Holidailies Day 4: Placeholder

 Today got away from me a bit. Between juggling job applications, cleaning and sorting (So Many Books), and getting the house into some semblance of ready to show to people tomorrow and Sunday, it has been well and truly exhausting.

Until tomorrow,

Hobbit

Holidailies Day 3: The Good Old Days?

 I started on a post over a year ago, in response to a question a friend asked me: How did you go from a conservative Evangelical to a progressive bisexual woman married to a non-binary person. How did I decide to come out at 29, and marry my then-girlfriend less than 6 months later?

The short answer is: Very painfully. 

The long answer is really long and will probably take more than one post because there are so many different pieces that all covered into one moment when I was 26 that totally threw me for a loop and set me on three years of soul-searching and study.

I'm going to start with my childhood and adolescence, mostly because we're packing up our office today and I just had to go through a bunch of old notebooks, so I'm reminded of some key points.

First of all, I was always a really spectacularly terrible girl, at least the type of girl that's valued in conservative Christian circles. I was the quintessential tomboy of the 90s, baseball caps, t-shirts and jeans 100% of the time if I could help it, and deeply offended by any instance where I had to wear a fancy dress. I would just be uncomfortable and get it dirty.

This was the mid-90s, early 2000s, the era of "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" in its heydey, "True Love Waits" conferences and purity balls, Rebecca St. James singing "Wait For Me", and the beautifully terrible lyrics of "all the boys in the band want a valentine from a Barlow Girl. Boys think they're the bomb, cause they remind them of their moms." [Seriously, all love to Superchick because a lot of their other music was hugely pivotal in my life, but that one didn't age so well]

But I mean, I grew up in the Bay Area, and I had basically unfettered access to the local library, where I read widely about people who were different than me. The most I ever thought about it was when I had a massive crush on one of my guy friends, and wondered if we ever were together in public, whether people would think we were a gay couple because I was consistently mistaken for a boy with my baggy t-shirts, cargo shorts, and backwards baseball cap (God Bless the early 2000s). So I knew that gay people existed. I even knew, in whispers, that a few of my mom's relatives were gay. I just didn't think it was an option for myself. 

Today, I would call this being somewhere in the middle of the gender spectrum and still call myself a woman, but with like, an asterisk for now. Back then, I just called myself weird and moved on with my life. Like many other queer people, as a teenager, I would develop very intense friendships that would eventually fizz as one or the other of us moved on. When it happened with boys, I recognized it as a crush. When it happened with girls at the same level, I repressed the hell out of it.

I am not one of those people that takes my beliefs halfway. So once I got the first "make a list of the qualities you want your future husband to have and don't even consider a guy until you're an adult and he matches ALL the items on that list!" talk and went to my first "True Love Waits" rally and signed the little pink pledge card they gave girls (boys got a different one that was not as flowery), I was fully dedicated to this lifestyle. Still insatiably curious about sex, but it was approved curiosity somehow if I was just "researching" to make sure that I could head any and all such inclinations off at the pass if they were to dare come into my life. I even dated Jesus for most of my high school years, and then proudly declared that I was not going to a Christian university to get my MRS, I was going to learn about GOD.

Cue the journal entry I just found from a poor "freshman in college" version of myself, who was feeling some sort of way about one of the girls in my wing that I wasn't even that good of friends with. I was freaked out to no end, and I think I even wrote about it in one of my papers about dreams because it popped up there. My prof at that time assured me that it was just some issues with my upbringing (cringe) popping up in weird ways. 

On top of all this, despite being undeniably butch for most of my life and mostly hating the fact that I'd been born female, I was absolutely and totally against any sort of rights for LGBTQ+ people because I thought that was what good Christians did. I voted against Prop 8 in California when I was in college. Every time I had an inkling of deeper feelings for a girl, I went to great pains to be Very Into Guys so I might one day fulfill God's plan for my life. This never happened because I was also really spectacularly good at pushing away any sort of relationship like that with guys, but there were a couple that I secretly longed to break up with Jesus for.

You know. As any good Christian girl does at that age. Hang on to Jesus until a guy comes along to dedicate your time to. Totally solid plan for life-long faith.

