Not Having a Wonderful Day

This morning a child tried to hurt me for the second time in two weeks. Last week he dug his fingers into my hand while shaking hands (the morning handshake is a normal Montessori thing), and that's my bad hand so I ended up having to ice it and not being able to lift anything heavy all day; and this was after I'd previously and clearly warned him that I had a sensitive hand and his handshakes had to be careful. Today he 'patted me on the shoulder' so hard that my shoulder was still aching two hours later. I immediately went and told the principal, nearly crying, and the principal had a LONG chat with him then a talk with both of us and the child accepted that he'd done the wrong thing and understood why it was a problem (he's a very defiant, confused and complicated child, behind academically and socially too) so that was somewhat okay, but it didn't make me feel great.

Then my co-teacher made a mistake in dealing with a child that allowed a child to make a false accusation against her - for the second time. She went home feeling sick (and partly because the principal was concerned that the child's parents would be violent towards her), so I was left all on my own with the kids all afternoon. We had an alright afternoon, it was okay, just exhausting because I was trying to be two people and deal with twice as many questions and queries all afternoon. And I'm upset with her for being so thoughtless, furious with the parents and the trouble-making kids for putting her in that position, and generally irritated at the whole Parent vs Teacher mentality that allows children to get away with monstrous disrespect and hide behind their parents' blindness.

So I get home eventually, knowing that we have a rent inspection tomorrow. We're going to hit the dusting and mopping when my housemate gets home, which is fine, but I spent my after school time doing two loads of washing, tidying various things, moving boxes, and generally getting the house ready for cleaning. In the process I managed to cut my thumb, and seconds later (while still looking at the thing I cut my thumb on), nearly shut Jemima in a door, and did hit her around the head with it by accident. At that point Jem went under the bed to sulk and I lay down on the floor and cried like I'd wanted to since the kid hit me this morning. I still feel like howling but I managed to pull myself together and go make dinner. I still need to wash the dishes, and my housemate still isn't home so there's still the wiping and dusting and sweeping and mopping to be done together when she gets here. I'm not tired exactly, just emotionally worn out and wanting to have a really good cry, preferably not while on a floor. What a day!

On the upside, I'm getting an even better laptop than originally planned - they can't do it in purple in the time frame, so I'm getting the black one but with enhancements as compensation. I'm going to buy one of those stick-on vinyl tops, probably using one of my own photos of UWA, to customise it. It'll probably be even cooler that way than with purple, and I can change it if I get bored :D This laptop is going to be all kinds of awesome.

Addendum: the house is clean, and I'm about to have a lovely shower then an even more lovely glass of Bailey's as I settle into bed with a book. I had a chat to Mum and a long extended whinge to my housemate and I'm feeling much better now. I rather suspect there's something hormonal going on, on top of everything else!

Hatehatehatehatehateit

I'm at home on stress leave today and tomorrow, and I'm scared and angry and miserable.

Last Friday, one of my students king-hit another student while I had my back turned for a moment. I took both boys straight to the principal, told her what had happened and asked her to deal with it. Her way of "dealing" with it was to get both boys' sides of the story, then keep the offending boy in in-school suspension for a couple of hours before sending him back to me at 2pm. He wreaked complete havoc on my lesson, stirring up two other boys and causing my entire afternoon to go all to hell.

I was angry enough over this when I got in on Monday, and then I found that the principal wasn't going to be there on Monday and hadn't left any instructions or requirements for the offending boy. I resorted to the standard punishment - sitting on the bench rather than playing at recess and lunchtime. He refused to comply. Then at lunchtime three of my good girls were found out of bounds riding another child's scooter through the gardens and destroying a small tree; students who were supposed to be doing rubbish duty as a consequence for rudeness refused to comply; and at the end of lunch four boys refused to come down from the top of the play equipment having spent lunchtime throwing stuff on the top of the equipment's shade-cloth. They just laughed at all four of the staff members who told them to come down! When they did finally come down we got the mother of the worst boy (the one who hit the other child) to come and get him. I tried to get on with my lessons in the afternoon but a couple of the kids had realised that there was no higher authority in the school and no one was actually facing any major consequences (this has been a problem for a while because the principal just refuses to impose any higher-level consequences). and proceeded to riot. I got on with things as best I could before asking for help, and when the other teacher took them to buddy class I could hear her screaming at them from two classrooms away!

