Back to school

It has been the case for many years now that back to school brings with it for me a kind of grief.

It seems like it should be too long by now for me to be grieving, too long for me to be sad and to be missing that completely different life I stepped away from 12 years ago when I left the classroom. 12 years ago when, for the first time since I was old enough to remember, I didn't go back to school.

And the grief passes and is replaced by other things, by busyness, by self doubt about the choices I've made, by longing for something that feels far out there, by guilt for thinking of these years with my children as wasted. I had a plan, you see, to get back. To start by subbing and to work my way back to being a full time teacher, to ease into it. And then a year into that plan the world shut down and I got stuck.

And now I'm afraid that I've missed my chance. That it's too late. That there is no way back anymore. That I'm too old to be figuring this out, that I've wasted, lost, too much time.

I'm not the same person I was 12 years ago and it's not the same job it was 12 years ago, and I can't step back into it like nothing happened.  And I don't want to start over and figure out who I am and what I want to be. I don't want to be someone else.

But I don't want to be no one anymore.