I quit

 I try to be a good person.

First and foremost, I try to be good, to be kind, to do right.

I quit.

Two weeks ago, someone in a local Facebook group attacked my friend's teenage child with autism. "If a child with autism attacked another child unprovoked, and if he had a history of doing this, what would you want to happen to him?"

Friends. This is not how discipline is done.

We don't crowd source it on Facebook without any actual facts. We don't publicly shame disabled children.

And so I wrote, on my own wall, this:

"Last week, I told some third graders that when another kid is breaking a rule and a teacher is handling it, their job is to say NOTHING. Some adults on Facebook could stand some lessons in 3rd grade behavior. #subtweet #snarkyday"

Friends, it so happens that I am a substitute teacher in our district. It also so happens that that has nothing to do with what a subtweet is.

So today I got a phone call from one of my administrators that these same parents who wanted to publicly shame a disabled child had called and reported my post.

That I, an employee of the district, was posting on Facebook about telling kids to keep quiet and keep secrets.

And this administrator called me and said that if he read that post, he would have those same concerns. That I, a substitute paid $100 a day for 1-2 days a week, was a representative of the district and as such was held to a different standard on social media.

I deleted the post. I cried for the rest of the afternoon. I went into a shame spiral. 

I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of being a good person. I'm just so tired.

Self care

 I went for a walk today. 

Every session, my therapist asks me, "Did you get to any self care since I last saw you?"

"Wellll."

Yesterday I went to my endocrinologist. I have Graves Disease, have I mentioned that? It means that I have an autoimmune condition that makes my thyroid VERY CONFUSED and so it spits out too much thyroid hormones all the time unless I take medication. If I'm high, it can make me jittery and anxious and can also give me a lot of extra energy and productivity. And make me lose weight.

"Your thyroid is a little high."

WHAT THE HECK BODY? WHERE HAVE MY BENEFITS BEEN? I've spent the past month barely able to get off the couch.

Thanks for nothing, thyroid.

Anyway.

I went to my endocrinologist yesterday and he said my thyroid was high, and he increased my medication but he also asked my how my stress was.

Hahahahaha.

So today seemed like a good day to Do The Self Care.

I went on my group chat of local mom friends and said "Does anyone want to go for a walk to ignore our meaningless lives for a while. I mean, my life is meaningless. I'm not saying your lives are meaningless. I'm just. I'm gonna go."

And I laced up my shoes and went for a walk with my own self, Glennon in my ears, the (okay I didn't know it would be THIS strong) wind in my hair.

45 minutes later I thought to myself, Self, that was a good walk. I walked a lot of the demons out and I feel better and now I sure am spent.

I was about a mile away from home.

20 minutes after that, I stumbled through my front door, plugged in my now dead phone, and rooted around my room until I finally found a marble notebook because if we're doing this, we're doing it.  Coffee in hand I plopped on the couch, flipped the notebook to the front cover,

And it had biggest girl's name on the front. Son of a.

Back up to my room I practically crawled, dug around some more, and found another notebook. I grabbed it and the pen next to it and sat down on my bed, my hand moving across the page in a was it somehow apparently did still know how to do.

And then I went downstairs to get another pen because the one I'd been trying to use was completely dead .

How's self care going for you, friend?