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Sad but Laughing

Okay, finally a post with words, but be warned, I was in a rather gloomy mood when I wrote this on Monday night...

It is possible to be happy, to be content with your life, and at the same time to feel depressed. This is how I feel today. Although I am happy with my life and feel that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, today I feel sadness and frustration in my heart. I feel like crying but the tears don’t really come, as if my ego isn’t prepared to give in. I am so sure that everything that is happening to me is supposed to be happening and I am so grateful for all that I am experiencing, that to cry about it would seem contradictory.

I find many contradictions and oddities around me. Like buying “brand new” bed linen and opening the sealed box to find strange stains on the new sheets. Like walking in to a very loud, crowded mall full of calm, quiet, unassuming people who smile sweetly. At work, colleagues say one thing to your face and another behind your back. They long to learn and improve their school, yet complain at being given the chance to do so. Also at work, racism is something that supposedly is not an issue, and yet I find myself sharing a large office with one white man, in full view of anyone who enters the school, while 20+ local teachers share a cramped teacher’s room (and probably think we insist on such ‘privelege’).

And time. Time passes in a strange way here. The days are long but they don’t drag and the weeks pass by in a flash. Even though I often get home late from work, I still have hours of time in the evening to unwind. In Europe I would get home, have dinner, and before I knew it, it would be bedtime and I hadn’t done much of anything. Here I can eat, work, play, go out, and still manage to get a decent night’s rest.

For every contradiction I find around me, there exists at least one more within myself. Although I have never been as alone as I am right now – single for the first time, thousands of miles from home – I also feel the opposite of alone. I feel protected somehow, allowed to take my time here to recover and build the foundations of my new life. And somehow that’s true even though I am working harder than I ever have before, facing challenges at work that I sometimes doubt I am capable of overcoming. When I face a new challenge in the classroom, I long for the support of my colleagues, just to share the experience and acknowledge that I am new here and I don’t have all the answers. Unfortunately this clashes with the teachers expectations of me – I feel like they want me to work miracles: they want to improve without having to do extra work; they want to see me walk into a classroom and have instant control; they believe that if I’m not shouting at the children, it must mean that I am not in control.... Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps this is not what they think. It could be that I am putting this pressure on myself. It’s still early days I know, and today I’m just feeling a little frustrated about it all.

Words from that Alanis Morissette song ‘Hand in my pocket’ come to mind….
what it all comes down to, is that I haven’t got it all figured out just yet…
I’m free but I’m focused…I’m hard but I’m friendly….I’m sad but I’m laughing…
And everything is just fine fine fine

I think I just found my new karaoke song (Hey Big Spender is getting old) ;)

Comments

  1. Noo --15 November 2011 at 22:28

    Completely understandable. All of it. I found that only when I was in a routine and settled did the enormity of living so far away in a totally different culture actually hit me in the face.
    I think it's when we get comfortable through repeated actions that we really start to think about our situations.

    And of course I moved with a James. And you didn't. So I can only guess that my thoughts, fears, feelings, and whatnot are a watered down version of yours.

    As for schools and their constant issues. They are schools. People have an unfortunate tendency to complain when things aren't perfect, yet fall silent and quietly leave the room when the change is up to them. That would appear to be a part of human nature.

    Stay true to yourself and your thoughts, despite their perhaps contradictory nature.

    Much love!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown16 November 2011 at 10:26

    Thank you Nat. It's nice to hear from someone going through a similar adjustment. What you said makes a lot of sense. It's now that I feel settled into a routine that everything suddenly seems to be crazy and I feel overwhelmed.

    I've seen and done so much since I arrived that it feels like I've been here a long time already. Now I realise that it's barely been two months, so of course there is still a long way to go at work in terms of building relationships with colleagues and discovering my own working style in this new environment.

    One day at a time I guess.

    ReplyDelete

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