“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
It's May, and things are significantly terrible. I don't want to do this anymore.
I think I say or write or scream some version of those exact words every single May, as years of journals show. And I don't want to be the person who anticipates a month to be terrible every year, just because it's that month. There are teachers who find a way to hate every single month of the year for some reason -- the novelty of good behavior wears off in October, the holidays make everything crazy, January is a slog, February is a slog, March is a slog, April is close to the end but not close enough, and May is a flat-out horror.
But there are also reasons to love every month, and it occurs to me that each month I should really write them down. This year, a couple of my teacher friends made a point of sharing positive teaching stories throughout the month of March and I appreciated that so very much. We need more of that. Look, I don't begrudge any teacher the need to vent sometimes, but it's so easy to descend into negativity, especially when we work in a country that shows nothing but disdain for its public school teachers (not to mention its women, and I don't know if you've noticed, but America isn't a great place to be either of those). It's hard. But we also need each other, to remind ourselves why we chose this and why we love it. Why we choose to stay.
So I feel sure that there are reasons to love May, but Mama, I am struggling.
Last year, I spent May in a state of pure and intense grief; I just wasn't ready for the year to end. I was losing a class of seniors I deeply loved. A friendship that meant a great deal to me was changing irrevocably even as we both tried to pretend otherwise. I knew I would soon lose my grandmother. These things converged all at once, and I was utterly unmoored.
This year I'm struggling for different reasons. In some ways, I'm in a better place. Things feel, somehow, less fraught with such deep sadness, with the inevitability of loss. But perhaps the grief is replaced with anxiety and anger and exhaustion. Am I enough for this anymore? Was I ever? Does it mean anything, does it matter? On top of that, has anyone noticed that the United States of America is a terrifying place to live if you're not a white man? I'm scared and I'm angry, sometimes so angry I don't know how to keep breathing, much less summon enough hope and courage to walk into my classroom and give my students -- what, exactly? The big picture is unbearable. The smaller one, I remind myself, is survivable. (I think. For now.) Even so, I stumble through my days feeling totally inadequate. Two students I've loved for a long time have made no secret of the fact that they're totally done and opting for easier classes next year so this work no longer matters. And even after they lingered to apologize for being so flippant, to tell me that they respect me and it's not my class they're done with, it stings, and honestly, they're still kind of assy about it, which just serves to remind me how little it all matters to them. When I'm all out of perspective, it's hard not to take everything personally. I guess this is a side effect of loving this work, even when I Google jobs for burned-out English teachers.
And I must still believe it matters.
*
I started writing this the other night, not really sure where I was going with it -- perhaps just trusting that eventually, I'd write myself into some perspective and back into love. I guess that's one of the reasons I write here, other than that it keeps me breathing.
And then yesterday a small miracle happened. I went to work wondering why in the world I ever thought teaching would be, as Pat Conroy said, one of the finest ways to spend a human life. However, I absolutely did not have Pat Conroy on the brain when I stood in front of my junior class and tried to talk them through writing their IB Essays, something I just seriously do not actually think I'm good at right now. But! Then I saw it: one of my girls had The Prince of Tides RIGHT THERE on her desk. And my next sentence went something like this: "So remember, the rubric for the IB Essay is different from the rubric for the IB Commentary, and if you look at the example OH MY GOD THAT IS LITERALLY MY FAVORITE BOOK IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, ARE YOU READING IT?"
And she smiled at me and said, "Um, I just started it." And the class laughed, because there goes Winslow, all crazy again, but -- and I may be imagining this -- I think detected relief in their laughter, because I think they've sensed that I haven't been entirely okay lately.
I said, "MY HUSBAND WON'T EVEN READ THAT BOOK BECAUSE HE SAYS THERE'S TOO MUCH PRESSURE and he's worried about how it will affect our marriage if he doesn't love it enough. I literally cried REAL TEARS when Pat Conroy died three years ago. I wrote him a LOVE LETTER sitting in a coffee shop in Portland just weeks before he died, and I never got to send it to him."
The kids said, "What's your favorite quote?" Like some sort of test. Babies, please. I immediately rattled off three of them, including the first line of the book (which I fully intend to have tattooed on my body), and the one that always, always reminds me of the person in this world who is my truest soul-friend and fellow Conroy lover, and of course I had to tell him right away, and talking to him changed the entire tone of my week. To have someone catch the words I fling into the cosmos and respond with love and wisdom is a thing that matters.
(The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.)
I kept murmuring sentences from that book as I wandered around the room. I didn't really mean to do it out loud, but when I noticed some of the kids watching I said, "Look, I know this book more deeply than I know any book. That book went straight to my soul when I was your age, and the grip it has on my heart is fierce. So I'll share it with you, I'll give you that piece of my heart, but I can't ever teach this book."
For the rest of the period that beautiful group of kids passed that book around -- some of them even read sentences aloud -- until I was all, "Dammit, babies, you should probably work on your essay." But I think it might be a sign, right? That we can stumble on?
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