Stress Hangover / I want my life back.

The class I just taught was a disaster. I'm sitting here at my desk, counting the minutes until I can leave for the day and escape to the sweet oblivion of my bed. 39 minutes until crisp sheets, PJ pants, lemon seltzer and Ice-T's sarcastic quips about the latest murder-rapist to terrorize the streets of New York City. 38 minutes until fuzzy socks, cool air, the evening stretched lazily in front of me in that special way that only Thursday evenings before Friday holidays can (Sidenote: Thursday evening is more glorious when there's no work Friday. Fact). 38 minutes until I start my usual weekend dance of trying to shove the stress of the work week out of my head for long enough to enjoy the 2 days off. 37 minutes until I can shut my eyes and try to sleep and probably fail because there's too much in my mind but somehow trying unsuccessfully to sleep beats purposely being awake.

When I started student teaching and grad school, my mom stopped incessantly yelling about my terrible sleep schedule. At first I didn't know how to respond. No one yelled at me to get up at a reasonable hour on Saturday. No one cared if I slept until 4, which I routinely did. No one screamed at me when I was going to be late for teaching. Instead, I woke up to hot coffee being poured into my mouth and a warm "Morning honey!" When I finally confronted her, she said, "Honey, you're working extremely hard. I can't imagine taking on that courseload while teaching all day. If you need to sleep 20 hours a night, by all means do it. In high school, you were just lazy. Now, you deserve those 20 hours." 

I took this to heart and I'm glad I did. It's so easy to feel guilty for the time it takes to recover from teaching, especially in a tough school system with many troubled students. Even the greatest teachers -- you know, the annoying ones who seem to have perfect systems in place for discipline and instruction that promote student accountability, consistency, inquiry, and growth -- come home and sit on the couch for awhile to decompress. Trust me. I've asked them. I'm not saying I'm thrilled about it. I would love to be able to leave work and DO things for the several hours until I go to sleep. I would love to teach summer school if I weren't so destroyed from the school year. I would love to have real hobbies that require regular time commitments and friends I see more than once every other month when I don't bail because I'm too tired or upset. I would love it. But I've come to terms with it. I no longer apologize for my SVU binges, or clicking DECLINE on 99% of the weeknight facebook event invitations that come my way. I'm not happy about it, but I spend enough time feeling guilty about the fact that I could have done this or that better at my job. I'm not going to feel guilty for how I recover from that job. 

But this year has not been typical. Nothing about it has made sense. And somewhere in the last few months I began to wonder if things are getting worse. Somewhere in the last few months I began to think maybe I should replace "well-adjusted" with "in denial" when describing how I deal with all this stress. 

Did I always take things so personally? Did I always get this destroyed? It's hard to remember. This year has been terrible, worse than other years by far, but my reactions have been astronomically more severe. My first year was pretty bad. I taught 7 different classes at one point (non-teachers: I mean I had to prepare 7 different lessons each day). My second year (or was it the third?) I had those 8th graders in the morning that gave me HELL, and then there was the year I had to plan different lessons for each 7th grade class because they were each dysfunctional in completely different ways. Last year was awful, the worst I thought I'd ever deal with, until this year happened. I was upset frequently. I slept a lot. But I wasn't this unhappy this often for this long. Lately it seems like every little thing sets me off, and the panic and anger and pain that set in last for longer.

I used to go weeks without going out on the weekends. I used to sleep 20 hours a day. But somehow I remember it being a choice I made, which implies that I could have made a different one. Last weekend, for the first time in 2 months, I went out on Saturday night. I karaoked with my friends and for awhile, it was actually fun. I didn't drink, because I can't control my emotions sober let alone drunk, but I love being with my friends so I still enjoyed myself. Sort of. Mostly. For awhile. I thought if I looked the part, dressed the part and acted the part, it would be enough. As it turns out, pretending to be okay isn't the same thing as being okay, so I ran out of Hong Kong in Faneuil Hall crying.

There you have it. There's no set of circumstances that could allow me to go out and for ONE NIGHT not fall apart. I can't be normal. It's not an option for me anymore. I'm at home alone every weekend night watching TV and reading because I HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE, unless I want to make crying while sober in crowded bars a habit. 

Remember when you realized you couldn't drink like you used to? It happens to all of us at different times. I was about 25. Losing 30 pounds and being 3 years out of college combined was what did it for me. Suddenly, I could count the times I HADN'T gotten wasted, instead of the times I had. Suddenly, I was hungover until 7 o'clock at night. I started losing Saturdays and Sundays. Eventually I realized why: My tolerance had gone down. My body chemistry had changed. My outlook was the only thing that hadn't shifted. 