But I digress. I never did date any guys. At first, I reasoned that it was because I wasn't even looking. Then I was actively looking (on and off dating sites for years) and I reasoned that it was because I wasn't "traditionally" feminine, that it would take a really understanding guy who wasn't super attached to gender roles to work with me. Then I just worried it was because I gained weight right as I hit puberty and just shot all my chances at finding love out the airlock with my trauma and mental health fueled eating habits (gotta love patriarchal fatphobia bullshit).

I was confused, I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with many other core tenants of the system I'd been raised in, and I was frustrated that no direction I turned seemed to have an open path. There was no way to be sexual and still be a Christian in my mind and I couldn't fathom how others could reconcile the two, so I just went on "exploring" in the shadows, and in shame-filled romance novel binging until I "got convicted" and tried to stop. And round and round the vicious circle went until something else drastic happened.

In 2013 my sister and her two boys died in a car crash. I've written about this in detail in other places, so I'll just stick to how it relates to this story. In my desire to find something, anything, concrete to hold onto while I was spinning out I threw myself into the life and teachings preached at my home church at the time. Suddenly I was there for every women's Bible study, actually dragging myself on their retreats despite being allergic to cutesy crafts, and signing up for the Nikao School of Leadership which was more or less the church's take on a ministry school at the time (ala Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry) but with more of a focus on skills that were transferrable between the sacred and the secular realms. The thing that drew me to it was the desperate need for a community that could help me hold my head above water and the focus of the first year on the idea of finding your true identity in Christ.

How did this tie into my sexuality? (Besides the idea of identity, in all of its facets.) Sometime before this happened, I'd already begun to doubt that the ideas of the Purity Movement were all that. This was largely due to the general lack of boyfriends that God was miraculously providing, as I had been told that He would if I kept myself totally pure and unsullied by another man's touch.

So in 2013, in the midst of all this other emotional upheaval, I distracted myself by obsessively researching all the little facets of purity culture and the harm it could do and how it messed with people who had been raised in it and gotten to adulthood only to find that reality didn't really actually work that way for a whole variety of reasons.

The journey of that period of my life will have to be for the next post because I have to get back to my extensive chores list. 

Until tomorrow,

Hobbit

A Highly Biased Definitive Ranking of Tamora Pierce Series - Tortall Edition

Welcome to Holidailies Day 2! Being the time when I attempt to post on this blog every day, so I feel less guilty about leaving it to languish the rest of the year. 

This post is brought to you by the article I read on this topic that I strenuously disagreed with, both in methodology and conclusions. Obviously, the only answer was to do my own and fix the issues. All love to Tammy, whose books have kept me company for most of my life, and have provided unparalleled comfort reading in my adult years. Especially this year, when so many of my other childhood favorites don't hold up as well.

First, a caveat: I do not pretend this is anything other than my fangirl opinion. A literary critic, I am not. However, I have been reading (and re-reading) Tamora Pierce's books for almost two decades now and I have a deep love for the worlds and the author. 

Second, since the two worlds she writes in are so distinct, I thought I would split my posts between them because I find it very difficult to compare them.

Okay, introduction done. On to the ranking!

[WARNING: SPOILERS MAY BE UNAVOIDABLE]

7. "Tortall: A Spy's Guide", "Tortall & Other Lands", other assorted shorts.

This ranking is based solely on the fact that the surrounding short stories and the guide are not really a series so much as a delightful peek into life before and after the stories we love so much. Some of them are particularly amusing - my personal favorite is the one with the young dragon Kitten as the narrator. But still not the concentrated amazing of a series.

6. "Tempests & Slaughter"

This prequel story to The Immortals, following Arram Draper as a student at Carthak is only this low because it's not finished yet. Based on the first book, it's quite possible that it will shoot up the ranking. It's very interesting reading her first male protagonist in the Tortall world, and also someone who is so academic and eccentric. I really enjoy seeing how she builds a character that's so well-established as an adult and I'm looking forward to the next two books. 

5. The Immortals Quartet

People may be ready at my door with pitchforks for this being so low, but hear me out. While Daine's rags to discovering she a demi-goddess story is brilliant and her animal companions are engaging and relatable (again, did I mention how much I LOVE Kitten?), I put it down here for two reasons: 

1) As one of her earliest series, there were definitely some problematic things that she addressed with more nuance in other books. 

