestly doing the best I could do; my family of origin took from me as much as they gave, and my two best friends who I would ordinarily seek support from had their own issues and wanted nothing to do with mine. I was alone, suddenly and very, very much so, and it was all I could do to NOT just run.

This was my chance to do the RIGHT thing for my daughter.  Not the thing I could make work–because, yeah, I could keep working full time and find a way to give her what she needed. I always do. But I’ve failed her in giving her what she’s WANTED.

Then my students started emailing me. They wanted to know how to get access to the textbook online for the “test” the next day. They wanted to know why they were having a test when I promised them they wouldn’t be having tests while I was out. They wanted to tell me the sub was letting so and so sit next to each other when we as a class had agreed that was a bad idea for everyone–even so and so. They wanted the sub to stop telling them what they already knew. They wanted the sub to let them teach, as we’d been doing in class lately–and they were good at, and they loved it. They just wanted me BACK.

And that voice kicked on in my head: “You could have made this work. Autumn is FIINEEEE. Liam will be home starting next week. You abandoned them. You could have made this work without hurting anyone.”

Which is a lie, and always has been a lie generated by Pompous Patty.

The problem with Pompous Patty is she doesn’t look out for ME or MY kids  She looks out for other people, because she’s super concerned with how we “look” to the world, and what people think of us. She’s pompous AND insecure. It’s annoying.

She was there when I disengaged some thirty years ago and sat around all summer letting my boyfriend pay my way. She called me a whore and a loser and a lazyass. I went back to work early because I didn’t want to listen to her anymore.

She was there when I left work 19 years ago to be a mother, and she pretty much ruled me after I went off my anti-depressants through the point where I screwed up post-divorce when it comes to caring for my kids.

My regular yoga practice keeps a handle on her as do my anti-depressants, which I happily take every day now. But times like these, Pompous Patty really tries to rule me again. She always wants me to think of others before MINE.

Last night, Pompous Patty and I had a little talk. Well, I talked, and then I stuffed her in a mental box with a heavy chain lock.

I don’t need her. I don’t need to worry about the world or what it is thinking about me. I don’t need to worry about the sub–she is experienced and creative and probably cannot roll her eyes back as much as I can, because I am one with my 8th graders–they are my people, after all–but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It wouldn’t do my students any harm to have a grown up teaching them for a little while.

I need to take care of my family.