It's a Tough Row to Hoe (Pt. 1)

After I had been teaching 8th grade English to inner-city kids for two years, I was suffering from so much burn-out. Work was hard. The kids hated being at school and didn’t understand the need to learn about writing conventions or literary themes. They wanted time to take bathroom selfies or watch YouTube videos about Minecraft. 35 of my 70 students were failing, and phone calls home only confirmed that the culture there was not going to back me up.

Good Teachers are Gardeners

Unfortunately, the culture at school didn’t support me, either. With federal mandates tied with invisible string to the funding we received, we were constantly asked to provide evidence of our work, of our students’ learning, along with reflections, grades, data analysis, plans for future lessons which included differentiated strategies so that all kids - those who didn’t speak English and those who didn’t give two shits about school - could learn the mechanics of informational texts.

Each teacher had to look great on paper - and in the classroom.

If an administrator or visitor came by, they expected to see smiling faces with hands raised, all students ready to ask meaningful questions or provide thoughtful responses.

We were to call parents (of all 70 students) each week and have constructive conversations about the edification of their children, with charm and solutions to every problem.

We were to keep a portfolio of evidence in 8 categories to demonstrate how hard we were working, how hard our students were working, and what we thought about each step we were taking each day in our classrooms.

We needed to have our classrooms decorated, clean, and organized, with rotating bulletin boards of useful and standards-based information, and a whiteboard full of objectives, instructions, and evidence of learning.

This all had to be done between 7:30AM and 3:00PM, in 55-minute class periods, with a 25-minute lunch break, and 3-minute transition breaks. You could also pray for a few minutes to pee here and there throughout the day.

As a teacher, I also greatly believed in the power of relationships with my students, so I coached softball in the spring - riding on the bus with my girls to their games while grading assignments or emailing parents, braiding their hair, and listening to their worries and dreams. Some nights, I would wait until 10PM for all the girls to be picked up from the school parking lot, eating vending-machine crackers or candy for dinner, and preparing for the next day.

Performing in Heels

I had already been on medication for depression and anxiety since my early 20s, and had recently started to exercise. I was (and had been most of my life) overweight, and not only did the exercise help my self-esteem, it gave me more energy to do my job - which I did mostly on my feet for 50-70 hours each week (but not in sneakers because those weren’t allowed in our dress code).

I put on a performance every single day - mostly to make learning exciting - but also to convince myself that I was making it.

I searched for books that would appeal to my students and read them in advance, preparing discussion questions and identifying examples that would help me teach the standards required by the state and federal governments.

I spent two of my five planning periods each week meeting with colleagues and curriculum coaches to analyze my students’ work or grades.

I stayed up late into the night creating activities or lessons or assessments that fell within all of the best practices - I wanted my students to be the best, most prepared, and I wanted them to have fun and remember me and my class forever. I wanted colleagues or administrators to walk through my classroom and share with everyone they met just how amazing my classes were.

I was a teacher - but not a person. Not a sister, daughter, or a spouse, anymore. A teacher--and a crumbling shell.

The Way the Cookie Crumbles

My (now ex-) husband and I fought constantly because, despite needing (and having) a Masters degree and giving my job everything, I barely brought in $40,000 a year, which was split in half after taxes, health insurance, retirement -- and then fully depleted after groceries, rent, and student loans. Money was always tight; he worked in tech customer service and went to school online--which wasn’t easy with a miserable (and emotionally unstable) nag as your wife.

The only thing I looked forward to was seeing my efforts be rewarded when my students asked questions excitedly about things like symbolism or foreshadowing.

And sleeping. I very much looked forward to sleeping.

I went down a dark path of longing and avoidance about halfway through my third year teaching, because even the obsessive exercise wasn’t supplying enough energy or dopamine to keep me going. I looked to the attention of other men, to spending, and to self-medication for what I thought was happiness.

I now know that I wasn’t looking for happiness - I was looking for relief, distraction from the physical and emotional anguish I felt from running on fumes for so many years.

Before teaching, I worked full-time at a staffing agency and took graduate courses during my lunch breaks and in the evenings.

Before graduate school, I worked at the hospital as an interpreter and on the school newspaper while taking 21 credit hours to hurry up and finish my bachelor’s degree so that I could make a better living.

Don’t you love the emotional trauma of poverty?

I struggled to return from the holiday break that year, and in January, I asked for a separation from my spouse. Maybe, I thought, the arguments and our loveless marriage are the source of my misery. So he left.

