you know what?

This morning, in class, I realized something, and I have had a bit of a change of heart.

All those people who told me I was so "brave" and "strong" in the wake of my dad's death? (And everything else)? And how I kind of rolled my eyes and said "deliver me from this" because I didn't feel so strong, I just felt like I was doing what needed to be done and was getting nothing more done AT ALL, I was just going in and teaching my classes and doing as little committeework and research as I could manage to get away with?

No, they were right. I was hella strong and brave. I didn't miss a single darn day of work over this. I walked into class every darn morning and took a deep breath and TAUGHT, even when I didn't feel like it, even when all I wanted was to go back home and get into bed. It didn't help when someone would stop the class dead over something I had gone over literally five minutes before, or who complained "but you never told us that" (and thank God for the students who chorused back at them: "oh yes, she did"). Even when I was running back to my office for the five minutes I had between classes and closing the door and reading what I could of my twitter feed because I just needed an escape for a few minutes.

AND I went to all the AAUW meetings and did everything I needed to do at church and I kept the house sort of minimally clean and managed to do enough laundry to wear clean clothes every day. I didn't work out every day I might have in better times, I didn't eat as healthfully as I might in better times, I bought more stuff (yarn, books, stuffed animals) as comfort purchases as I might.

But I pretty much made it through. (Seeing as the week after Thanksgiving, two of my classes are just students doing presentations and a third is just review and an exam, I am counting this semester as done. Grading I can cope with. It stinks, but I can cope with it because at the worst, I can go home and put on cartoons and have a mug of tea at my elbow while I grade. Going into class and teaching and interacting with people was what was hard)

And yeah, maybe I'm telling myself this now because I need to remind myself that I just need to be brave and strong for a little bit longer, to get through everything in the next week*


(*Oh, how much of adulthood is saying over and over again, "maybe next week will be easier"?)

But yeah. I am also struck by how surreal the news of the outside world seems and how little I care. I'm just tired and like I said, not looking forward to the coming week. So I don't care what goofiness other people have got up to. (Though at the same time: I am noticing a new tendency, or rather the resurgence of an old tendency, in  myself: if someone uses an insulting word about someone (e.g., "pig," as one of the less-directly-offensive ones) as part of their critique of the person's behavior, I am much less prone to listen to them. Even if I might agree. It feels more and more like that kind of insult is unnecessary. (Oh, it is one thing to say "so and so acts like a bully," that makes sense to me and it's pointing out a behavior pattern. But saying "so and so is just a d*ck because...." I feel like it's unnecessary; state the offensive behavior and if necessary explain why. But it does seem we've all got down in the collective mud in recent years and I'm tired of it)