2) It's such a wide-ranging story that it sometimes feels disjointed. I know she didn't get into writing longer books until much later in her publishing life. Plus, the length of these books makes them accessible to younger audiences which is super important. However, it's such a wild time for the realm that when you add establishing the rules of the gods and additional political intrigue that the Song of the Lioness was not concerned with (for good reason), and I also want there to be more attention given. 

Please don't hate me! I love Daine!

4. Song of the Lioness Quartet

This series has a special place in my heart because they were both the first ones I read (after multiple people saw I shared a name with Alanna and suggested them to me) and because I read "Alanna hated being a girl and wanted to become a knight instead" and I was immediately hooked. As a tomboy (read, future butch bisexual) I was intensely disgusted with the gender roles I was being expected to conform to and Alanna was a refuge. 

Despite my personal affinity for Alanna, I rank it fourth because it was her first series and when you compare it to the writing quality of her later work, Song of the Lioness doesn't hold a candle. It's a timeless theme, and I will be the first to talk about how revolutionary it was for the time it was published. I just usually make it a point to start my read-throughs with these books because going from her more recent work backward is a bit jarring, personally. 

3. Protector of the Small Quartet

This is where the rankings get really hard. Kel is distinct in the list of protagonists because she doesn't have magic, which is one of the reasons she is so admirable. After Alanna with her powerful gift, and Daine being a literal goddess, having the next hero in the line be just an ordinary girl with remarkable grit and a tendency to adopt the needy animals and humans who come to her is really important. 

Kel is not only impressive because of her personal accomplishments - not least of which is convincing the rigid Lord Wyldon of her fitness for page and squire training - but because of her heart. She cannot resist helping those who need her, and I personally love her anti-bullying campaign as a page and her dedication to saving those who would otherwise be in dire straights. Also, getting more time with Raoul, and getting an up-close and unflinching perspective on how the realm has changed after the one-two punch of Alanna's adventures and the mess around Jon's coronation and the Immortals war is a great way to remind us that the "happily ever after" endings of the previous series are just the beginning of a larger story of change and progress. It also really brilliantly points out how bloody difficult it is to move any country forward when one has to work with all parties to avoid civil war, especially when one party is willing to resort to violence and treachery to achieve their goals.

2. Trickster's Duo

As much as I love Alanna, I find myself gravitating to Alianne more so personality-wise, and while I try not to base my preferences on the books by the character's love interests, Nawat 5ever. Part of it is because George was always a favorite character, and she's so much George but with the steel and determination of Alanna. I love how much Aly notices, and how fast her mind works. I love the way she solves puzzles. I love how fast she goes from a bored teenager to a leader and teacher in a revolutionary force. I love the raka and the portrayal of the messiness of revolution. I love how much of an ass Kyprioth is. I love the characters of the conspirators. The ending of "Trickster's Queen" has made me cry 100% of the times I have read it. 

Also, while some of the ways she portrays colonialism are not perfect, I feel like some credit must be given for introducing me - a very sheltered teenager inhaling her books like air - to the idea that colonialism existed, and what it might look like. As a white middle-class person, I needed that nudge to look at my country and start to notice the cracks which led me to a lot of the beliefs I hold now after reading more and more on the topic, especially from authors who have lived it as their story. 

1. Beka Cooper Trilogy

To be honest, Beka getting such short shrift in the other article is the entire reason I started with this idea of a ranking list. That, plus I'm in the middle of re-listening to these audiobooks right now (after listening to Protector of the Small and the Trickster's Duo again) and I'm even more in awe of the quality of the narrative and voice.

Personally, I love a good procedural, and so from the first book I was hooked on Beka and her personality. Her voice is so approachable. She's principled, loyal, devoted to her friends (even the crooked ones). I also love the journal style, the particular dialect of the Lower City, Pounce (!), and how each story in the series gets a nuanced, detailed treatment. All three books are distinct in the issues they address, but they work together so well as a progression of Beka's character.

