I need a fuzzy navel and some stilettos

My life has been very boring. I wake up at 6am every day and leave for either Philadelphia or the coffee house. I work all day. I come home and grade papers or work on lesson plans. And then I sleep.

This is killing me. I miss having fun.

Once I become a paid teacher, this will end. I'll have free weekends, planning will be easier without the overseeing of a co-op. Just, overall it will be a more smooth process. And I'll be able to have a life. I'll be able to go out, I'll be able to drink, I'll be able to enjoy my crack (a.k.a. live music). I'll be able to *gasp* have friends and visit my family. I'll be able to go shopping every other day, which is something that I miss.

The sight of a mall makes me want to die a little bit. I miss trying on clothes.

Oh, there's a big one. I miss dressing like a normal 22 year old girl. My current daily clothes consist of teacher shirts and dress pants and the coffee house uniform. (Black collared shirt, black pants, black shoes). I love clothes. And I feel so bland here of late.

I hate feeling so tired when I get home from work that I just keep on what I'm wearing or throw on some old jeans and a tee.

I miss wearing fun makeup. I just put on some neutral eyeshadow and some mascara. I miss liquid eyeliner, darker shades, lipstick. I miss bright nail polish. I miss skinny jeans and knee high boots.

It's not that I can't do any of this.. it's just that I can't do any of this until after December 10th. December 11th is when I go back to a normal human schedule. And you better believe that I'll be in the mall on December 11th shopping for normal human clothes.

I just miss being a 22 year old. I keep telling myself that this is only a 14 week experience. I'll be done soon enough. And I love it. I love it to death. I love the kids, I love the profession, I love poetry and writing and reading and.. just making people feel better about themselves.

But I don't love not getting paid to do it and I don't love being under the surveillance of a co-op and I don't love the fact that I work 75 hours a week because I need to work at the coffee house to pay my bills.

I love where I'm headed in life, but I'm really at a bit of a bump. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy. But I just want to play. That's all.

Keys

When I was little, I had a key to my parents' house.
When I went to college, I had a key to my dorm room.
When I got out of college, I received a key for my apartment.

And over the last two months:

I got promoted to supervisor and I got a key for the coffee house...
and I became an 8th grade teacher and got a key for my first classroom.

This may sound weird but every time I use my two new keys, I am proud of myself for always achieving success. Some people who are my age still haven't even got past the first key I mentioned.

I've never let myself down. I always end up where I want to be.

The Earlier Days

I miss college.

Technically I'm still in college. But I'm a grad student now and it's not the same as being an undergrad.

I miss having a crazy cokehead roomie who'd fall on top of me in a drunken stupor at 5 in the morning.
I miss moving into the boys residence hall and walking to Wawa with my newfound roomies for dinner at midnight.
I miss walking to class in my pajamas with fluffy slippers and hot chocolate.
I miss going to Cold Stone pretty much every day for some cake batter ice cream with graham cracker topping.
I miss dining hall food. Simply because I didn't have to cook it myself. Or pay for it myself.
I miss sneaking into the attic of the castle and filming creepy videos.
I miss living with Judy (aka Judeous Judamo) and playing Flyff and/or the Sims with her all day.
I miss being a political nut who was the president of the democrats club, going from rally to rally and shaking the president's hand.
I miss going to concerts and stumbling into the house at 3am or later.
I miss being able to get drunk whenever I pleased because I didn't have big responsibilities.
I miss not having to pay for health insurance.
I miss dances. I miss dressing up for them and dancing the whole night.
I miss playing board games with my roomies and getting really pissed when I didn't win.
I miss having time to obsess over hot celebrities.
I miss not working 75 hours a freaking week.
I miss making a heck of a lot more money than I'm making right now.
I miss...

I miss everything. I feel bad for anyone who didn't go to college. It really is the best time of your life. I would do anything to go back in time and enjoy every single second of it once again.

Ma mère

I love my mother. I hardly go a day without calling her. I can’t understand how we can be so close, because we are complete opposites. But for some reason, we put our differences aside.

It’s her birthday today. I decided to write about her because she has quite a fascinating history.

