Just whine, no cheese

To quote Amy Poehler from her memoir, Yes Please: (yes, I am getting kickbacks at this point)

"I believe great people do things before they are ready."

As we jump into summer I take with me a heavy heart. I am leaving the hellhole that is my school and going to a potentially new hellhole within the district. I never even wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be a therapist. I wanted to run weird studies and collect data about human interactions and relationships. I wanted to win the lottery and become a funded humanitarian with a comfortable lifestyle. Unfortunately you can't really rock a Psychology degree. I mean you can, but it's not really recognized as a real thing by the "real world".
The next best thing was becoming a teacher at an alternative school. I showed up 10 years ago in a bathing suit for my first, real adult job interview. I was still teaching swim lessons in the summers and the then principal of my school asked if I could swing by in between lessons for an interview. I told him the state of things and he said that was fine. What he didn't mention was that there was an entire panel of people who would be interviewing me. They were NOT aware that I would be coming in a bathing suit and flip flops. Their faces said it all. I was too inexperienced to even be upset; I literally knew nothing.
I didn't prepare for the interview in the least and had never interviewed before, anywhere important. I winged it and by some crazy something, they saw something in me and I was hired. I was only an aide that next year, but I knew I would get certified and teach. I don't always brag (out loud) but I knew I was going to be good at teaching and love it simultaneously.
And that is where I've been for the past decade.

Even when I sat out a year because I was lovingly nurturing Alex as he assimilated into American culture and our family, I knew I was going back to my school the next year. I thought about it often when I locked myself into small hiding places around my house and cried in the fetal position every other day.

And I did go back, but back to something that wasn't the same. There was pure evil among us...an evil that I have never in any of my years had to deal with on a daily basis. It became more work to do the right thing than to give up and do wrong just to stay under the radar.
So...
In time, all good things come to an end and after a drama-filled two years (some of it my fault, some of it just insane) I took events as a sign from God to move on. The problem is that I am not ready to move on. I am terrified. It's like in Shawshank, when those prisoners finally got out and couldn't handle life on the outside.
I've never worked on the outside!
I was really happy working with the prisoners!

I will miss my friends. It took me about 6 years to form friendships at work, but I did and they don't know it yet, but they're stuck with me for life. I don't just make new friends. Mostly because I lack the proper skills, but also because it takes me forever to convince people that they want me around sometimes. Time will tell how long it takes for them to block me from our FB page. Sometimes I post 12 things in a sitting.
They are great people and the only reason I went to work this year from post Christmas break to the end.
There are 4 of us leaving (so far) which is a huge number for a staff of only about 15 teachers. 

Sending out all my love. Please continue all of our games, especially WDBD? I'll bring you some baked goods every now and again. I am literally 5 minutes away; It shouldn't be this sad.

Pray for me. Even though I have the confidence to know that I will be okay, I keep having visions of me hiding under my desk as 30 students run crazy around my classroom yelling and breaking things. Also of eating lunch alone in my car. Also of being filmed or recorded on someone's cell phone and getting cyber bullied on social media by a bunch of punk ass pre-teens. All of these things I never worried about before.

I came up to school to pack up my room and move out this week. I dressed comfortably in work out clothes and my Chaco sandals. One of my students completing summer school days asked, "Where you been, Ms? (I literally saw him 5 days ago) The beach?"
Obviously, when I rolled in at 10 AM dressed like that, I was previously at the beach.
My friend and I just looked at each other and laughed.

i had to talk to the custodian for 15 minutes to borrow that dolly

I helped myself not at all by listening to the throwback Thursday station on Spotify while I finished packing up. Missing my school home is one thing, but missing school AND the 90s - early 2000s is another.

sorry next teacher, you're getting nothing except a lot of junk you will never use

maybe next year I'll get a classroom where the windows actually show outside the building

Maybe I could look at the open window instead of back at the closed door. Maybe, you can shut up.

God, I'll miss this place.
Ready or not, here I come.