On the Up

Another week has flown by and I am certainly feeling it today as the nasty pathogens that have been working their way around our classroom have focused their attack on me. I’ve got ‘flu and when I say ‘flu I don’t mean “a slight cold” as most do when they use that word. I mean ‘flu, where inexplicably every part of your body hurts, quite literally from head to toe. Achy limbs are not useful for typing with either.
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Apart from feeling like I really ought to be quarantined, it has been an OK week. I am still enjoying myself and a slight hint that my new job has brought some of my confidence back, although there is still a long way to go on that front. Frustratingly my colleagues have gradually managed to squeeze more information about me and inevitably I have had to discuss how I was training to be a teacher but failed. I hate people asking me about it and have done my upmost to avoid talking about it. I think I may have mastered the technique of abrupt answers which give away the littlest amount of information possible.
The trouble is eventually I run out of ways to dodge talking about the massive disaster that was the first part of this year and once I’ve talked about it I spend the rest of the day having flashbacks about it. I’ll be sat at on the bus home and suddenly a memory from my teaching placement will pop into my head and I will feel very uncomfortable. Although probably not as extreme, it feels a bit like post traumatic stress disorder. I know little about it really but triggers like conversations about my experience make me feel uneasy for the rest of the day. It’s mild and I am sure in years to come I will get over it but it is deeply unpleasant.
It probably sounds weird to you but writing this is OK because I am talking about talking about the experience, rather than talking about the experience itself. I know I can teeter on the edge of the chasm, talking about it without actually talking about it.
On a similar theme, I had a weird moment of realisation during a training session on child protection and safeguarding this week. It’s always a horrible think to talk about and was made even worse by the fact I was sat on a chair built for five-year-olds. As anyone who works in the education sector has done at some point, we went through all the symptoms of abuse. The list for emotional abuse popped up and it was a list that described me back in February. It focused on low self esteem and things like spending a lot of time in isolation and either not eating or eating excessively (I was the latter). I’m not saying I was emotionally abused or anything but the point it my self-esteem couldn’t really have got any lower. It’s odd to look back on that period and realise just how bad things were.
In trashy magazine style, I am happy to be able to say how things are much better now. My self-esteem is gradually rising and I hardly ever isolate myself from everyone. Working in an environment with a lot of people around means I am forced to actually talk to people, whether I like it or not. And I’m happy to be able to say since I returned home from uni I’ve lost 3 stone (19kg) which is pleasing. This is mainly thanks to the fact I have not been binge eating and I have been doing things rather than moping. All in all things are heading in the right direction.
Having to rely on public transport to get home from work is beginning to get a little frustrating as twice this week I had to wait for over an hour for my bus to turn up. Thankfully I am getting much more confident with my driving and I think unless something goes terribly wrong I should pass my driving test at the end of October. The thought of being tested on something practical is still somewhat alarming but for the first time I have that rare feeling of knowing I can actually do something. Hopefully in November I will have bought a car and will be zooming (at the speed limit, of course) around the local roads. I very much hope so anyway.
This was originally supposed to be a post talking about soldiers and warfare but as you can see, that didn’t really happen. I blame the nasty infection eating me from the inside. In summary though, life is looking better and I am beginning to move on from past disasters.

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