"Lost and insecure"
I have been checking my e-mail incessantly since Tuesday when I saw a reference request from a principal that I recently interviewed with. I saw it late, four days after she requested it (though she e-mailed on a Friday) and I have been worried that I missed an opportunity. She originally said everyone would be notified five to ten days after the interview and I have heard nothing. I feel a little bit of me sink into unhappiness.
I needed that job. It wouldn't have been an amazing salary but it would have been the experience I needed with an extra added break to make my first year a bit easier. But more than just getting a job, it was hope for me to figure myself out again.
Today is Mother's Day, and my first time to celebrate. It's not much different than any other day aside from the fact that friends and family keep texting me Mother's Day wishes. Because I have a child and I still don't really have a place in my brain for that. Some days I feel like I'm babysitting, and other days I feel like he's my little brother. But almost no days do I feel some sense of motherhood. I don't know when that will come. The first time I have to discipline him? The first time he starts to talk? Or, what I'm most afraid of, when I'm forced to become one.
Jeff and I decided that if I didn't get a teaching job by August, we were going to move. I have had enough of playing games with this forsaken city. There are so few opportunities for the educated and professional person that what few jobs there are, people are clamoring for. I am not a nurse, dental hygienist, blue collar worker or service industry worker. I am thirty-one years old and refuse to resort to the last two options simply because this entire metropolitan area has a thoroughly defective way of thinking. Most of Louisiana does. So if I don't win this fight, I go.
But I don't really want to go.
Not now.
Because if I move to a new city, with no friends, I have almost no chance of "finding myself". Those new people, whoever they may be (neighbors, parents at a daycare center, co-workers) will all have some idea of who they think a thirty-one year old mother of an infant should be. My family is NO help, none of them know me. Not a single person. My father sort of knows me but doesn't for a minute understand me. And he certainly has his opinions about my life.
I recently told an acquaintance, via IM, which I don't know if they received, that I felt bad that I had been invited out a couple of times and didn't want to go. I tried to explain that I would be going out with people I don't know and I'm not in any position to be around people who are trying to get to know me when I'm not sure who I am. This is what will apply in a new city, too. All I can do is tell stories about my pre-baby life as if it's a narrative that's not about me. But how do I get back to DOING those things? Who helps me do that? Jeff certainly can't, especially since he doesn't do any of the things I like to do, with the exception of French Quarter fest, Jazz fest, Voodoo Fest (but not Poboy fest, oddly enough). If I move to a new city, I don't even have anyone to go do things with.
So I don't really want to go and New Orleans doesn't want me to stay. All I can really do is try to go with the flow.
I needed that job. It wouldn't have been an amazing salary but it would have been the experience I needed with an extra added break to make my first year a bit easier. But more than just getting a job, it was hope for me to figure myself out again.
Today is Mother's Day, and my first time to celebrate. It's not much different than any other day aside from the fact that friends and family keep texting me Mother's Day wishes. Because I have a child and I still don't really have a place in my brain for that. Some days I feel like I'm babysitting, and other days I feel like he's my little brother. But almost no days do I feel some sense of motherhood. I don't know when that will come. The first time I have to discipline him? The first time he starts to talk? Or, what I'm most afraid of, when I'm forced to become one.
Jeff and I decided that if I didn't get a teaching job by August, we were going to move. I have had enough of playing games with this forsaken city. There are so few opportunities for the educated and professional person that what few jobs there are, people are clamoring for. I am not a nurse, dental hygienist, blue collar worker or service industry worker. I am thirty-one years old and refuse to resort to the last two options simply because this entire metropolitan area has a thoroughly defective way of thinking. Most of Louisiana does. So if I don't win this fight, I go.
But I don't really want to go.
Not now.
Because if I move to a new city, with no friends, I have almost no chance of "finding myself". Those new people, whoever they may be (neighbors, parents at a daycare center, co-workers) will all have some idea of who they think a thirty-one year old mother of an infant should be. My family is NO help, none of them know me. Not a single person. My father sort of knows me but doesn't for a minute understand me. And he certainly has his opinions about my life.
I recently told an acquaintance, via IM, which I don't know if they received, that I felt bad that I had been invited out a couple of times and didn't want to go. I tried to explain that I would be going out with people I don't know and I'm not in any position to be around people who are trying to get to know me when I'm not sure who I am. This is what will apply in a new city, too. All I can do is tell stories about my pre-baby life as if it's a narrative that's not about me. But how do I get back to DOING those things? Who helps me do that? Jeff certainly can't, especially since he doesn't do any of the things I like to do, with the exception of French Quarter fest, Jazz fest, Voodoo Fest (but not Poboy fest, oddly enough). If I move to a new city, I don't even have anyone to go do things with.
So I don't really want to go and New Orleans doesn't want me to stay. All I can really do is try to go with the flow.