I also love how unflinching this series is at how it looks at the differences of how people are treated by class, and how it gives a commoner's view of how the realm got to the point it was 200 years later when Alanna came on the scene. It moves from serial killers to reckless counterfeiters to treason against the crown, and all of them expose different inequities and show how hard Beka works to address them. Also, painful as the twist at the end of "Mastiff" is (It took me a good 5-6 years to get over it enough to re-read the book) I cannot help but be in awe of how seamlessly she wove it in, with the hints really only jumping out to me on my second and third runs through the books. I can hate it all day long, but I have to recognize the literary prowess there and bow to it. 

For the sake of ending on a good note, did I mention Pounce? He's so much more developed as a character than in his iteration as Faithful, and I love every second of it. 

Holidailies: The Dumpster Fire Edition (Day 1)

Holidailies? Is it that time already? Bless it, that means this year is almost over! As is traditional for my first post of the year, a bit of a catch-up.

I only made it about three posts into the challenge last year because I was in the midst of a somewhat hellish year of teaching middle school. All those times I was training as a teacher and was like, "I will teach any grades except middle school?" Yeah... I took a job that was a high school job - based on the research into the school I'd done - then was told the district had switched it to a middle school over the summer and the websites just hadn't been updated yet. What are you gonna do?

To be fair to all involved, I did the best I could with the situation I was handed and I had a ton of really spectacular support from the admin, my other teachers, and my induction coach. It just was not enough to help me deal with an age group that I only love in small doses; less than 10 kids? Absolutely, totally fine. 30+? Lord help us all. 

Added to the mess was the slow realization that this was a trend in my career, to start off okay and then quickly drop all of the balls as the year picked up speed. On the one hand, hard to deal with emotionally. On the other hand, it led me to finally get an ADHD diagnosis that made many things about my life to this point make so much more sense. Only took until I was 31.

I was aware of my impending unemployment in February, and I thought, "no big, for the first time in my adult life I have multiple certifications, plenty of skills that can be transferred to other industries, and I won't be job search in a recession! I'll be fine!"

*cue the universe laughing*

March happened. And y'all don't need me to tell you about that hot mess. I was just scrambling to get distance learning set up, and reveling in the extra sleep cause I was freed from the commute. I was happy to stay home, and Chris had a minor COVID scare in April but couldn't get tested so we worked through it and they've been fine since. 

I was paid through the summer, so I spent the majority of June-August job searching, briefly trying a door-to-door marketing job until California became blanketed in smoke. I've been tutoring online, trying to find other remote work, and generally not making a ton of money since September. 

I have continued to grind with job applications and all, but I'm looking for remote work especially since my ADHD diagnosis meant that I finally took myself seriously when I had the thought, "I function better when I have some flexibility on when I do tasks, and also when I can control my environment a bit more." So that's been my focus in job hunting. Unfortunately, many other people are having the same thought so there's a bit of a glut in the market.

[Shameless self-promotion break!] If you have kids, check out my creative writing, academic writing, book club, and ukulele lessons on Outschool: Link here. I am also available to tutor privately in English at all ages, edit short stories and novels, or work as a proofreader if you happen to be able to pay for such services! Email me at redbooktutoring@gmail.com for more info. [/shameless self-promotion]

Now for the fun, not-dumpster-fire part of the year!

At the end of October, I realized it was almost NaNo time and I had no clue what I was going to be writing. On a whim, I decided to revive a bit of my 2013 (and 2016) novel because I'd spent the last couple of years working on turning one half of it into a standalone novel. I figured the other half was due for a similar re-working.

I spent the last few days of October hashing out a bunch of the details of updating the story with some friends, and figuring out how I was going to add to it since I was adding an entire POV that didn't exist before - the original novel had too many characters to give them all dedicated POV time - and significantly adjusting the characters so they were a little more believable and endearing. 

Then November. I'm not even fully sure how, but I started off the month with an 11K first day, hit 50K by the 8th, and kept going. There were a few lulls where I only got a few hundred in a day, but they were all after I hit 80K. My goal was to finish the first draft of the newly conceived book, and I did achieve it, even if the last few scenes were just exposition of what will happen when I've recovered enough to write prose again.

And that's about it! We're moving during the month (because the aforementioned lack of solid work does not allow us to keep up with a rent that made sense when I was on salary), so some of the days might be short. I have a few drafts that I've collected over the years of attempting to write on this blog that I may repurpose so I can get them out in the world. I also have a few ideas for listicles because I've been doing much reading this year, of old books and new. It'll be fun!