That's how work feels. The stress from one tough class leaks into another. The stress from one terrible day is still there the next morning. I run and sleep and box and watch SVU and I still can't get away from it. The stress is like a hangover that never ends. You can reevaluate the way your body handles alcohol, and change your habits accordingly. You can drink more water, drink less beer, get more sleep, and be hungover less frequently. But what can you do if your job is what's making you sick? What do you do if your life is one neverending migraine headache,  your mornings are spent bent over the toilet, you've been sick with one thing or another since October, and your doctors tell you the stress is causing your body's systems to malfunction? What do you do when you panic the second things seem calm because it's so unfamiliar that you're unprepared? What do you do when your body rejects the place you have chosen to do the job you love more than anyone has any right to love a given job? What do you tell the ER doctors when you're throwing up blood for no reason? What do you do when what's wrong with you doesn't show up on blood tests, and there's no medicine to make you better?


I don't want this anymore. 

This one time, in the hospital...

Rather than tell everyone what happened a million different times, I'll just sum it up here:

WARNING: ANNIE, DO NOT READ THIS. IT IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH OF STOMACH. CALL ME, AND I WILL TELL YOU AN EDITED VERSION. I REPEAT, ANNIE, DO NOT READ THIS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I was teaching my sixth graders and suddenly my stomach started burning. By the end of the day, I was puking in the parking lot. I don't really know how to describe it... "churning" is the word that comes to mind, though I'm not sure why. I just kept on hurling, it wouldn't stop. The worst thing was, I ate my mom's lasagna for lunch, so clearly it wasn't food poisoning, because my mom's a better cook than half the people on Food Network.

The worst part, by far, was my last chunk of teaching. Literary magazine and running are the only classes I teach where there's no one else near me, so I was just terrified that if I needed to puke, I'd have to throw up in my mouth and slyly spit it into the trash can. I couldn't leave the students, clearly.

Oh God and running? I gave them a time trial, and when they asked why I wasn't running, I said I was analyzing their gaits. True, if by analyzing gaits I actually meant trying not to ralph all over the gym floor.

Anyway, I called my doctor when it hadn't stopped after 5 hours, and she said to call an ambulance. Of course, I thought that was ridiculous. I mean, there were probably people who actually needed ambulances, so clearly I wasn't going to occupy one. I figured I'd tough it up.

Then came the blood.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure, throwing up blood is probably one of the scariest things in the world, and I've been through some scary shit. I will now take the time to make a list of the few things that are scarier than throwing up blood:

1. bleeding out your ears (which means you probably have a spinal or brain injury)
2. the scene in the Jack@ss movie when they give themselves papercuts between their fingers and toes
3. moldy cheese
4. being completely irrelevant

Anyway, when that happened, I made a mental note to buy extra whitening toothpaste and called a cab. Interesting note: cabs aren't supposed to take you to the hospital if you're sick, because of liability, I assume. When I requested to have a cab sent to my apartment to take me to the Emergency Room of Beth Israel, the man was skeptical. I insisted that I was visiting my sister (I don't have a sister), and to my surprise, he actually asked me questions!

What do you do when that happens?

Wait a second, on what planet does that ACTUALLY HAPPEN?

Well, in my case, it was a Tuesday, so with House MD still fresh in my mind, I responded, "Lupus." Questioning ceased.

Looking back, I must have looked like a wreck. I wore pajamas, because I figured if I wore clothes I'd just have to take them off anyway, and before I could fill out paperwork I had already thrown up three more times. I was given a complimentary bucket. I still have it. I did not actually throw up in the bucket. I missed. Oops.

So, the ER is actually much nicer than it appears on TV, although the doctors weren't nearly as attractive. I got hooked up to IVs and given lots of fluids (weird word, fluids), anti-nausea meds, and they stuck weird things all over me and put me in machines and then, I realized the unthinkable.

In real life, McDreamy has grey hair.

So sad.

But still so hot.

I will say one thing though. Asking the doctors all about their love lives is a great way to pass the time. That is one of the true elements of Grey's Anatomy.

Oh God, and my mother was of course, going nuts. I told them not to come, because I was fine, and to their credit, they did wait about three hours before my mother decided that since she was going to be on the phone with me every ten minutes anyway, she may as well drive down there.

I would have been fine, but thanks guys. Your witty banter helped considerably. And walking the mile to the 24-hour pharmacy in Copley (since I got out at like, 2) would've sucked.

So, hopefully at some point in my life, I will get an iron-clad immune system and avoid situations like these. They always say the first few years of teaching are the hardest on your body, and I'm now positive that's true. No hard feelings, students. It was pretty clear where the point of origin of the illness was (the name is too confusing to remember. Gastronanahanawhatawhosasomething). I compared IV bruises and tape marks with my students two days later, and my God, the only thing worse than throwing up blood as an adult has got to be throwing up blood as a twelve-year-old. My poor girls. And maybe boys, too, who knows who's caught it by now.

So, I came out of the situation bruised and with a free bucket. And two fewer sick days. Oh well. I guess they exist for a reason.

So, I should really stop starting every paragraph with "so," because that's redundant and unnecessary.

Loveyouall,
LW