Leaving Him Waiting

Today I leave town for 2 nights and 3 days for a teacher workshop at Sunday River. I get to go there, stay in a hotel room, and have everything paid for. All I have to do is show up, listen, learn, and be prepared to share when school starts back up. I think I am going to learn a lot.

However, I'm nervous. Any time I leave home to stay in a strange place by myself I am nervous. I have never stayed in a hotel room alone before. Garrett has always been there with me. I am going with another teacher but I don't know her very well. I suppose this means I will be getting to know her very quickly though. That could be good since our classrooms are right next to each other. I should know her better. I just don't interact with a lot of the other teachers much cause I live in my own little bubble.

I am also gearing up to be away from Garrett for a couple of days. I know I am going to miss him. Especially since I won't know anyone else there. I am sure I will be a little bit lonely. I miss him every time he is gone. I find myself checking my phone constantly. I try to not text him first but to wait for him to text me. Usually he is the one who is off on a trip somewhere and I just don't want to bug him when I know he is hanging out with his friends. But this time I am the one leaving on a trip.

I find myself wondering if he will come home to an empty apartment and wonder how to spend his time. I wonder if he will sit and watch things online or on netflix. I wonder if he will check his phone and Facebook constantly looking for an update from me. I wonder if when he goes to bed he will snuggle up to my pillow like I snuggle up to his when he is gone. I wonder if he will toss and turn for hours before falling asleep because the bed just feels too big. I wonder if he will sit at home on Tuesday watching the clock and waiting for me to walk in the door.

I never feel like he misses me when he is gone. I always try to spend as much time with him as I can before he leaves. He never seems to notice.

Last night we crawled into bed together and for the first time in I don't know how long he pulled me in close to snuggle. I was laying there and I knew that it was because I was leaving. I felt like he might actually miss me. He held me all night while we slept. Something he hasn't done since... since before we moved here. So a year? Maybe longer.

I loved every minute of it. I loved waking up to his arms still around me.

I think this is different for him. He isn't used to being the one left behind. I wonder if he is realizing how different it is to be the one waiting at home.

Summer Time

I am finally a teacher. I managed to survive my first year teaching 7th grade ELA and Reading. Yes, I forgot until now that in middle school they separate English into two subjects. It creates an interesting conundrum and it means seeing the same kids two or more times a day sometimes. That is alright though. It also means fewer names to learn and more to keep me busy.

Now however it is summer. I was so excited for it. I had big plans. So many big plans. Lots of traveling, lots of swimming, some hiking, some 5ks, some work, some reading, some writing. I thought, "Man I haven't had time off in such a long time! I think I will take this time and enjoy it." HA!

I never realized until now how bad I am at relaxing. I am terrible at it. I am also terrible at self-motivating. I can not for the life of me maintain a decent sleep schedule. Sometimes I get up at 5:30 easy as pie and other days I can't manage to open my eyes before 10 am. I thought I would have a routine by now. A decent amount of time to devout to everything I wanted to accomplish! Ha! Not at all. I make plans. I do housework. If there are no plans or I do not feel like doing housework because of the heat then I stay at home and read or watch a movie. Most days the only time I get out of the house is when I go eat lunch with Garrett in the parking lot at his work.

I am enjoying a lot of it. I have read 5 books. I have been to Martha's Vineyard. I went to Damarscotta Lake State Park. Garrett and I went to Fort Knox and to see Buck's Grave. We went to Old Orchard Beach. We found two nice places to swim near here and have been to one frequently. We celebrated my birthday and have been visited by friends from out of town.

I think Garrett is getting tired of me being home though. He enjoys having me here when he gets home. But he gets home and it's like I have been waiting for him all day. Cause I have. He is exhausted and just wants to relax. I'm not. I am bored out of my mind.

Garrett says I need more friends to spend time with. My friends say I need a new hobby to keep me busy. I think it might be a little of both. Or maybe I should have taken a summer job after all.