Until tomorrow.

Hobbit

Interesting Questions Answered Pt. 1

It turns out that I'm only good at writing deep philosophical posts examining my life every once in a while. Other days, I start to form a thought and it stalls out in the face of exhaustion or other weird things like having a job.

So in the event that I can't get together enough brainpower for a full thought but still need a daily blog post, here are a bunch of partial ones in the form of...

An internet survey!

Yes, these things that tend to circulate around the internet on various platforms; first email, then Myspace, and then Facebook (and even Tumblr for a time). Honestly, they were a major part of my experience in growing up on the internet and I love them. So I'll be answering questions from this list, 10 at a time on days that I have a lot going on.

Here we go!

1. What was the last picture you took with your phone? A picture of my cat, Lorelai, sleeping peacefully on my lap.
2. Do you know any big gossips? Yes, schools tend to be hubs of gossip, though I try to avoid it when possible.
3. Have you been pulled over by a cop? Yeah, a few times, mostly for speeding (once for going 2 MPH over the limit, but it was in Oregon and in a construction zone, so I don't really count it cause the cop let me off with a warning). I haven't been pulled over since 2012 though and I'm looking to keep that streak strong.
4. Do you know your heritage? Genetically - Scottish, Irish, Finnish, Bohemian, Filipino, and a couple of unknows tossed in. Culturally - very American, with an affinity for bagpipes, scotch, and Guinness. Though I do love me some adobo and lumpia when I can get it.
5. What have you always wanted? Did you ever get it? Well... I'm pretty sure one thing I always wanted was to have a serious relationship with a person who not only gets me and all my weird quirks but also loves me and all my weird quirks. And I've definitely got that now in Marie. 
6. What kind of sickness have you lied about so you wouldn't go to work? I used to try to pretend to be sick to get out of doing my schoolwork, but it doesn't work as well when you're homeschooled and pretending to be sick mostly just means you can't go and play with your friends when you're done. I don't think I've ever pretended to be sick to get out of an actual job though. At most, I've timed my travel plans poorly and not made it back in time after a break or vacation.
7. What was the last lie you told? I told myself that I would write a full blog post before I went to work today. Clearly, that worked out.
8. Have you ever danced in the rain? Yes, and sung in the rain too.
9. What is your blood type? My philosophy in life; B Positive.
10. Have you ever been in a car accident? Yes. Nothing major, just a few fender benders. 

Well, that was fun! Now I can go to sleep guilt-free, and hopefully tomorrow I will finish the thought I started to compose today.

Until tomorrow.

What Next?

As mentioned in Sunday's post, a lot of my time this year has been spent asking the question, what next?

What could I do when a job that I sacrificed a lot of time and personal hobbies for cut me loose?

What could I do when that job is in the career field I'd worked towards since I was 19, and my confidence was shaken?

What could I do about the fact that hiding my identity from nearly everyone in my professional life has caused me to lose sight of it in my personal life as well?

I've always been pretty good about picking myself up after a setback and finding a way to move forward. I trained myself to view failure as an opportunity to learn and I value hard work to accomplish goals. The first thought I had when I got out of the final meeting with the administration was decide that I was going to work on my Masters research, get straight to finding a job, dig my room out from the piles that always accumulate when I'm stressed.

But. There's always that but.

In this case it was the perfect storm of a few factors:

1) As mentioned, I had gone off my meds about 6 months before, cold turkey. If you know anything about meds designed to treat mental illness, you know that was a stupid ass thing to do. Which I know, but had conveniently forgotten.
2) I do a couple of things predictably when I'm overwhelmed. First, I compartmentalize my emotions so that I can focus on day to day tasks, like planning, grading, actually teaching the classes, meeting with colleagues and parents, etc. Anything outside of those tasks goes on the back burner until I can deal with it. Then, if I'm tired and not forcing myself to deal with it, it builds up and will eventually take me out.
3) Teaching is stressful on the best days. First year teaching is, by all accounts, three times as stressful by default. Teaching in a place where you don't feel like you have a ton of allies on the staff just adds to that. So... I wasn't dealing with anything that wasn't absolutely necessary to doing my job.
4) I put every ounce of energy into keeping that job for months, and when I was cut loose, and suddenly had a lot of time on my hands, I ran. Ran from the barrage of emotions that was nipping at my heels, ran from having to face the consequences of ignoring myself for 6 months, and sunk into a depression that was almost as bad as when I lost my sister and nephews in 2013.

