Transitions

Unless you're living in the southern hemisphere, transitioning out of your teaching job in November is a bit awkward. In fact, it's an altogether challenging proposition to present to others that such a thing is all "part of the plan".

Even more challenging is trying to pretend to myself that everything is rosy as far as my work life is concerned. The fact is, my work life is bit tenuous at the present time. Maybe this is a blessing. Maybe getting knocked on the head with this one will be helpful. One thing seems sure to me now: I am not going to be able to pretend my way out of it. And pretending is something I've done a lot of.

An aspect of the "protective bubble" I spoke of in my last post is the ability to pretend that something is very much other than it actually is. As long as no one pops the bubble with facts, one can keep the thing afloat for quite a while, with one's self inside of it. A problem, of course, is that the bubble may not have much of a advantageous relationship with the reality we find in places like, for example, the job market.

Maybe if I had had a smoother transition from my job, I would have been able to keep the bubble as intact as ever. As it is now I have stepped out of the bubble even more, to where I can get objective glimpses of how it's affecting me in my every day life. No doubt it will be a long process of de-tangling myself from this effective but flawed survival mechanism.

So how did I, you may ask, come to resign from my teaching position this past November? As is often the case with such events, it had been cooking for a while.

About two and a half years ago I began to experience a rising sense of anxiety in regards to my family history and my own role as a wage-earner. I knew that my dad resigned from a post as a college professor at age forty, had a very spotty working life over the subsequent nine years, at which time he killed himself, penniless. My mom had been working in a professional job for 6 years when she had a nervous breakdown and psychotic break at age 44. About the same time her supervisor began a process to have her removed from her position, which took more than a year. My mom resigned before she was fired.

I worried about following in their footsteps, of having an echo of their experiences ripple through my own life.

The anxiety prompted me to focus more of my attention on coming to greater clarity about what the hell happened in the first eighteen years of my life and what it meant for me now. The enormity of the project made me think I needed a sabbatical. My wife and I looked at how it might be possible. It wasn't.

So I began to open myself up to look at aspects of my thoughts, behavior and biography I had always shied away from considering. I needed to clarify what the affects on me were of growing up in a mentally ill household. It was increasingly difficult to do this and maintain excellence as a teacher.

A crucial step in my striving for clarity was taking the "Family to Family" class from NAMI. Through taking the class I felt my feet come down through the base of my denial bubble and actually feel some ground underneath. I was just at the beginning of the process, but at least I was starting. About a year after the NAMI class I began a counseling relationship and began to experience my pain, injury, and a deep well of anger which had been suppressed since I was very young.

I started to see that the protective bubble had rules it required I live by; primarily that I keep basic and important parts of my life and upbringing in secrecy. I was not allowed, per my "agreement" with the bubble, to share myself with others past a certain point. This secrecy, this feeling of hiding my "shameful truths", was casting an ever greater shadow over my interactions with other people. I could maintain an affable presence with my colleagues and acquaintances but none were allowed past the niceties to any of the inner courtyards one needs to share in order to be friends with someone. I have a deep and wonderful relationship with my wife, for which I am unspeakably grateful, so the contrast was seeming all the more marked in that light. I had to face the fact that, except for my relationship with my family, I was becoming increasingly isolated.

My counseling work was feeling fruitful and promising. The problem was that my pain was, seemingly by its own nature, taking more and more of my mental space. Once the school year started I was able to teach passably, but the interactions I was having with parents were becoming more strained. The shadow of my secret pain, now opened up in my process, was causing me to draw inward. Where I wanted to be open-hearted I found myself more closed. I am pretty sure the students saw that I was just holding on, rather than thriving in the classroom.

At the same time, a very dear person to me, my aunt, was near the end of her life with terminal cancer. I visited her often over the summer and knew it was unlikely we'd see her at the Thanksgiving family gathering. The same week my aunt died I learned from the leadership of my school that the class parents were, for the most part, done with me as the teacher of their children. The school leaders told me they would support me to finish the year if I so chose, while painting a fairly grim picture of what that would look like as far as parental support was concerned.

I gave notice the next week and transitioned from the class over the Thanksgiving break.

Standing at the place of middle age, life looks very different than it did at age 20 or even 30. I can see that the vitality of growth helps a great deal between the ages of 20 and 40. At about the time that NBA players retire, one realizes that the vitality that brought the previous expansion is not going to be funding the next one. A person has to find inner resources to fuel what comes after.

What I am realizing is that parts of my inner resources are strong, but that parts of them are still deeply damaged by my experience growing up with mentally ill parents. I feel like my success in the next half of my life will come through my efforts at transforming this damage. I have no idea where this process will lead me, but it feels like it's the only thing I can do.

Secrecy, shame, isolation. They seem to go together. Writing this blog is about me sharing with others what I experience in my soul, something I have done only sparingly in my adult life. A vast expanse of me has been hiding and feeling deep shame for a long time. It's time for me to start talking about it. I hope that my doing this will be helpful to you who are struggling with similar places in your soul.

Those of you reading the blog, please feel free to post your comments, experiences and insights relating to either the specific blog topic or the general topic of living life as an ACMI.

Best regards,

Ben