Whew! I feel better already. But so about my not so good day. I am an introvert by nature, and an extrovert by nurture. When I was a child I was painfully shy and it took all the way up into my college years to finally find my voice and speak up! No really - in large crowds still to this day, I am often quiet and observant. If you have some strong personalities in the mix, forget it. You will not hear much out of me. It's not that I do not have anything to say, I am just an introvert by nature (and rather quiet). I have made huge leaps and bounds with my ability to speak up and out. However I am still not where I'd like to be.
This leads into my frustration with myself - and my not so good day. I often feel like I am trapped within myself. I see and hear what's going on around me, and I know how I *want* to act or behave. How I *want* to fit into a group of people. How I *want* to be more outgoing for that moment of time. Yet ... I can hardly ever bring myself to do it. Then I get upset with myself and frustrated. That was my day today. Wanting to do something so simple ... yet feeling as thought I had chains on my arms, feet and mouth and could not. In fact - I have felt like this all year. And I am growing weary as it's only November ... I cannot go on through the year like this.
Furthermore, I am so frustrated with the teachers I work with. Heck ... many of my coworkers. I am a third year teacher and 24 years old. I am both the youngest and newest teacher at my school. Almost all of my coworkers are over the age of 30 AND are married. Many of the married teachers have children. As a result, I feel as though I do not relate to anyone at my school. I cannot chime in on conversations about sick children, soccer carpools or 4 1/2 hours of sleep the night before because of a crying baby. Heck! I cannot even offer my thoughts on a husband who purchased the new call of duty game and stayed up all night drinking beer and playing it. I am as single as the number one. Where I am in life ... these women encountered YEARS ago. So I often feel like I am out of touch with them and have nothing to contribute to conversation. Throw in the fact that I can be super quiet ... and BAM! These females have nothing to say to me, therefore choosing to ignore me.
Or ... I have been trying to figure out if maybe it's just these females are super fake? I listen to some of their conversations ... they're not so nice. And these ladies only smile and ask me questions when they want something. Otherwise ... they make no effort to get to know me or include me in our conversations. So this is my everyday reality ... and I feel trapped! I hate it. I do not know how to remedy it. I guess in my ideal world, I would want to be BFF with everyone and the funniest, most outgoing person there was on this team of teachers. Now does that make me sound fake? Ha! I snickered under my breath ... maybe it does.
The real question is how am I going to get beyond myself. I know for a fact that I am my own worst enemy. I over think things. I over analyze things. I will vent to my girlfriends or my momma until I am blue in the face ... but I do not tell these things to the people who need to hear it (i.e. the people who are giving me the blues). And then the cycle begins again - because I grow frustrated with myself. This has been a heck of a year already ... I had to switch teams AGAIN! I've been on three teams in three years. So it becomes like my first year of teaching ALL OVER AGAIN. New people to learn to work with. New senses of humor to understand. New styles of teaching to adapt to. And all I wish is that I could be the funniest, most outgoing one of them all. That's a silly daydream. I know. However, the truth in all of this is that I really wish I had someone that I could confide in at this school. Who I trusted and saw eye to eye with. Someone who could truly understand where I am coming from. Someone, perhaps, who was as young and as green as I am.
I dream of the day when I am an 8th year teacher, with a husband and children. Then maybe I'll have something to relate to people on. Then maybe I'll be comfortable in my own skin and content with my character traits and flaws, everything in all. But I need to live in the here and now. And what I currently know is I feel ten times better having gotten all of this off of my chest. And I hope one of you reading this can relate - and perhaps, give me better insight than I am currently able to give myself.
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