My mom was born and raised in the Bronx. She had several siblings, one who left and never came back after she was brutally raped. My mom and her siblings had a rough time growing up. My grandmother was mentally ill. Possibly schizophrenic? She’d leave the kids alone for months at a time. When she’d leave, she’d lock all of the food in her bedroom. My mom’s brother had to go and steal food for them.

I know very little about my grandmother. The only time I ever saw her was at her funeral. Quite … eerie. Supposedly she was very promiscuous, and she would come home dressed in only lingerie. I guess it’s not surprising that my mom ended up in an orphanage.

Later in life, my mom ended up having five kids. One, however, died when she was two years old. She was playing on a fire escape with my two sisters and fell. My mom was in the apartment taking care of my brother, who was near-death. He was born very ill. They didn’t think he would make it either.

After my mom had my four siblings, they continued to live in the Bronx until she decided that it was too dangerous there. My sisters were quite traumatized after the principal was beat to death by a student with a baseball bat. Also, the fact that my sister died didn’t help the situation.

They moved to the sticks. Also known as Bath, PA. My mom met a guy at work and nine months later… ME!!!

Um, at this point my mom had to leave her husband. Needless to say, there were some issues between my dad and her ex-husband and her kids. At age 12, actually, my brother moved to California to get away from my dad who was supposedly quite violent with him. I was too young to notice, so I have no opinion on that. I refuse to believe either side of the story.

That was the worst day ever, by the way. I was three years old. My dad took me to 7-eleven to get a Slurpee. I purposely got pina colada because I knew that was my brother’s favorite flavor and I wanted to be cool like him. I was excited to show it to him when I got home. But when I got home, my mom was on the couch crying. He left. I didn’t see him again for at least 10 years.

I slept with his teddy bear every night. To this day, I keep it next to my bed. He gave it to me a few days before he left.

Anyway, things have definitely settled down over the years. My mom and dad live together. They never got married, but they’re very happy. They’re definitely the best of friends.

A few years ago my mom had a severe head injury and I almost lost her. Her entire face was covered with stitches and she was never the same. She had violent outbursts, she would stare into space for long periods of time, she lost a lot of her memory. It made me realize how much I took her for granted.

I love my mom so much and I will never take her for granted ever again. I’m so glad to have her. I’m so glad that she was okay that day. I don’t know how I would have made it through certain things without her. I'm lucky to have her.

I hope her birthday was perfect today.

Making Sense

I can't remember who said it, but someone told me in passing that I'm "pretty badass" for teaching at a school in Philadelphia.

Okay, so I didn't really think about it much. Because I don't ... I don't know, I'm one of those people who looks at the fluffy side of everything. In my opinion, things are always peachy keen. And you know what, I love my students. And the ones with criminal records and whatnot, they are totally nice to me. I haven't had any problems whatsoever.

It's sort of like I'm not living my life. That I'm just observing. Like, today when I found blood all over the hallway floor and wall and when someone outside of my classroom punched through a glass window... I kinda just thought to myself "Oh shit" and moved along.

I kind of just.. feel numb to it?

I'm not totally unaware of the situation. I get nervous when I walk the two blocks to my car at night, and I refuse to walk the hallways when the kids are in it. I mean, the principal broke his back because he got in the way of two kids that were fighting, so I don't want to be in the hallway when things like that are more likely to happen. Also, when I see cops on the sidewalk and hear sirens, I keep an eye out around me because I don't want to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes, I'm teaching in the most dangerous part of Killadelphia. Yes, I'm teaching at a school that feeds it's students into a high school that is on the "persistently dangerous" list. Yes, it's so bad that they can elect to go to another high school, just because it's so dangerous. Yes, many kids get taken out in handcuffs and so far, I've dealt with high school gangs breaking into the school while I was teaching.

But for some reason, I can't fathom any of it. It's like I'm walking into a normal school in a normal neighborhood. The kids are great. I love them to death. Some of them can't even speak English, some of them have criminal records, and some have failed multiple times and are nearly 18, but I love these kids to death. I want nothing more than for things to get better for them.

What a weird feeling. I don't think I'll work in Philadelphia for the rest of my life. It's making me very confused, which is mentally exhausting. I try to not think about it. Thinking about it is too hard.

I figured I'd write about it though, to try to straighten out my feelings. To try to make some sense of things.

But I don't think it worked.

Mmmmmm

Things have been frickin amazing. Busy, but amazing.

