Just over a year ago, I wrote and posted a poem that greatly affected my career and relationship with my boss. At least 8 people I thought were my friends sent it to her the following morning.

Did I think that so many people would see it and send it to her? No. Did I enjoy the immediate backlash from posting it? Obviously not. I hate conflict, and boy did it create conflict. Ultimately though, do I regret posting it? Absolutely not. I find that writing is how I can be most vulnerable and how I can share my truest feeling about subjects that are affecting me.

Being a teacher is so hard, and there are too many people who refuse to see through the summer vacation (it’s unpaid!) to recognize it. Substitute teaching should be like jury duty – everyone should have to do it for one day so they can see how difficult it is. The same goes for customer service jobs.

Of my eight years in the classroom, all in seventh grade, I spent 2 1/2 of them thinking that suicide was the only way out of this career. I never attempted. Hell, one night I tried to cut myself just to see if I could (I couldn’t). It feels like once you become a teacher, there is no other trajectory for you. Us teachers are so “amazing” but somehow, it’s a challenge to transfer our skills into other fields. I can assure you, if someone can be a teacher for over 5 years, they can do anything.

What’s hard for me is the constant reminders that even though this job has destroyed my mental health in so many ways, I truly feel like I’m meant to be in this profession. No matter how low I felt, my students knew I was their safe space. No matter how much people say test scores don’t matter, over 80% of my students passed this year. In 6th grade, 54 of my students received a 0 on their essay. For 7th grade, that number went down to 25 (25 too many, but I digress).

After the fallout from my poem, I stopped publishing here. I stopped writing period. There are no new poems in my journal. I knew people were watching, ready to send it off and create more problems that no one needed. We’re all just educators trying to survive every day with enough energy for our families and friends at home. I spent all of the year unmedicated, dancing around my feelings, keeping my mouth mostly shut because I didn’t want to jeopardize any other relationships with people I worked with.

Change scares me, but I knew that if I wanted to truly find myself again, something had to change. My entire teaching career had been spent in one place, teaching one grade level over and over again. I was honestly prepared to just stay and find other ways to enjoy life again, until the news that the ELAR block would be back in a “new” way. Ask me what my class looked like for those 2 years I mentioned earlier.

I’ve officially been hired in a new district – my alma mater, my kids’ school, and a 2 minute commute – teaching 9th grade English. My body has the full stress response with a month still remaining of my vacation: I clench my teeth in my sleep, I have hives, my mind races constantly. To be honest, I may consider going back on medication this year just so I can relax a little bit and turn off my anxious brain. But the relief I felt when it all got finalized was a huge weight off my shoulders.

I know the grass isn’t always greener, but sometimes just being different is enough. For my sake, I hope it is.