The Forever Sleep

There was a night not long ago that I lay in bed trying to sleep. I remember closing my eyes and thinking about how some old people die in their sleep. They close their eyes and somehow in their sleep they drift out of their bodies to never return again. It has always made me wonder what it is that holds us here. How do we stay in our bodies when often it seems much easier to just leave them?

It was then I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. I slowed the beating of my heart. I tried to gently push my soul out of my body.

I don't know if I did this out of a real desire to die or more out of a curiosity. Could someone my age, 24, die in their sleep? Could my heart and lungs just stop working? Can a person will themselves to die? Why not? They say a person can will themselves to live.

I have many happy things in my life.

I really do like my job 90% of the time. It is hard. It is time consuming. And it is at times life draining. However, then a kid learns something, or says and does something that makes me realize I really am having an impact of some kind. I really am getting through to them somewhere.

I really do love my boyfriend. He manages to make me smile even on my darkest days. I can count on him to take care of me when I am sick. To comfort me when I am afraid. And to let me vent when I need to. He is my best friend and my partner in crime. I say, "Let's go" and he asks, "Where to?". I have never felt more like me or more free than I do when I am with him.

I have some really great friends. Friends who would do anything for me just to see me smile.

I should be less willing to leave it.

The Real Me

All of us are made up of different parts. We are different things at different moments.

I am a dutiful daughter.
When I play this part I listen intently as my mother complains about my brother. I try to console her and convince her not to worry. Everything will be alright. I do as I am told and get the oil in my car changed. I drive hours for family events and get togethers. I help clean up after dinner. I watch the dogs. I watch my brothers.

I am a teacher.
I pretend I have confidence. I hide the fear making my quake inside. I turn the butterflies in my stomach into energy. I crack jokes to ease tension. I send misbehaving students to the principals office and give out detentions. I dread calling parents but when pressed by students I act as though calling their mom is no big deal to me. I listen intently to what other teachers have to say in the teachers room and I keep my mouth shut.

I am a good girlfriend.
I cook dinner. I clean the apartment. I offer to rub his back and shoulders when they hurt. I do the laundry. I make his favorite meal to cheer him up. I bring him his lunch so he doesn't have to worry about it the night before. I tell him I love him. I sit and enjoy his favorite things with him.

I am a best friend.
I offer advice and comforting words. I encourage. I praise. I thank. I hold her as she cries. I say nothing when my advice is ignored. But when it blows up in her face I say, "I told you!" I laugh. I joke. I make funny faces.

But this is me around new people.
I watch as they laugh and play. As they crack jokes. I hear the witty banter. But I am counting the minutes until I may leave. I am counting the minutes until I may return home. Home to my cat and my love. To the place where I am free. Every minute of pretending to be me is painful. Every laugh, every joke, every smile feels forced. I am forever playing a part while the real me cowers inside.

My New Years Resolution

I posted this in January of this year in another blog. I am deleting this other blog.

My New Years resolution this year is to climb Mount Katahdin this summer. I know this is crazy. Hell, I'll be happy if I make it half way up but I think that I need to try this. Here are my reasons why.

1) I have always wanted to climb Katahdin. When I was a kid I was in girl scouts and every year my troop would camp at Natarswi just below Katahdin. The whole time we were there I would stare up at the mountain and wonder what the world looked like from the top. I used to be quite a hiker. In middle school I climbed lots of mountains. Great Pond Mountain, Blue Hill Mountain, Bald Mountain, and some mountain near Camden and Rockland that I don't remember the name of. Used to be that I could complete a 5 mile hike in 2 hours.

2) I need a goal. My life has been one goal accomplished after another and now I need a new goal to throw myself into. I went to high school and worked part time. I worked my way through college and graduated cum laude. And now I am working as a teacher at a great school. Those have been my goals for so long now that I no longer know what to do with myself. Now I am setting myself a new goal to work towards.