For starters, I got promoted to supervisor at the coffee shop. Yay for more money. So I work about 13 hours there every weekend.

Secondly, I'm an 8th grade English teacher in Philadelphia Monday-Friday. I love my kids to death. It's a rough neighborhood and, I'm not going to lie, I feel a bit unsafe, but I'm surviving and I love my job more than anything in the whole entire world. I'm not getting paid to do it though, because I'm doing it for certification.

I pretty much have no social life whatsoever at the moment because, when it comes down to it, I work about .. 75 hours a week? Or more? No I'm not kidding.

I'm working my ass off at the moment but as soon as I land a paying teaching job after December 10th (when I get my certification).. I'll be good and dandy. I'll retire from my coffee house days and enjoy my summers and weekends off.

Work now, play later. That's always been my philosophy. Except when it comes to concerts.

I'm not going to lie, I'm going to have to drag myself into work all dead-like next month because I have another concert (maybe 2) to go to on a week day. I did it last month and the kids didn't notice. I guess we'll see what happens.

Anyway, time to head into work. I'm gonna make my favorite drink EVER: a non-fat extra foam caramel white mocha with caramel drizzle and nutmeg and cinnamon on top. Mmmmm. Worth every single calorie. My mouth is watering.

In 8th grade.

I'm an 8th grade teacher.

Today I went to a seminar that was about physical, emotional, and sexual child abuse.

One of my students is a bit down now and then. But I look at her and say to myself, "I was like that when I was her age. And I turned out all right."

After the seminar, I examined my thoughts a little bit. Was I really all right when I was her age?

In 8th grade I was alone. My parents both worked nights, so I only saw them on weekends. I made my own dinner. I made my own bed time. I sat in the house all night by myself. I felt so lonely that I would lay in bed and cry.

In 8th grade I was miserable. When I did see my parents, it wasn't enjoyable. My dad would scream and yell. He'd threaten me. He'd tell me that he wanted to kill himself. He'd say that there was no point to life anymore.

In 8th grade my dad was an alcoholic. He'd bring over his alcoholic friends on the weekend and they'd all get extremely drunk and I'd hide in my bed, crying. He'd drive them home, drunk, and have me in the car. I was always frightened that we would get into an accident. He couldn't even talk without slurring, and I had to help him open the car door.

In 8th grade I was afraid because my dad was abusing mild prescription drugs, and I worried that he was going to start doing other drugs again like he had done in the past. I worried about the mirror under my parents' bed that had white powder and a razor blade on it.

In 8th grade I hated myself. My dad told me that I was ugly. That I had a big nose and big ears. He told me that I shouldn't ever tell anyone I was half Puerto Rican/Spanish because people don't like "Spics." "Spics are dirty." "You have a Puerto Rican nose."

In 8th grade I thought I was a lesbian and I had to listen to my mom's regular rants about how gay people are disgusting and it's wrong and "God" doesn't like it. That gay people "choose" to be that way so they are "choosing" to be harassed.

In 8th grade I started to cut myself regularly.

In 8th grade, I attempted suicide. I poisoned myself. I slit my wrists. And then when my parents found out what I did and left work to make sure I was all right, they didn't comfort me. They told me that I was an idiot. That I was stupid. That "child protective services" were going to take me away. That when they'd "take me away" I'd see how lucky I was.

In 8th grade I found new ways to hurt myself without being caught, because I didn't want my parents to harass me again for being stupid. I did inhalants. I used minor illnesses as an excuse to take my mother's pain killers. I'd only cut myself on my stomach or upper thighs, where no one could see.

Overall, I wasn't all right.

I was contemplating suicide starting 6th grade. Age doesn't matter. "8th grade" doesn't mean anything. 12 year olds and 13 year olds can have serious problems just like adults have serious problems.

I would have done anything to have a support system when I was in 8th grade. In 11th grade I was contemplating suicide once again, and a TEACHER did something about it. He got me the help I needed. He might have saved my life.

I care a lot about my students. Tomorrow I'm going to casually ask this girl how she's feeling and if everything is okay. Maybe it's just normal teenage emotions, but maybe it's not.

In 8th grade I had a friend that I lost because he attempted suicide, which resulted in permanent brain damage.

I want to be the kind of teacher that prevents something like that from happening.