Three months ago I woke up to shortness of breath, heart
palpations, and the scariest panic attack I have ever had the displeasure of
experiencing. This was not the first anxiety attack caused by the ever-mounting
pressures of being a teacher, but that day I decided that it would be my last.
As I drove home from that doctor visit where I was told that
if I could pinpoint what was causing my anxiety attacks that my only solution
is to get on medication or eliminate the stressor, I knew that I had to make a choice.
The idea of having to take a daily dosage of Xanax to get through the workday
scared me. Would I become dependent on the medicine? I wasn’t sure what scared
me the most, needing to take anxiety medicine to get through my every workday
or accepting that fate. I knew of a teacher at my school that regularly took
Xanax to get through the stressful parts of the school year. I didn’t want
that. As scary as it sounded as I said it to myself I already knew what the
answer was, I wanted a balanced life. A life where my job wasn’t literally
making me sick from all the added stress and lack of support to go along with
it.
Two months ago I walked through that familiar classroom door
for the last time. This would be the last time a student would refer to me as
Mrs. A. I wasn’t sure what feelings would be brewing inside of me on that final
day of teaching. Would I be sad or relieved? While I felt twinges of guilt of
leaving my classes more than half way into the school year, the feelings of
relief ran through me all day long. I was going to be free of a part of my life
that no longer fit. Many teachers believe they will be teachers until they hit
retirement age. Career teachers. That was never my intention. I stumbled into
teaching when my journalistic aspirations failed to come to fruition and I
decided to try my hand at substitute teaching. I was surprised how much I
enjoyed working with middle schoolers and went forward with teacher
certification. What I have come to realize is that teaching was a just a chapter
(a significant one) in my life. My life still has many other stories to
tell. That afternoon when I
decided that I no longer wanted to be a teacher, I had no inkling on how the
next chapter of my life would look. I had ideas and thoughts on jobs I was interested
in. I knew that I wanted a job that would use my master’s degree in counseling,
but that was about it. So I chose to take a leap of faith supported by my
husband, parents, and an emergency savings fund. I applied to countless jobs
mostly with no response, got several interviews where interviewers questioned
why I left teaching and how would my skills transfer, and had moments where I
was afraid that maybe future employers would never see past my years in the
classroom.
For almost two weeks now I have been working a job that I’m
really liking. A lot. A non-teaching job that actually uses my master’s degree
that I am still paying off. I already can feel the shift in my life. I can come
home and spend time on my interests. The truth is that I had been neglecting my
hobbies during the school year and just coming home to grade papers or lesson
plan. I missed having time to write, read, or just dabble in something new that
I was excited about. I am not naïve to think everything will be perfect now. I
could always still lose the balance again. For right now though I am happy and
content with my life.
A happy post needs a happy Denise picture. What better than from my bachelorette party? Disregard the shot glasses on my head lol.
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