Taking It All Back Again

Two weeks ago, I went to see my doctor because I had my usual sinus crap, and his nurse took my blood pressure. Without posting the gruesome numbers here, let's just say it was running high. Not quite "Oh my God, you're about to explode" high, but close. This isn't the first time it's spiked high. I had problems with it in grad school based on diet and stress. I cut back my salt and exercised and it responded beautifully. It also spikes high when I am fighting one of these colds from hell, so I wasn't really worried.

Last week, I went back, and it was still high. Usually, it goes down after a round of antibiotics. Equilibrium is restored, and my body goes back to business as usual. Not this time, though. The life I am living has finally taken its toll. The words hypertension and medicine were mentioned. I wanted to bury my face in my hands and cry. Is there never a break?

I met with a dietitian Wednesday. She was a very bouncy older lady who wears and understands the value of wearing Birkenstocks, so once I got over my initial wariness and she stopped talking to me like I was a person of subnormal intelligence (something I find almost all health care providers do, at least initially), we got along fine. I have to cut my caffeine back to one soda a day (ONLY ONE DIET MOUNTAIN DEW!!!!!), I'm to cut my salt radically, and I am to lose weight.

Normally, this would have put me into a spiral, but to tell the truth, all these things are just symptoms of something much larger. I have done the very thing that the AP trainers warned me not to do. I remember the very first trainer I ever worked with telling me that nothing burns a teacher out faster than AP, that we as new teachers needed to make sure that we gave as much time to having a life outside the classroom as we did crafting and sculpting our lesson plans. I haven't done that.

What I have done is stay too late, sleep too little, eat very poorly and with no attention to the food, sit behind my desk until it gets dark, drive home, and fall down knowing that the next day is going to be a photocopy of the one just finished. I know this sounds negative, but I really don't mean it that way. I love what I do. I couldn't go do it if I didn't. It's just that I've been burning my fragile little birthday candle at both ends with a blowtorch, and the reserves that I once had have melted into vapor and smoke.

I don't take care of myself physically. I don't read for fun. I don't watch movies to relax. I don't see my friends or email the ones who live too far away. I don't have people over for dinner. I haven't produced any new poetry in over a year. I have been so busy submerging myself in trying to be the best teacher I can be that I've almost lost all the other aspects of who I am. This bout with my blood pressure has been sort of a wakeup call for me.

I need to reconnect to the things that are important. I need to take the time to do things that don't have anything to do with my teacher self. I need to try to repair the damage I've done to my relationships with my friends by my inattentiveness and all-consuming absorption. I need to heal the imbalance in my physical self before the problems I'm having become lasting and potentially debilitating ones.

Therefore, from this point forward, I'm taking it all back again. I need to turn around and find my way out of the place I'm in now before all hope of navigating a new path is gone. I don't know if I can change these things now, but I intend to try. Maybe the effort itself will be something that changes me for the better.