So I played a lot of video games, watched a lot of Netflix, and read a lot of trashy novels. And I also made zero progress on any project that could eventually get me out of my funk, like finding a job or working on research. I just couldn't find the motivation, and believe me, I tried. I tried every single day.

The only difference was that this time I at least knew to do some things. I knew that when I didn't show signs of bouncing back after a month or so, I needed to get myself to counseling and fast. That helped some. I also tried to force myself out of the house for stuff, though some days that didn't work out super great. I went to camp, I volunteered. I tried.

So the question remained, what next?

I found some of the answer with Marie, for sure. Having a future to plan for with her has been some motivation to get myself in order. Another piece was found when I finally managed to get a job working in after school care, which is what I was doing before teaching. It's a familiar rhythm, even at a different location, and that's helped ground me a little bit. It's also helped me realize what I actually missed about working with kids.

And the rest I'll have to tell you about tomorrow, because I'm writing this on my phone and it's not playing nice with the app, so I will come back to this when I'm at a computer.

Until tomorrow.

Hope Springs Eternal

Well well well, what have we here? A mostly unused blog? What? Never!

Actually, all the time. But it's the Holidailies season, so I'm back! I am very excited, even though I totally missed the first day of the month because my NaNo hangover took me out. 

It is what it is. I'm over it. It even fits with my theme today, which is hope.

I'm going to start out and say that it's been a bit of a roller coaster of a year. There's not a hugely detailed record of my brain-space last year around this time, because I was so crazy overwhelmed that I think I managed maybe one or two posts before dropping this project in favor of all the work I had to do at that point. [Edit: I looked, and I was wrong, I got zero actually posted, but I do have one draft that shows the intention was briefly there.]

If you've been wondering what's been up with me, here's the Cliff Notes version:

• January 2017 - Got my teaching credential finally!
• June 2017 - Signed a teaching contract with a conservative Christian private school to be their 9th Grade English Teacher.
• July 2017 - Got assigned a senior girl's Bible class as my non-subject matter specific course.
• August 2017 - Found out that the Bible class was also more or less a Home Ec/How to Be a Good Housewife class. Laughed at the thought of me, Lifelong Defier of Gender Roles, trying to teach a group of girls how to be more traditionally feminine. Decided to go with more of the worldview, critical thinking, and Bible focus.
• Fall Semester 2017 - Struggled a good bit with the Freshman English, but in ways that are fairly typical for a first-year teacher (I thought). The senior girls turned out to be a tougher nut. Besides knowing more than me about most of the "practical skills" I tried to teach them about things like cooking and entertaining, they could not decide whether I was teaching too much Bible or not enough Bible. And either way, I definitely wasn't teaching the Bible they were used to. The death knell was when I shared this brilliant article about Advent being a Feminist Expression of God to the world. The most conservative of the group did not appreciate that it, 1) Used the "F" word, 2) Was written by a woman *gasp*, and 3) Doubly terrible, written by a woman who claimed to be a preacher AND queer. So...
• January 2018 - Got told within two weeks of the start of Spring semester that I was no longer teaching the Bible class. Took it as an opportunity to focus more on my English classes, and get to know more of the students because I was assigned lunch yard duty in place of my teaching time.
• Spring Semester 2018 - Did my best to address my struggles in the English classes, asked for help consistently, searched out resources and advice from multiple sources, and was still struggling to keep my head above water. Couldn't figure out why. Asked for more help from the administration...
• March 29, 2018 - The administration's response to my requests was less of a, "we'll help you get through the rest of the year" and more of a "Nope, not worth it, see ya!"
• April-August 2018 - I'm pretty sure these months existed. I may have even done something in them. I know that my brother got married, and I spent a couple of weeks at camp. Past that, it's all a bit of a blur. Except for one thing. I did start hanging out a lot more with friends, in particular, one writing friend, who I taught how to drive stick in July and August so she could borrow my car to get to class when her Fall semester started up.
• August 29, 2018 - Finally fought through my haze enough to see that I was actually extremely attracted to said friend, and officially asked Marie to be slightly more than that.
• September 2018-Current - Finding my feet again, career-wise, and with my mental health. Made much easier by the fact that I have an amazing girlfriend by my side, and she has helped me reconnect with some of the things that bring me joy, like being in a choir and leaving the house to do things on occasion. 