By the end of the day I was a crying nervous wreck and told the registrar I wasn't coming in today. I've been to the doctor today and cried at her, and I've got a certificate for today and tomorrow. My stomach is all in knots and I can't breathe properly and I'm feeling sick and strained and awful, not the least because I have to see the principal for a meeting at 8am on Thursday. I know I need to be assertive and firm and somehow MAKE her realise that while my handling of the problems might not have been the best - it is my first year of teaching after all - the heart of the problem is that she won't back us up or impose any serious consequences herself. I need to let her understand my feelings of being unsupported and out of options while not putting her on the defensive, and I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

I hate this!

I'm currently doing the only thing I can think of to make myself feel better: applying for positions in private schools. I've found three to positions to apply for and I'm going to look for more. If this principal isn't around next year it won't be so bad, but on the off-chance she will be here I don't want to be. I've had enough.

Trying to keep trying

I'm not feeling good today. I'm getting over this bug, mostly, but I still feel sort of off-colour and drained.

When I get stressed I recycle a lot of anger at the world - non-specific, undirected anger that stems from the problems and challenges of my childhood. I'm feeling a lot of pressure and anxiety at the moment with reports coming up and the financial pressures of Christmas requiring a juggling act. I'm also experiencing a lot of loneliness and dissatisfaction with being single. I know I need to make peace with that, build my own life etc but right now I'm in an I-just-don't-care-I-want-a-family state. I don't know how to deal with myself when I'm like that! I know part of it is just the virus-imposed weepiness masquerading as cluckiness, and of course parts of me are going to be reacting to the fact that so, so many of my friends are pregnant (including the announcements by two of my close friends from primary school *sigh*).

Some of the feelings are real and some are just reactions, and I do know that I need to work through the issues that make me feel that way. I need to let go of the anger at past events, and let go of the negativity that I attach to being different, stop comparing myself and just let my life be what it is, when it is. I need to put aside the frustration and just enjoy what I've got, but it's hard, and I'll admit that a part of me is resisting. The misery and depression are oh-so-familiar, and soothing in their own way. Living healthily and positively involves giving up the security blanket of depression and self-deprecation, and that's scary.

So I'm trying to just keep on trying, keep on wanting to get healthy, and not fall into my old ways. I'm trying to find some behaviour to replace sitting on the couch crying over the things I want and don't have, which doesn't involve spending a lot of money. Hmm.

Changing Hurts.

Growing pains of the soul and mind are no less painful than those of the body.

At the moment I'm digging deep into my childhood, doing the work I need to do to understand why I get pulled into negative relationships time and time again. Part of the answer is the straightforward issue of being an Aspie growing up in a neurotypical word which has given me a desperate need to belong, to be normal, to be seen as fitting in. Sticking with bananaheads because being in a grown-up relationship made me one of the "real people" is part of my problem.

But the more painful issue is one of sibling dynamics. Throughout my childhood, my brother was the one who acted up and acted out. Not that he had no reason - diagnosed with ADHD and undiagnosed with Aspergers, he didn't exactly have it easy. But his problems were so visible. He got into trouble, he had manic episodes, he broke windows, he had to change schools so many times because the staff were running out of patience with his issues. Not all the time - not every day - but he was certainly a high-maintenance child.

I was the opposite. I never acted out, and when my problems did bubble to the surface, they came in the form of hysterics and inconsolable tears. I was a withdrawn, introverted child, the polar opposite of my brother. My problems were no less severe - diagnosed ADD and undiagnosed Aspergers - but I was no trouble. My brother received the lion's share of everyone's attention, because he had to. He needed it, for sure. But I needed it too . . . and never got it. That is the great unmet need of my childhood - for someone to look past the fact that my brother was loud and I was quiet, and realise that I needed help too.

Time and time again, when my brother worked himself up into a state and started acting out, my parents would rescue him - new school, new counsellor, new hobby etc. For years and years and years I waited for my parents to rescue me too. I just knew that sooner or later they would realise just how much pain I was in, how much I was struggling at school, and pull me out, find me a school that would work for me. It never happened . . . because they never knew. And I never asked for help. How could I ask, when my brother so clearly needed their attention more than I?

