She wrote a blog post about what has really happened. I tried to reach her as fast as I could, just to chat. Luckily, there's such a thing as Facebook, because I'm far away in Holland, while she is in Belgium. Anyway, we talked, and we decided to meet when I'm back home in Belgium for the holidays, which is real soon. While reading her blog post, many feelings of recognition came to my mind. So I think that she's right. She's been lying for weeks now about her situation: "I'm looking for a job, but unfortunately I haven't been successful so far..." It's time I stopped lying too...
You know, I've been lying too, and it's time I cut the crap. Ever since I graduated last year in July, I've been wondering if I will ever find a suitable job. As you may know, I live from a social allowance because I can't work. My idea was that the social allowance was only necessary as long as I was studying, because I couldn't combine my studies with a job. I was 100% sure that after finishing my studies, I'd find a job and I'd no longer need the social allowance. However, now I'm doing some voluntary work, and it's kind of tough. Fortunately enough for me, every week, one or the other student cancels his or her lesson, so I never get the full load, but if I would, I would be teaching for about 8 hours a week. I never get that far, but it costs me a hell of an effort to be able to fulfill the few hours I do teach.
You see, many people think that teaching is just working for two to four hours a day, and finishing early after an easy day at work. Well, I can tell you, they're completely wrong. First of all, you need to prepare your lessons very carefully. You need to calculate what you're going to do in those hours and what kind of matter you are going to deal with. Don't forget that, if you give private lessons - as I do - every single student has his or her own needs. Secondly, you have to know all the answers and you have to be able to explain everything properly, in plain English (or Dutch, or Portuguese, or...). And thirdly, you have to turn a dull piece of grammar into something diverted, to present a dull list of vocabulary into a nice exercise. Believe me, that's not easy, and that's why I always use a hand-out with nice colours, sometimes with drawings, in any case, a hand-out which has to be carefully composed.
I think people overestimate and undervalue the job and the art of teaching, and so did I, until I came into the circuit. And yes, it got to me. So now I know that it's not easy. Now I know it requires a lot of preparation. And it still gets at me. I'm dead-tired after two or three hours of private lessons, even though it's all voluntary work. And now I will have to face it: I'll probably never ever be able to get a normal job as a teacher. Then you have to work at least 24 hours a week. I barely get half of them. I'll probably never be able to work more hours than I do now, and the advantage of the work I'm doing now is that it is all voluntary. Okay, the disadvantage is that I don't get paid, but the advantage is that if I'm feeling too tired or if I have a relapse, I can always step back, which is not quite possible if you have a stable job.
However, all this is bothering me. My family expects great things from me. I graduated Cum Laude twice: Bachelor and Master, so the expectations are high. I should have found a job by now, because it's almost been a year since I graduated. In the beginning, I was fierce in my attempts at finding a job: I sent my CV to various employers. However, after not receiving any reactions, I quit and I subscribed to newsletters, hoping that one day, I would find my dream job. No, I'm not looking very intensively anymore, and I know why: because I'm not able to take on a full-time job, maybe even not a part-time job. It's disappointing, and it hurts. It frustrates me and it wears on me. I've been talking about it with my psychiatrist and my psychiatric nurse. They understand me, but I know for sure that my family will never, ever understand this without feeling resentment. Just because they haven't been there, just because for them it was easy, just because they don't have to rely on those awful pills.
There is still hope, however. I've applied as a volunteer, that is to say, as a hands-on expert. Tomorrow I have my first reunion in a group in which people are working around the theme of recovery. It's good to do this, because at the moment I'm all but feeling well. I'm having small psychotic episodes and large depressive episodes. I'm in a crisis and my psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse decided to give me more tranquillizers. So now I'm back on the so-feared but at the same time so-loved Tranxene. I'm practically dependent on it, because I feel the moment coming when it's time for the next dose. I despise myself for it, but unfortunately I don't have any other options left at the moment...
So let's cut the crap: Debz is not feeling well at all at the moment. She tends to isolate herself from her friends, because that way, they won't be able to notice something's terribly wrong. She's not going to karate, nor to the Leiden observatory. She's afraid of some people in her life, people who have humiliated her, people who have the power to make her feel like a piece of sh*t. When she's among friends, she tries to put on a brave face. She's terribly afraid she'll end up on the closed ward again, because she's not feeling well. She's depressed, she's tense, she's nervous, she's agitated, she's frustrated... everything but fine. She'd like to take a nap that would last a week, at least. Unfortunately, she has responsibilities, called "students". She's looking forward to going home, to Belgium, in the weekend, but she's extremely afraid things will run out of hand over there and that she'll be admitted to a psychiatric clinic over there, with well-known consequences.
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