PPS

AKA  A benign re-visitation to the nightmares of earlier times... 

I had lovely Sunday. I went down to Ottawa and had brunch with Fred and Laura at a pub near where they live then went for a walk with Fred along the canal and then met up with a friend of mine from Deep River.

My friend had been out of town and her husband had read my blog while she was away. (Really, her husband had read my blog? I find this SO bizarre. I find it bizarre that anyone would read my blog, especially the husband of a friend. I see myself as so full of self-pity as to be nauseating and I can’t imagine the attraction that reading this would hold, at all.) He had become concerned upon reading my last post, titled “Bye”.

When I was a teen I had a repeating dream scenario that was a metaphorical representation of my erratic mental state. I would dream the same dream over and over, with variations. Where I was physically in the dream landscape represented where I was emotionally in my waking life. (I was not a happy teen.)

My dreamscape had two distinct settings; one the downtown core of a huge city and the other a vast field of wheat. The city had long straight grey streets, canyons with skyscrapers soaring up on all sides. It was always eerily quiet in the city. And very grey. Overcast. Gloomy. Dark. There was no indication of people or traffic. Just the buildings. The very tall buildings. The wheat fields were outside the city and stretched for miles. It was always sunny out in the fields with a sky blue and a gentle warm caressing breeze idyllically waving the wheat shafts. It too was a silent landscape but a far safer one. They were very different these two landscapes, one closed in, cold, and forbidding, the other open, warm, and free.

On bad days I would find myself - in my dream - lost, wandering the dreary streets of the downtown core, with the buildings looming menacingly on all sides of me. I didn’t like being in the city. Being there, even just walking below the buildings, was dangerous, ominous; they represented such a temptation, such a threat.

On really bad days I would be on top of a building looking over the edge and considering jumping. In my dreams I never climbed to the top of the buildings, never took the elevator, I would just suddenly be there, standing, contemplating. I never actually jumped in my dreams but as a teen I believed that if you died in your dream you died in real life too, so standing out there alone on the ledge, looking down to a street far below - even when I recognized that I was in a dream - was scary. I can to this day remember the isolation and desolation I felt, so frequently, as I stood, silent and still, looking down.

(When I was a teen my mother worked as an ambulance driver. Her least favourite job was using a spade to shovel up the remains of the jumpers and put them into body bags.)

On better days, however, I would be out in the fields, the sun warm on my back, the city so far off in the distance that only the tops of the tallest building were visible over the wheat - but still there, a distant yet present threat.

On really good days I would be way out in the fields, so far away from the city that I wasn’t even aware of it, couldn’t even tell which direction it was in. I could spin round freely, arms flung out, spin and spin and have no idea where the city was. Freedom.

I would dream and re-dream this silent landscape, but also, after it became an established part of my psyche, just check in on it at random times to see where I was and how careful/happy I needed/could be. It was my own private suicide watch system.

I do not dream this dream anymore. I have grown out of it. But I know that at present, were I to go there, I would not be walking the silent grey city streets, feeling the height of the skyscrapers pressing in on me and worrying about finding myself suddenly standing, yet again, unexpectedly, unhappily, on top of one of those metaphorical buildings and looking contemplatively down down down. No. If I were to go there right now I’d be out in the field so very far from the city as to be oblivious to its existence. I would be happy. Free. Safe.

Which is why it was a shock that my friend’s husband read potentially suicidal thoughts into my blog entry. I have been there so often, have had so many episodes of such deep depression that the  taste of the idea of suicide is a familiar friend, but now, no, not now. I am full of self-pity now and whinging and whining up a storm. I have passed through angry and bitter, on my journey back towards happy, and am firmly stuck in the complaining and carping stage (if such exists) but I am not, thankfully, black enough as to be considering, even for a second, a final goodbye. Which is good. Of course. Very good.  

And then I came home and wrote yet another extra blog entry. Yes. A lovely Sunday.

PS

Good Things Come in Threes  AKA  Less pissy than before...

I didn't want to teach this year. I didn't want to teach at ADHS. I didn't want to move to Arnprior. I didn't want to teach Art. I started off September in a pretty pissy mood. 