One effect of this dynamic is relatively easy to deal with: I need to learn to acknowledge my own needs, recognise them as valid, and be prepared to stand up for them. Another effect . . . not so easy. I have to ask myself: do I get into these relationships where I am still suffering and still living out that silently-going-crazy coping role because I am still waiting to be rescued? Is the part of me that puts up with these relationships that same little girl who waited all those years for someone to notice the pain? Am I unable to say no to crazy-making situations because it's my way of giving the universe / my peers / my parents / others one last chance to do what I needed them to do all those years ago?

I have to put that pain to bed forever before I can let someone into my life. I need to make peace with the fact that child-Christine and teen-Christine are never going to be rescued. I have to learn to live with how it was, not how it should have been.

I haven't the faintest idea where to start, but I'll get there somehow.

I'm watching "The Holiday" this evening and want to share this quote:

Iris: "I wanted to get away from one guy, an ex-boyfriend who just got engaged and forgot to tell me."
Arthur: "So, he’s a schmuck."
Iris: "As a matter of fact he is a huge schmuck . . . how did you know?"
Arthur: "He let you go. This is not a hard one to figure out."

EXACTLY.

Setting it Straight

I have mentioned before the wonderful blog Getting Past Your Past, an incredibly empowering resource for people who are grieving over their break-up and are ready to question why it went wrong and what they can do to end up in a good relationship next time. The site advocates using a tool called the "Relationship Inventory" to take stock of what went wrong and right in your last relationship, and what that meant in terms of your own satisfaction. Some of the questions are hard to answer, because they ask you to question your own beliefs and understandings. But when you finish, it feels good. Oh, so good.

These are some of the things I’ve discovered so far.

1. S was controlling, manipulative, jealous, passive-aggressive, inflexible and enormously self-centred.

2. I ignored S’s behaviour because I was busy being the ‘good’ girlfriend and enabling S’s behaviour because giving in to him meant that I was not being a brat.

3. This was an issue for me because I have struggled against a tendency to a volatile temper. I had formerly adopted crazy-making habits and was determined to defeat them, to the point where I failed to maintain basic standards about how I could be treated.

4. I also ignored S’s increasingly crazy-making behaviour because I did not have the self-confidence to admit that I could see that it was going wrong.

5. This was a self-confidence issue for me because I felt that being in a proper adult relationship was a validation of my own status as a genuine adult, meant that I was ‘keeping up’ with my partnered friends and cousins. These are two issues I have struggled with. By backing out of the relationship I would be going back to the ‘single and failing at life’ tag I’d ascribed to myself.

6. I have self-esteem issues for a number of reasons going right back to the first few years of school. One is the simple fact that having an Aspergers brain means that I have felt different, substandard and confused for much of my life. Another is my role of silent child / ‘the one who copes’ in my family structure. The latter has resulted in my aversion towards asking for help and a habit of belittling my own needs because, as a child, my needs were never as great as those of my brother. I have also developed the habit of belittling my achievements, because what I achieved in spite of my minor needs were never as impressive as what others (ie my brother) achieved in the face of his greater needs. This is a false perception, and a belief not shared by other people, who see my achievements independently to others’ and are really very proud of me.

7. In most of my relationships, I have repeated the pattern of accepting what I should not accept, because I lacked the self-confidence to draw the line at the risk of losing the relationship. In these situations I was clinging to the validation that being in any relationship provided, and doubted my own ability to distinguish between acceptable friction and unacceptable behaviour. I broke up with B because of his denigrating behaviour, then reneged and had to find it out again in the repeat relationship. I took it from E until my walk-over-ness drove him away. I caught it in time with N. With C, I allowed actual abuse to drag on for a year before finally refusing to accept it any longer, precipitating the breakup. D drove himself away by buying into his own crazy-making manipulation, but I had realised that the relationship was going to end because of it. With S, I pretended that I could accept and deal with the treatment I was receiving, and although I still have no idea exactly what precipitated the breakup on S’s part, the way he was treating me was appalling and I should not have been allowing it.

8. The key for me to have successful relationships in the future is to develop an unassailable feeling of self-worth, and to be absolutely clear with myself about what I will and will not accept from others. To do this I will need to unpack every layer of my self-doubt, address every false perception, reject every unwarranted label, and replace the falsehoods with positive truths that will support my belief that I deserve only the best treatment from only the best people. Then, and only then, will I be ready for another relationship.



So there it is. I have a LOT of work ahead of me. I don’t know how long it will take, and for some parts I don’t even know how I will achieve it. But I’m going to get there. No more crazy-making, no more doubt. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.