“Crawl through the space between Miss Francois’ legs!  It’s the doorway to a new world!”

So said a 1st grader in after care yesterday.  There I was, “supervising” the children (and by that I mean reading National Review Online on my phone and keeping an ear out for signs of distress), when this nugget of wisdom rang out across the room.  I was so shocked two of them had already made it from the regular old multi purpose room to the Narnia I (apparently) guard before I notices there was a train of crawling children beneath me.

And this about sums up my week.  It was really strange.  And I didn’t really know what to do with it.  Vacillating between mild depression and exhausting frustration, I just never knew where I was.  Between bouts of fevered sleep and like-pulling-teeth lessons, I seemed bombarded by internal conflicts with no clear resolution.

So while I am still mildly depressed, frustrated, conflicted, unresolved, and a bit fevered, I have to realize that at one point this week a very small person said something so unexpected to me that I am still laughing about it days later.

Can’t be a total waste.

(I year, 4 Months, and 5 Days Sober)

I gutted my closet the other night.

Now there are many bags full of clothes, shoes, purses and jewelry stacked by my door and a few lone work shirts hanging in my much more bare closet.

I just couldn’t stand it anymore.  I couldn’t stand looking at hangers packed with clothes that didn’t fit, or were too old to be descent, or I never liked in the first place but bought anyway.  I couldn’t handle the “guilt” anymore of putting on the same five outfits for work and then looking at all the clothes I never wore, feeling as if they were neglected in some way.  But mostly I just couldn’t stand that there was no space anymore.  What was the point of having all this stuff?

Sobriety takes, in the words of Mad-Eye Moody, “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” (Yes, I will quote Harry Potter whenever possible.  And it’s always possible.)  You always always have to be honest, be on the lookout for the moments when you lie to yourself or to others, where you hedge, bobbing and weaving around simple things so that you don’t have to take responsibility for them.

My closet became this physical manifestation of what I wasn’t being honest with myself about:

There is a lot of crap in my life that is getting in the way.  And it’s time for it to go.

A lot of crap like worrying about my students instead of working to better educate them.  Crap like saying I don’t have time to have a real life and then spending hours clicking through the internet.  Crap like the 5 off-brand Twinkies I ate yesterday.  Crap like creepy “though-provoking” foreign movies that don’t really have any conclusion, just end.  Crap like being more comfortable being vaguely unhappy rather than make the effort to do what will make me happy.

Moods like this, of being discontent and hemmed in, usually lead me to some rash decisions.  Like moving without having a job.  Or cutting my hair off so that my face looks even fatter.  Or seeing if I can break my record of two magnums of wine in one night.  So I guess I should look on it as progress that all I’ve done so far is remove a ton of unused clothes from my closet.  And I haven’t even bothered to take them to the donation bin yet, so I must say, I’m getting quiet lazy when it comes to my mental breakdowns.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’m growing up a little bit, and getting to a place where I realize that these feelings will pass.  That I can take a look at what might be causing those feelings, and deal with that in a slow and systematic way, instead of turing my life upside-down because I just hate everything.  It doesn’t mean that I simply let the physical and metaphorical crap stay where it is, cluttering up my existence.  My closet is a much better place now.  I can move around in it.  It doesn’t look like a cave of cotton and hangers.  I can see what I’m doing when I get dressed in the morning.  And after I drop off these bags of clothes in the donation bin I probably won’t think about any of the things I’m getting rid of.

I wonder what can go next?

(1 Year, 3 Months, 29 Days Sober)

This was a LONG week.  And in some ways a really sad week.

Sad mostly because it became clear to me just how empty and defeating my all the “happy” things I use to distract myself really are.  Sad somewhat because Friday was the first day in a year that I didn’t want to go to work simply because I didn’t want to handle it.