Today, however, three things happened at work that switched my mood just a wee bit.

One, I noticed that they had put a name plate on my door. It says, "Ms E Edwards".

I'm not sure what I think about the “Ms” part. I’ve never liked Ms. When I filled out my income tax last year the very first decision I had to make was what my title was. The software I was using wouldn’t let me continue without making a choice from the drop down menu. And there were only four choices. I didn’t want to choose Miss, because I am old enough that that implies never married to me, and I didn’t want to choose Mrs, because I didn’t feel married, and I didn’t want to choose Ms, because I don’t like it, so, as I said to Emily, who was in the room at the time, the only possible option was Mr. She thought I couldn’t do that but… I hope that’s not why they audited my income tax!

And I don’t know what I think about the “Edwards” part. I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep it as my surname or not. I don’t want to go all the way back to Ells. I’ve been considering going to Trepanier, which would be odd, since I wasn’t married to Andre, didn’t ever use Trepanier, and it is very French and I am not… The only other option I’ve come up with is to become mononymous, not be Emily Edwards or anything else but just to be Emily. To have one name, like Madonna or Cher. Why not?

But the point is I've been teaching since the 1980's and have NEVER had a name plate on my door before. It may seem like a tiny thing but it made me feel like I belong.

Two, I had a fantastic free lunch, at the school, for reasons I won’t go into, and, talking to the other teachers at my table I learnt that I might, unbeknownst to myself, have the qualifications needed for cat 4, so after lunch I called up the OSSTF and yes, sure enough, I could have switched to cat 4 years ago, which, obviously I didn't know, but at least I know now. The ramifications of this are that my salary will jump significantly right now, and, if I teach for another 5 years, then my pension with be significantly better too! Wow! Yeah! It would have been good if I'd known this years ago of course but at least I know it now... (And, I wonder, why didn’t I know this years ago? Did the topic just never come up at my old school during any of the many lunches with my colleagues there? Did the union rep who reviewed our qualifications each year not notice or not care? Why didn’t I know?) What matters is that I know now, and when I went back to say thank you to the teachers who had pointed it out to me they were genuinely pleased to have helped me, and I felt like I belonged.

And, three, when I was in chatting with the principal about my name plate (I was SO happy that I felt compelled to drop in and thank him, and yes, don’t worry, I was WAY more concise when talking to him than in my rambles here) he told me that my name had come up in the District Review report - well not my name since they can't do that but given as I am the only Art teacher I can't hide – the reporters apparently were  "particularly pleased with the engaging activities that were taking place in the art room and the way the assignments were structured to include student self-reflection.” District Review, for those not in the loop, is a BIG DEAL. Hot shots in suits come round and spend the whole day walking in and out of classrooms. They sit and stay a while, watch what is happening, make notes on what is or is not posted on the walls, and, most importantly of all, talk to the students, asking questions in edu-jargon, checking to see what the students think of the program, if they know what they are supposed to be learning, and so on and so forth.

I’d decided not to stress about District Review this year. Just to do what I was doing.  But don’t be fooled. I was stressed. Who likes being judged?

So. My principal was pleased, felt I’d brought honor to the school on District Review day. Who would have guessed? Wow. Go me. And it made me feel even more like I belonged.

All in all not a bad day at work.

And I am, I hate to admit it, in a little bit less of a pissy mood, than I was before.







PS (or maybe sometimes good things come in fours...) 

Report cards were due this week and, after they are submitted, the principal gets some sort of error report back from the computer telling him about the wee mistakes that teachers have made. My name wasn't on the list and so they, the principal and the secretaries, thought at first that maybe, since I'm new, I'd not known how to submit them, and then that maybe I wasn't yet on the correct school list at the board level or something, but, in the end, it turned out that the only reason I wasn't on the list was because I was the ONLY teacher at the school who hadn't made ANY errors on the report cards! (Well, any errors of the type that the computer can catch at any rate.) Wow. My principal was pleased with me again. Maybe I'll stay at this school after all.