And I was alone.

I then had no one to blame for my misery. I had no one to talk to about how I was feeling, and I had no one (especially not myself) to encourage or affirm me.

I felt like everyone was tired of hearing me cry, so I was either “great!” or barreling towards panic attacks that felt like hot lightning striking my entire body.

I exercised -- and nothing changed.

I met men through dating apps and slept with them - and nothing changed.

I ate greasy junk food, drank alcohol, took pills - and nothing changed.

I Just Wanted to Sleep

My ex knew when I was calling, that it was to either start an argument or to wallow in self-pity.

He finally hung up on me one night and refused to answer again after I mindlessly and drunkenly sobbed into the phone that I was “an empty garbage can” that no one wanted or wanted to be near.

That night, I thought, “Well, if the world is going to shut me out - I’m going to shut it out,” so I turned off my phone and took a handful of Ativan and melatonin, and with every light in my house on, fell asleep with salty tears and slobber drying on my face.

I woke up several hours later to sounds in my kitchen and living room - loud knocks and shouts from both male and female voices. Three uniformed individuals came into my bedroom with a (very bright) flashlight and asked me question after question. Of course, the spinning cloud of cotton that was my brain barely allowed me to respond, but I came to understand that my sister had grown concerned because she couldn’t reach me via my (powered off) cell phone, so she had called my dad, who then experienced the same.

My dad is a man who doesn’t play around, especially not when it has to do with his children, so instead of chalking it up to my mood swings or recent separation, his genuine concern led him to call the police. Mind you, he and my sister both were four hours away in another state, so their options were limited.

The police or paramedics - I still don’t remember to this day who or what all they were - asked if I had taken anything (No, I lied) and if I had been trying to hurt myself (No, I lied again). “I just wanted to sleep.”

They weren’t buying what I was selling, so they asked that I come with them to the (very BRIGHTLY FLASHING) ambulance parked in front of my house (surrounded by my neighbors), so I changed clothes, grabbed my cell phone, and unlocked the back door. Even in my blurred state, I knew someone would need to come take care of my dog, and they would need to have access to my house.

(I will always be grateful to my dear friend, Sarah, who not only came to check on me in the emergency room, she also snuck through my unlocked back door, scooped up my fluffy little girl, and cared for her while I was kept at the hospital. She communicated with my principal discreetly about where I was, and has always kept my secrets and never once treated me or looked at me disdainfully as a result.)

Weird side note: I have always loved hospitals and doctors’ offices. I grew up in a family full of medical professionals, and as a patient, I always felt such kindness and attention when being cared for in them. I know there are likely some lingering mental health factors attached to that fondness; regardless, I always felt like everyone in a hospital or doctor’s office was there to help me feel and be better, overall.

I did not love the psychiatric section of the hospital’s emergency room.

It was a Sunday night, and after my very first ride in an ambulance, I was wheeled up against a dark nurses’ station in the back of the emergency room, out in a hallway shared by several other psychiatric patients.

The gentleman whose bed was parked along the back of mine, not unlike the second domino in a game of Mexican Train, spent several hours trying to convince anyone who walked by that he needed stronger meds because he regularly took oxy for back pain.

Another lady sat up in a bed parked against a wall between the door to a public restroom and the curtained entryway to another patient’s room. She was secured to a bag of blood that I assumed was being infused into her body, but she clearly didn’t want to be there. Several trips to the bathroom later, she had taken out her IV, squeezed the bag of blood onto the floor, and used the diversion as an opportunity to make an escape attempt.

(I later noticed her back in bed, handcuffed to the side rails, looking extremely disappointed.)

Various hospital staff came to check on me: nurses, a social worker (or two), a resident with an intern, a doctor with a resident, and before it was confiscated, I read messages on my phone from my dad and a neighbor.

“We’re obligated to keep you under observation for 48 hours,” the social worker mentioned. “Do you have health insurance?”

Panic rose up in my chest (albeit, still dulled by the benzos I’d gulped down hours earlier). There were clearly no rooms available, so I would have to sleep in an open hallway, eat applesauce and toast, and use a public restroom for two full days?!

Shit.

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Check back for part 2!

Nikki is a Dominican-American aspiring writer and former teacher of teenaged minds. She has a passion for The Big Six Romantic poets, her four-legged children, fat activism, and helping spark a mental health revolution.

Follow her on instagram @goodgollymrsholley and send inquiries to [email protected].