A few things to add to that: 

First, I have a lot of feelings about the mess with the school I was working for. Many of them involve words that are less than kind, but I'm hoping I got most of those out of my system in the nine months since the shit hit the fan. I will say that upon lots of reflection, both on my own time and with trained counselors, I acknowledged the parts of the experience that were undoubtedly my fault or a result of my choices. One choice that doomed me was going cold turkey on meds for my depression instead of getting the prescription switched over to my new insurance. Not a great plan. Also, the school was true to their stated identity and purpose, and I mistakenly thought I could manage to fit in well enough despite some fundamental theological differences.

For instance, I knew that I was bi a full two years before I was hired at the school. I had made my peace with it, but had not - at that point - taken any steps to be in any relationship, let alone one that the school definitely wouldn't approve of. I thought it would be fine because I had not technically stepped over the line. 

It was not. 

It is very emotionally exhausting to be in a place and culture where you know that a good portion of the people who currently find you a fairly decent human being would turn on you in a second because they believe God has told them to. Also, there's nothing like being tossed into a community almost exactly like the one you grew up in to show you how much you've grown and moved away from some of their beliefs since high school. Knowing the language isn't enough when you use the words to mean very different things. 

Which brings me to hope. 

There were a lot of moments in the last year and a half that I felt totally hopeless. More hopeless than I'd felt in years. And yeah, teaching is stressful, but I loved the things about teaching that I always love about it; connecting with students, being a listening ear for them, having my classroom be a safe space for students to be themselves, and teaching them how to communicate more effectively through English. Throughout the year, my classroom became a hangout spot for a number of students, and I welcomed it. It was the bright spot that often gave me hope when nothing else seemed to be going right.

What caused me hopelessness was, in hindsight, feeling like I didn't fit in. I had a cordial relationship with most of the staff and an "actual conversations that cover deeper topics" relationship with a few. But I never felt fully comfortable unless it was just me in the classroom because I had to be guarded about so much. Can't let them know that I'm a left-leaning moderate (and leaning farther with every passing month), that I support and consider myself part of the LBTQ+ community, that I hang out with pagans and atheists on the regular and don't go out of my way to evangelize to them, that I think that Evangelicals are generally good people but a lot of their theology rubs me the wrong way, or even that I am pretty charismatic and radical in my expression of my belief.

Tl;dr, no part of me fit in, except things that I'd left in the past. Not my theology, not my political beliefs, not my strongly held convictions, and definitely not my own identity. And that disconnect was always going to manifest itself in a more difficult time in the classroom.

It took me a while to understand this, to be fair. I was shaken to the core when they asked me to leave at spring break. I missed the kids the rest of the year, even though I made an effort to make it out to sporting events and the school play until the end of the school year. It really wasn't until August that I really appreciated the freedom from the theological boundaries. It meant that I could do something when I looked at this beautiful woman I'd been hanging out with for like, 8 hours at a time some days, and thought, "huh, maybe I always want to spend time with her because I am falling in love with her... OHHHHHHHHH!" 

And while I'm sure there will be a more in-depth post about Marie in the future, the main thing the start of our relationship signaled to me was hope that things could actually work out. Up until we started dating, I was almost thinking about leaving teaching for good, going to something else like social work or being a school counselor, where I could still work with kids, just outside of a classroom. I had no idea what goal I should be reaching for or where my future was leading. 

With Marie, I have some more confidence that I know what at least part of my future will hold. It helped me have a little more security to look at the experience with my previous job and have some hope that I will find a way to work as a teacher, in a school that I love, and do what I feel I was meant to do. 

Hope is beautiful that way. It can take something you thought was totally dead and breathe life back into it. It can refresh you, even when you feel like life has taken every single thing you hold dear away from you. There's a reason it lives with Faith and Love in Paul's list of things that will sustain you through life's greatest trials. And I am thankful for Hope showing up in my life, even when I stopped looking for it. 

Until tomorrow.