So, second things first.  Just over a year ago I left the worst job I will ever have.  I was an office manager for a totally crazy woman.  I mean bat-shit crazy.  Everything I did was wrong, she was super passive-aggressive, she completely hated me, anytime I asked for help she yelled at me, the patients treated me like shit and she told me that was part of my job, I worked weekends without overtime, and once when I was in a car accident out of state she made me find my own replacement to cover for me.  Just kind of a nightmare start to finish.  Previous to that I had been unemployed for about 20 months, so I was grateful to get a job in the first place, but that gratitude was cold comfort when dragging my hungover ass out of bed knowing that I would hate my day so much it would drive me right back to the wine bottle.  (In all fairness, I was an alcoholic before I started that job, it’s not a case of “if I’d never had that job I wouldn’t have become an alcoholic.”)  December 30, 2011 was my last day, and I slept for almost 24 hours out of sheer relief.

As much as my first year of teaching has been (at points) hilarious, humiliating, joyful, discouraging, confusing, disastrous, and always always exhausting, I have never wanted a day off because I was afraid of going in.  A week of escalating encounters with my problem student finally hit the fan when Thursday after dismissal she told her mother that another student pushed her down and hit her.  Her mother marched into my classroom to demand what I was going to do about this.  Immediately my bullshit meter hit red and I placated her by saying I’d speak to the teacher of the “offending” student.  In addition to all the other problems that make this student a problem, she also has repeatedly lied to me about other students’ behavior.  I informed the other teacher and we agreed on a plan to work it out the next day.  But that didn’t stop me from worrying all night.  I got very little sleep and by the time I was heading to work Friday morning I was so keyed up I started crying on the bus.  I felt lucky that I had gotten on the bus at all.  The whole time that I was showering, dressing and packing my lunch my stomach was churning, the stress and uncertainty and anger of the whole situation that has been building inside me since September making me just want to crawl back into bed and cry.  Finally admitting to myself that I am afraid to be in my classroom alone because I just don’t know when this woman is going to come storming in with the next lies she’s been fed and all her indignation over my tyranny just about pushed me over the edge to calling in sick.

But I didn’t call in sick.  I faced it.  I, with adrenaline rushing through my veins and just plain sadness pulling at the edges of my mind, went in, asked questions, and found out the facts.  She was lying.  She didn’t even deny it.  Nor did she look in anyway ashamed.  Essentially she had no recognition that lying to her mother, and her teacher, and accusing another student of harming her was wrong in any way.  She walked out of my classroom at  the end of the day with a “what’s the big deal?” look on her face.  And part of me wondered if she didn’t have to right attitude.

Even wondering if she were right was part of the primary thing that was making me sad, or why I was sad.  I’ve been trying to work on really being aware of how I spend my time, of what I am really doing with my life.  It has made me more conscious of when I’m being productive, when I’m relaxing and when I’m just fucking wasting time.  Funny how once you start looking at it it becomes terrifying just how much time you’re wasting.  And a lot of that time that I’m wasting I’m wasting trying to make myself feel better about the stresses and pains and demands of my life.  This is different than relaxing.  I’m all for relaxing, it’s totally necessary.  But there is a difference between relaxing (taking a break from work to do something I enjoy) and avoiding (doing anything to distract myself from either thinking or doing anything).  Slowly but surely it’s been creeping up on me that all my avoiding activities are hollow and unfulfilling.  And this week admitting to myself that no amount of ice cream, no trashy romance novel, no crappy TV show (different from good TV), and even no nap was really truly going to comfort me, to alleviate my distress, to give me purpose and direction, to allow me to experience the love that God has for me.  I have finally come to a point where my distraction are not distractions anymore, I can see through them, and know I won’t come out any better on the other side, so what is the point.  And this made me sad.  It made me sad to shed another illusion, to take another step away from the myopic insulation of ephemeral “comforts” and face with more honesty the unknown demands of who God wants me to be.

So I’m facing tomorrow a little more honest.  Honest that I won’t love every day of my job.  Honest that my distraction are detrimental.  Honest that I have so much farther to go.