3) I weigh 180 pounds and am 5 foot 4. This means my bmi is 35.14 roughly. This means I am overweight. I have before tried to get more healthy by setting a goal weight and working out. This has never worked for me. I'm not good about working out as regularly as I should and I am terrible at keeping track of the foods I put into my body. So instead of setting a weight loss goal that really means nothing to me I am setting a goal that is a little more tangible than a number on a scale. This way it is more concentrated on what it really should be about (being healthy and active) and less about weight loss.

 4) I am tired of being out of shape. I walk up the stairs at school and am out of breath. I have spent so much time in a room studying, balancing the checkbook, or doing chores that I have left absolutely no time to take care of myself. That was understandable in the last 5 years because I was working towards a very large goal but now I have accomplished that goal. It is time to take care of me. It is time to take care of the mess that work has created.

5) I care about my health. In the spring of my junior year of college I had H-Pylori. A disgusting and painful stomach thing(bug? virus? illness?). It caused my stomach to hurt all the time. I thought I was tired so I tried to get more sleep. I thought I was hungry so I ate more (about every hour on the hour). I thought that I was stressed from school. Finally, after a month of trying to deal with the pain by eating and trying to relax more I went to see a doctor. They took some blood and found out what it was. They then put me on some very strong antibiotics that made me feel worse for just about the entire 10 days I was on them. There was a lot of damage done though. I gained a lot of weight from overeating and the H-Pylori left my stomach very sensitive. That summer I developed a cyst on one of my ovaries. This presented with pain during sex. I went back to the doctors. They could not figure out what was wrong with me. I was in more and more pain every day. The cyst hurt. My stomach started hurting again from the worry and stress. I saw more and more doctors, specialists. Eventually we figured out I had a cyst and it burst and went away. Then we figured out I had acid reflux and got me the medication I needed to help me deal with it. However, the damage to my body had already been done. When I eat the wrong thing, my stomach hurts. When I get the flu the puking makes the acid reflux unbearable. When I am stressed or upset it feels like my stomach is eating itself from the inside out. I don't want to be sick. I don't want to spend my life in pain or in the doctor's office. I want to be in control of my body not the other way around.

6) My dad has celiacs. Celiacs is a genetic auto-immune disease. Essentially your body has a severe allergic reaction to wheat gluten. I do not have this but in time I could still develop it. I want to use my goal of climbing Katahdin to practice paying attention to what I eat. Right now I suck at this. My diet has for way too long been controlled by my schedule. For too long it has been eat a donut on the way to work at 8. Then the drive-through at McDonalds at 1 after my first job and before my second job starts at 2. Then dinner of whatever is easy at home at 10 pm because I am too tired to move. I have a regular job now. I work 7-3. I get a regular lunch break. I get home by 5. I have time to make a decent meal and to work out. I need to be doing so.

7) In high school I threw my knee cap out of place. I spent a month in a whole leg brace unable to bend my knee. Then I spent another month in painful physical therapy learning how to use the knee again. Unfortunately this type of injury can be recurring and I then threw the knee cap out of place two more times before I graduated. These both went untreated. When I got to college I realized that it hurt to run, to walk up or down hills or stairs, to stand for long periods of times, and when it was cold outside. I went back to physical therapy because my doctor believed I have patellofemoral syndrome. This happens when your knee cap grinds into your other bones and your cartilage when you bend it. It is very painful. The only way to keep it from happening is to make your leg muscles that run over the knee cap strong enough to hold the knee cap in place. When I left physical therapy I was supposed to continue the exercises. I did not. My knee cap has not returned to how it was before but if I keep slacking it could. Part of my goal is to take better care of my legs so that I am not crippled when I am older.

 So I am going to try to keep track of my weight, how many calories I eat, and how much I exercise every day. The idea is that if this is public knowledge then I will have some support to keep me going. Plus it will keep me honest. I know there are a few of you out there who will check this daily or weekly and nag me if I slack. I need that. You have always held me accountable while reminding me that it is ok to take a break. I hope that you will continue to do so. If you want to help me or become healthier yourself then feel free to comment or become a follower. Wish me luck!!