News from the Underground
When I was teaching last year, the kids liked telling stories about which teachers they have reduced to tears over the years. I remember thinking, these rich little conceited self-righteous bastard children!
But, I have found that underprivileged children can also be little conceited self-righteous bastards. They, too, love to see an adult cry. For this reason, I have been focusing on rational detachment a lot these days. I go through various bullshit steps of "self-talk", saying things like: This is my JOB, not my LIFE. They are just saying "fuck you, bitch, you don't know me, get my name out your mouth 'fo I really give you sum'in to trick about" because they're teenagers and they have never learned how to behave in this world.
You can hopefully see how it's with huge amounts of regret that I can no longer say: I've never cried in front of them.
I came really close last week when one of their fathers was yelling at me over the phone. After a couple hours of that mess, I avoided tears by getting my boss to come to the house so I could go to my quarters in the basement and stomp my feet and repeatedly slam a book on the table while holding my breath.
The thing that broke me down didn't really even have anything to do with the girls. Directly, anyway. I had taken three girls to do a volunteer project outside of the house and headed downstairs to put my coat and purse in my quarters. There's a partition that separates my part of the basement from the recreation part of it, and the closer I got to it, the more I was overcome by a ferociously evil smell. I turned to enter the "living room" of my quarters, the 60% of my quarters that I never use because I've heard that it floods in the spring, and there it was. Poop.
The raw sewage had come out of the drains in the floor, and when the water receded, only the solid parts of it remained on the floor. I was pretty shocked, I guess you could say, because for some reason I wasn't really that bothered by it. I was like, OH GREAT. One more thing to hate about this job. GREAT.
I calmly walked back upstairs to tell my co-worker, Amy, that I needed some time away from the girls so I could take care of that. She was in the middle of a conversation, so I waited, calmly. Then, in a super calm voice I told her calmly that there was a problem with the drains, and did she mind if I calmly went downstairs to figure out what to do? I was handling it all like a true champion of rational detachment. I was not letting my emotions slow my path from problem to solution. I should have been videotaped for training CIA agents or something.
Then Amy said, "Oh my god, are you okay?" And then, as if she had flipped a switch, the waterworks started flowing. I started crying like the angry, confused, bitter, lonely person I am, all in front of the girls. Thinking about it, I'm surprised I held it together this long.
I spent the rest of that evening moving everything I care about to the far corner of my bedroom, on top of the bed that had been moved to that corner because it was as far as I could get it from that fucking drain. I barricaded the entrance to my bedroom with plastic and towels. I stood there while some man from security poured bleach down the drain, you know, because that would help things. God knows we couldn't get a real plumber out there at 7 o'clock at night- it's $27/hr for an overtime plumber! What did I think this was? A Federal Prison? NO WAY! Non-profit organizations can't afford overtime plumbers, even if a staff member's employment (and health?) is at risk of immediate termination.
I grabbed my stuff and left before I said or did anything crazy, like, quit my job. The girls sure do think I'm never coming back. Haha.
But, I have found that underprivileged children can also be little conceited self-righteous bastards. They, too, love to see an adult cry. For this reason, I have been focusing on rational detachment a lot these days. I go through various bullshit steps of "self-talk", saying things like: This is my JOB, not my LIFE. They are just saying "fuck you, bitch, you don't know me, get my name out your mouth 'fo I really give you sum'in to trick about" because they're teenagers and they have never learned how to behave in this world.
You can hopefully see how it's with huge amounts of regret that I can no longer say: I've never cried in front of them.
I came really close last week when one of their fathers was yelling at me over the phone. After a couple hours of that mess, I avoided tears by getting my boss to come to the house so I could go to my quarters in the basement and stomp my feet and repeatedly slam a book on the table while holding my breath.
The thing that broke me down didn't really even have anything to do with the girls. Directly, anyway. I had taken three girls to do a volunteer project outside of the house and headed downstairs to put my coat and purse in my quarters. There's a partition that separates my part of the basement from the recreation part of it, and the closer I got to it, the more I was overcome by a ferociously evil smell. I turned to enter the "living room" of my quarters, the 60% of my quarters that I never use because I've heard that it floods in the spring, and there it was. Poop.
The raw sewage had come out of the drains in the floor, and when the water receded, only the solid parts of it remained on the floor. I was pretty shocked, I guess you could say, because for some reason I wasn't really that bothered by it. I was like, OH GREAT. One more thing to hate about this job. GREAT.
I calmly walked back upstairs to tell my co-worker, Amy, that I needed some time away from the girls so I could take care of that. She was in the middle of a conversation, so I waited, calmly. Then, in a super calm voice I told her calmly that there was a problem with the drains, and did she mind if I calmly went downstairs to figure out what to do? I was handling it all like a true champion of rational detachment. I was not letting my emotions slow my path from problem to solution. I should have been videotaped for training CIA agents or something.
Then Amy said, "Oh my god, are you okay?" And then, as if she had flipped a switch, the waterworks started flowing. I started crying like the angry, confused, bitter, lonely person I am, all in front of the girls. Thinking about it, I'm surprised I held it together this long.
I spent the rest of that evening moving everything I care about to the far corner of my bedroom, on top of the bed that had been moved to that corner because it was as far as I could get it from that fucking drain. I barricaded the entrance to my bedroom with plastic and towels. I stood there while some man from security poured bleach down the drain, you know, because that would help things. God knows we couldn't get a real plumber out there at 7 o'clock at night- it's $27/hr for an overtime plumber! What did I think this was? A Federal Prison? NO WAY! Non-profit organizations can't afford overtime plumbers, even if a staff member's employment (and health?) is at risk of immediate termination.
I grabbed my stuff and left before I said or did anything crazy, like, quit my job. The girls sure do think I'm never coming back. Haha.