(1 Year, 3 Months, 23 Days Sober)

I almost threw up all over my students yesterday.

I had picked up the girls from pizza-lunch, and we were going back to the classroom to quickly drop off lunch boxes, get coats, and head out for recess.  My patience was already a little tattered, but I kind of thought we could get done what needed to get done without a whole ton of ridiculousness.

I was wrong.

I ducked into the 1st and 2nd grade room to get them moving putting their coats on, and while I was absent for a mere 20 seconds one of my students decided to fill our classroom with as many burst of fruit scented body spray as she could manage.  Assaulted with the smell of Everclear and Gatorade (because let’s be honest, that is what that shit smells like), my stomach heaved, my eyes watered, my throat closed up, my head started spinning and I had to grab the wall before I was completely knocked out.  My student took my being doubled over and clutching my mouth as an endorsement of her behavior.

“Doesn’t it smell so good Miss Francois?”

“No.  It smells terrible.  Don’t do that again.”

“It smells great!!!”

Here I had to pause to bite the inside of my lip so I wouldn’t scream.  I bit it so hard it started bleeding and my mouth filled with blood.  As she jumped around proclaiming how wonderful she had made our classroom smell I tried my best to marshall my meager professionalism and line up the classes.  The other girls, seeing my obvious physical distress, followed instructions quickly, and we got outside where the clean winter air did wonders.  Wonders for my body at least, if not really my soul.

Because I didn’t really mentally recover from what shouldn’t have been too big a deal.  There were plenty of factors at play: tiredness from the week, the fact that the student in question is the one whose mother I am determined not to call Bitch-Mom, a longstanding fear I have of being physically incapacitated in a public place, three nonstop days of horrid behavior from this student and her clear disregard for the well being of others.  All of those things would have been enough to just put me off for the rest of the day, to upset me and make me wish the whole thing never happened.

But what I really couldn’t get over (and still haven’t) is that she made my classroom, the center of work that I take seriously, am very proud of, and is completely separate from my drinking life, smell like a trashy college Halloween party.  Without any warning, or need, my senses became swamped in memories of humiliating nights at Deep Ellum clubs, throwing-up off balconies (which a host of one party called “watering the bushes”), screaming fights with friends when I was too drunk to open my eyes, various suicide fantasies when I wouldn’t just pass out, and countless other dangerous/depressing events from my past that I would rather not think about.  All of a sudden things around me seemed tainted, as if all my mistakes had found a new place to take up residence.  On the odors of cheep rubbing alcohol and chemically concocted “fruits” a past I haven’t fully made peace with invaded a space where it is most unwelcome.

I’m trying not to harden my heart against this little girl, but I admit, it’s getting to the breaking point.  Watching her revel in my pain, it was impossible not to think “Thanks kid for dragging my psyche through the shit today.  Please, be proud of yourself that you more than got back at me for all those times I told you to sit up straight.  Tell your mom, she’ll get a good kick out of this.”  I can rationally remind myself that she is in no way responsible for my choices, my memories, my alcoholism, and I know completely that that is true.  But I know myself.  I know from here on every time she acts out the image of her gleeful face while I tried to stand will come to my mind and I will have to fight that much harder to be generous and forgiving.  When she needs my empathy I will have to ask for even more grace in order to give that because I will never be able to separate her future behavior from this time, when her desire for attention resulted in a confrontation with my vulnerability and shame in a place where I was unprepared.

And obviously I’m sending an email out to the parents that any body spray I find in the classroom will be immediately thrown away.

(1 Year, 3 Months, 16 Days Sober)

So I am totally used to people who know me assuming the worst about me.  I can live with that.  I’ve made horrendously public mistakes and then I talk about them for like 10 years, so I get it when family and friends are slightly skeptical of my good sense, sound judgment and prudential behavior.

They won’t be fooled again!

