Dear Teacher with a Heavy Heart,
I could single you out by name, but I won't. You've been through enough already.
Chances are you're not reading this anyway because when you're hurting, really hurting, everything is hard including reading. That's because reading requires thinking, and when you're hurting it feels like someone has pounded your brain with a meat mallet.
Between bouts with bone shattering grief, you try to free up mental space for simple tasks like making a pot of coffee. Only you can't remember if you even have coffee, and if you do, you've forgotten how many scoops of grounds to add or where to add them. So you don't....have coffee...which reminds you how horribly awry life is right now. On a normal day, you would've downed two cups by now, but today isn't normal. You wonder if you will ever be normal again.
If you're reading about coffee right now, you're probably not the person whose world was crushed into microscopic dust today, but maybe you were this person at some point. Better yet, maybe you know the person who's lost all the pieces to a mangled puzzle that once reflected a perfect image.
Maybe we're thinking about the same person right now or very likely we're not. That's because the "who" isn't nearly as important as the "what." Grief, sorrow, pain, suffering, loss are universal to each of us.
Like a sharp object flying through a window pane, we're never ready for the paralyzing silence of such shock.
For a teacher, deep guttural hurt like this is a dichotomous blend of fire and ice. Some days we want to scream, throw things, or hit someone. Other days we want to shut down, push others away, but being in a public role, we are never afforded the luxury of collapsing in an isolated cubicle until the storm of grief is spent.
Teaching is a communal profession that always makes us accountable to someone- many someone's to be exact. We are bombarded with "I'm sorry" statements and "Are you okay?" questions way before we are ready.
People mean well you keep reminding yourself.
It's hard to see it right now, but a good number of these people have licked the same floor of hell you have. Ask any of them, and they will tell you they survived because of the accountability of a community who wouldn't allow them to give up when they wanted to throw in the towel.
How is it possible that the very thing that hurts us the most also heals us? I'll never understand it, but fortunately, I don't have to understand a thing to know it's true.
When you're ready, maybe you'll work up the courage to allow one of these survivors to bring you a cup of coffee.
If you do, it's highly probable you'll soon be the one stirring the sugar and cream for someone else while asking, "Are you okay?"
-CDB