The year is drawing to a close. But the stress of this job has finally taken its toll. My nerves have cracked like the shards of ice that I've erected around my heart so I feel nothing. But the shards are cutting deep and my heart feels like it's falling down a very dark hole taking everything that I am with it.
Today during my free period, I had a meeting with the principal over an incident involving one of my groups that held an illegal raffle ticket sale to raise funds for their banquet. I didn't know that it was against school policy. I don't look at all those manuals they hand us at the beginning of the year. The meeting was very short. Not even five minutes. I wasn't in trouble. I was simply told not to do it in the future. No write up. No other words were mentioned. But it has been one big build-up of tension, frustration, and aggravation that has led me to this point.
I lay my head down in his office. Did I mention that we work together? That we see each other nearly every day and that for the past ten months we have been nearly inseparable? And so he is a part of my stress too although he is not aware of it. But the otehr day he did say he had turned my world upside down in relation to all this rebellion I have been feeling all year. Yes, I agreed, and I replied that I had turned his world upside down as well, although I didn't say in what way. But he agreed as well. I can only imagine that the unspoken things we leave hanging in the other have to do with more than just work.
Back to the story at hand. I lay my head down on the conference table in his office. He was off in his corner working on his computer. I had my back to him. Had he looked my way he would simply have thought I was taking a much needed nap. But I was trembling, the tears sliding down silently, staining the table, and I was tense. Had my fingers the strength they would have made grooves into the table. Had my fists been able to pound the table and break it they would have. Instead I lay there feeling that at any minute I would lose myself utterly and have to be led out of the school on a stretcher.
How much can one person take? How much can the body hold before it bursts? I feel like I am going to burst at any moment and I will run all over the table and the carpet, a river of blood and tears, sorrow and horror, running watery red over everything.
He didn't know what was happening to me. Because I didn't want him to know. What can he do? What can anybody do for me now? It is like nothing can console me now. I am feeling like a walking shadow. I am disappearing. I am losing myself in junk food, my body puffing out, my legs ballooning under the injections of salt I give them. I can't help it. It's like I am trying to put layers of insulation over me so that I don't attract attention and no one will come near me. Someone would have to peel back the layers to find the core of me. He once said he wanted to do that. But what if he found the core of me and ran screaming from me? That I could not take.
It's better this way. All alone. Suffering in silence.
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