(Haha, that’s what they think.  Suckers.  Just wait, when your back is turned, I’ll fuck my life up again!)

But, I wonder on what basis people I’ve had very limited interaction with jump to the conclusion that I am a spectacularly worthless human being?  Who told them?

I found out today that Bitch-Mom (um, maybe I shouldn’t call her that…) called my Headmaster to report that I had let her child go hungry at lunch after I was informed that her lunch was stolen.

WHAT!

That isn’t what happened at all.  Her daughter told me that her mom forgot to pack her a lunch, there wasn’t time to call the mom and have her bring the lunch, so I ran to the store and bought my student a lunch.  She ate, it was fine.  End of story as far as I was concerned.  But apparently not.  For some reason there is an entirely different version of this story and it involves me allowing my students to steal from each other and then forcing one of them to starve.

I swear, I am not a villain in a Dickens novel.  The absurdity of it just blows my mind.  I wrote up my version of events and passed it on to my Headmaster with the oh so professional “this is your problem now” attitude.

The communication between this parent and me has never been stellar, and in the past she has addressed issues with me that I decided to deal with in a way that didn’t meet her standards.  (She complained about something ridiculous, I didn’t give in, she got even angrier.  Lather, rinse, repeat every week or so.)  So in some way I understand that she just thinks I’m an idiot and wants to go over my head.  But how can she think that I am so wantonly cruel that I would let a child go hungry?  Really?

And yes, it bugs me more than it should simply for the fact that I went out of my way to make sure that she had a proper lunch when she had told me that there was mix up at home and she didn’t have anything to eat.  I put in my time and my money so that she would be fed and happy with no embarrassment to her and no hassle to her family. So now the whole thing being misunderstood and turned back on me as if I am some sort of cartoon character of a mean schoolteacher just irks the ever living fuck out of me.

But what really am I to do?  Someone let her in on the secret that I’m not as nice as I look.

(1 Year, 3 Months, 13 Days Sober)

2012 was my first full calendar year without a drink.

That is, if I make it the next 35 minutes.

(Who am I kidding, I write so slowly, it’ll be 2 AM before I hit publish.)

I’ve been sort of hiding in my apartment the last couple days.  After a wonderful week with my family I need major decompression when I got back to Maryland.  And so I slept, read trashy novels, ate a HUGE pizza and finally today got around to showering, going to the grocery store and attacking my grading.

At no point did I make any plans to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  I’m sure if I told anyone that I was back in town an invitation would be scrounged up for a house party or some such revelry.  But I didn’t.  Going out on New Year’s Eve was always always about drinking away the shame of how I’d spent another year screwing up and how I didn’t really believe in my heart that the next year was going to be any different, despite what I tried to tell myself.  Slathered in enough makeup to make me look like a demented drag queen, tugging on an ill-fitting dress and standing around with nothing to say I would drink and smoke as much as I possibly could  simply so that I could pretend I was somewhere else.  So that I could pretend that I was someone else.  Even the years that I stayed in, to “keep myself from social anxiety and mild depression” I would stock up on cheep champagne and as the minutes ticked towards midnight the sips became slops and the next year started the same way the last had: tear stained and puke flavored.

But there aren’t any tears for 2012.  There were plenty of tears in 2012, but I have none as I look back.  No matter what happened this year, no matter what I did, I was sober the whole time.  There was no alcohol in me in 2012.  For good or for bad every second of 2012 was my own in a way that no year has been since I was 12.  And the best way I can celebrate that is to be as I intend to continue on: to plug away at my work, to try new recipes (lentil chili is cooling on my stove, waiting to go into the fridge), to call to mind my blessings rather than invent my slights, to say no to another cup of tea at 11:45 PM, and be all of myself (good and bad) without flinching.

So I wish all the fun in the world to all my friends who are out there living it up tonight. Be merry and be safe.  I hope that everyone had a pretty descent 2012.

I did.

(1 Year, 3 Months, and 11 Days Sober)