entry fifty

 Monday, June 2, 2025

    This weekend gave me something I did not even realize I was starving for—ease. The sun poured through the trees like quiet reassurance, and for a little while, I felt more like myself. I saw friends, lingered in conversation, and laughed without checking the clock. It felt like stepping into a version of life I used to know, before the exhaustion settled so deep in my bones that even joy started to feel like a luxury. For two days, I was not “Ms.” anything. I was just me. I had not realized how much I missed her.

    Then, Sunday afternoon came. I opened my laptop to write lesson plans, and it felt like a curtain dropped. The weather hadn’t changed. My tea was still warm, but something inside me shifted. That hopeful, restored version of myself started to fade as I faced the week ahead. The demands jumped off the screen—meetings, behaviors, assessments, emotional labor I already know will stretch beyond what I have to give. It wasn’t just that planning for the week “killed” my weekend. It was the grief of realizing that the space I had carved for joy was temporary. Like I had borrowed time and now owed interest.

    Eight more days. That number is both a lifeline and a reminder. I am not wishing my students away—I care deeply about them, maybe too deeply. I am yearning for space where I can recover without the constant pressure to be everything for everyone. I look at my calendar and feel the cumulative weight of a year that’s demanded more than I had and offered little in return. I have given so much of myself that sometimes I wonder what’s even left. Yet, I keep showing up.

    There is guilt woven into even that small joy I felt this weekend. Guilt for needing the break. Guilt for counting down. But I also feel clarity. If I don’t reclaim pieces of myself now, when will I? This weekend reminded me that joy isn’t gone—it is just been buried. Maybe these last nine days can be a gentle landing instead of a final collapse. Maybe I can finish this race not just crawling to the end, but honoring how far I have come, even if I am battered.

    This is not just about needing summer break. It is about needing to feel like a person again and for two days, I did. That means healing is still possible. I’m not gone. I am just tired. Tired does not mean broken—it just means I need rest that lasts longer than a weekend.

Eight Days

The weekend gave me back a little piece of myself—
sunlight on my skin,
laughter that didn’t cost energy,
friends who didn’t need anything
except presence.

I felt human again.
Almost whole.
Like the ghost in my classroom
had stepped aside
and let me breathe.

Sunday afternoon came like a curtain call—
lesson plans spread out
like storm clouds
on my kitchen table.

Each bullet point
whispered of behaviors waiting,
paperwork piling,
small voices rising in chaos
I’ll be asked to calm
while my own
cracks in silence.

I saw the week
before it even began,
and the joy unraveled
thread by thread
until only
the dread remained.

Still—
eight days.
Eight.
I whisper it like a prayer,
like a countdown,
like a promise
that some part of me
will make it.

Not whole.
But not gone.

I will show up,
as I always do—
patched, frayed,
tethered by a stubborn kind of hope.

Maybe,
on the other side of those eight days,
there will be more sunlight.
More friends.
More pieces of myself
that I might
still recover.