I'm just going to hide out here for awhile

I briefly considered squeezing in a little exercise after school today, but then I stepped outside my classroom at the end of the day and surveyed the garden and courtyard, dark and slick with rain. Instead, I picked up the kids and asked them if they wanted popcorn, which I made immediately. And I'm just going to be okay with that.

On Friday evening I decided to take a Facebook break, but I haven't actually done that. I've read sporadically, but it's been enough to upset me. Look, if you're going to make blanket statements about not wanting refugees in your state, thank you very much, I challenge you to look into the eyes of a refugee child you work with every day and say it again, out loud. But! You don't work with any refugee children, do you, so it's a lot easier for you to post such things without thinking about it too much before you go on to post a recipe you found on Pinterest. (That was unnecessarily snarky, perhaps, but I am making a point, a big fat point, in my own tiny little corner of the internet.) You are perfectly comfortable. And scared; you are also scared. I understand that. But we cannot allow our fear to govern our humanity. I still deeply, passionately believe that. If I am to continue in the work that I do, I have to keep and hold a part of my twenty-two-year-old self, however insufferable she might have been.

But my point is that I am done reading on Facebook for awhile, and by "awhile" I probably mean a week, but I really do mean I'm not going to read it. I don't really believe in fancy cleanses when they pertain to food because I think we just like the word "cleanse" and don't really get much benefit out of cutting things we plan to add right back in ten days later or whatever, but occasionally I think a social media cleanse can help a great deal, even if it's just to quiet the noise in my head for a time and not walk around in this huge cloud of angry resentment directed towards people I generally like who post careless (heartless? ignorant?) things online. So I'm going to maybe write a little more here instead, because I still love to tell people what I think, and I still like to fling my tiny little thoughts out into the world, even if they just land in empty space. I'm going to resist the urge to call out to my Facebook friends, "Hey, I just wrote a blog entry!" which means the traffic here will be pretty light. I'm going to be okay with that.

And maybe, because of that, because I won't be writing with a particular audience in mind (although that's not entirely true; I always write with a particular audience in mind) I'll be okay with throwing silly little things up here, things I'd normally write on Facebook. And I'll know that it might not be my Best Work, and it might be read by three whole people. And I'm going to be okay with that, too. Maybe I'll just write things like, "There is a decided lack of brownies in my life tonight and I find that distressing." Or I might record silly conversations I have with my sophomores.

Sophomore Boy: You know what's hard? Just being shut down. Like, I try, and then I get shut down and I don't want to even try anymore.
Me: Who shut you down?
Boy: *names a girl*
Me: Hm. Are you sure she was trying to shut you down? Or is it possible she was simply politely disagreeing with you?
Boy: No, it was definitely mean. Like she thinks everything I say is just irrelevant.
Me: What did she say?
Boy: She said I was a BIG PHONY.
Me: Um, she really said that? (Note: I resisted the urge to make a comment about Catcher in the Rye.)
Boy: Okay, she didn't actually say that. BUT I KNOW SHE THOUGHT IT.

Oh, bless them.

Last night I read an article about being an HSP -- a Highly Sensitive Person. I must have heard about this at some point, because this doesn't seem like a new thing, but suddenly I found myself demanding that Matt listen while I read parts of it aloud.

"This is me, isn't it?" I said. I ticked off traits: We're going to cry when we're happy and sad and angry, because we feel deeply and react. We notice subtle changes in tone. Repetitive and loud noises are particularly distressing. We startle easily. (I wasn't sure about that one, but Matt confirmed it, and he knows me better than anyone else on the planet.) Violent movies can be incredibly distressing. We're constantly told we take things too personally. We crave deep relationships.

Matt nodded and seemed to think it was pretty accurate. Today I took the same article to a friend at work and said, "What do you think?"

He laughed when he read the bit about noticing subtle changes in tone, because I confessed that yes, if he sounds different when he sends me a text message -- more abrupt, say -- then I notice; as in, I actually spend time wondering about it.

"That is a colossal waste of time," he said, "but the part about you being overly-empathetic is very true, and I love you for that." And because I am apparently highly sensitive, I felt all warm and fuzzy over that.

(For the record, it's not all true across the board; I don't think I have a terribly difficult time making decisions, and I don't think I have a particularly low pain tolerance. But the rest felt true.)

I can think of no artful way to end this, so I'm just going to sign off now, because I have dinner to make and floors to vacuum and children to bathe and, if I can stay awake after those children are tucked in, a book to read.

I'm not doing school work tonight. And I'm going to let that be okay.