17 February 2010

A Scene From Another Life: Wednesday Night

I didn't go to the PTSD meeting today. Just too many roadblocks. I've been keeping busy during this week off. I made a list and have knocked most of the chores off it already. I even added a few and discharged them. I still am unsure how things will go when I get back to school on Monday. I have to find a way to get back and stay back. Last week I was unable to go to work on consecutive days. We had a snow day last Wednesday, so I was only in school on Monday and Thursday. I can't keep doing that. I'll quickly run out off sick days. I am owed 61 hours of missed prep periods, which means I could miss 12 days and they'd still owe a few hours, but it doesn't work like that.

I still feel a little numb and slow, but have only had one disturbing new event. When I try to sleep or when my mind wanders, I see myself standing across the street from my classroom. I'm looking up at my window and, just in my field of view to my right, I see myself standing in front of the kid with the gun in the same area it all took place. There's no sound or movement. It's a like a posed scene. No sense of menace or threat, just an odd sense of seeing myself seeing myself. It's like the feeling I tried to describe earlier of how, during the event, my mind seemed to split, part of it observing and commenting on the action. Except now I seem to have constructed another me, a third me, witnessing the action out of the corner of my eye. I don't know why I'm across the street from my school looking up at my classroom. Perhaps I feel like I'm being kept away from teaching by the events playing out on my periphery.

No response from DFT union president, although he said that he would do what he could to help. No response from my principal, either. I suspect both of them are on vacation somewhere this week.

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