Cleaning Out

The end of the year is finally here.  It's been one hell of a year.  And I mean that in every possible way that it can be taken.  All the shouting is done now, and I have no obligation left to it or for it.  That is a much nicer feeling than I can express.

At the end of every year, it is necessary to clean out the debris that builds up, throw away and toss out what is no longer useful.  Some of that is physical; some of that is not.  The important thing is that you don't carry that worthless dross with you into whatever is coming next.  Unpack all the bags, debride all the wounds that have gone unattended, fortify and patch where needed.  These are year-end tasks.

Sometimes the mental cleaning is worse than the physical labor ever could be.  As teachers, I think we tend to become too attached to our jobs.  It's dangerous, and I am not sure it is good for us.  I watched person after person today who was retiring from our little home say that they had let this job become their whole lives, and they were hurting as they left.  I recognized myself in them.  I have, for eight long years now, lived for this job.  It has been my great joy, my happy game, my serious obsession.

And then, because there are the times that it is all these things, there are the times that it has been like a knife twisting in a wound.  When one of my students took his own life.  When I got word another one had been shot for reasons unknown.  Other things far less dire but somehow more hurtful because they were deliberate and without cause, just random acts of pointless jackassery lobbed in my direction, because, I suppose, a target was needed.

When it's done, though, beautifully, it's over.  The choice about whether or not I keep packing it up and hauling it around with me is mine.  I choose to take only the good.  It was there.  Lots of it.  Running over the top and washing out the other.  I will keep the good, the sweet, the precious, and the rest of it can go...well...frankly...wherever it likes.  It's not my problem anymore.