It's been a busy couple of weeks.
Contrary to what I had promised myself about 'subbing only' this year, an opportunity came along to do a 6 week stint in Junior High and I took it.
Nice kids. Nice school. That made my decision easier. Any place else would have prompted a resounding 'no'.
But I am now faced with the daunting task of learning 75 new names and writing 150 report cards in two subject areas. I'm doing okay on the names but the report cards?
Oy vay!
But it's all good. It's been a real eye opener for me as I experienced something I had not felt in a while, while making my decision whether to take this job or not...
Sheer terror and panic interspersed with migraines that felt like some clown named Chucky was shooting cannons from inside my head and laughing hysterically at my pain.
Migraines that were debilitating in the worse sense. Migraines that caused a vomitous reaction.
I kid you not. I was puking my guts out.
This finally ended when I made my decision to proceed with the job but since taking it on, I have experienced shortness of breath - like a constant mini-panic attack. Manageable, but irritating as all get-out.
Frankly, it's pissing me off.
And I don't know what the deal is there because everything's been great.
Furthermore, you'd NEVER know it if you met me.
So what gives? It was perplexing me to no end.
And then it hit me.
I made a contract with the universe that I would stay the course, sub for a while and not commit myself to anything that might take me away from my goals and dreams - even if that meant sacrificing a better paycheck. After all, I've been there before.
Hell, I've been there for 30 years.
Only this time, I was going to make good on this contract and do what was important to me - write - because the time was ripe and I was determined to pull it off.
And then I took this job.
I felt like I cheated on the universe. I broke my promise.
I broke my contract.
SHIZA!
It didn't matter that it was only six weeks, it was the principle behind it that was killing me.
But I did it anyway.
On top of it, I accepted another job offer to teach grade 3 next year at a different school.
Both jobs came within a week of each other, (effortlessly I might add - more on that later). But neither fit in with my life plan (or so I thought). And yet here I was, saying 'yes' because on some level, it felt like the right thing to do.
And it was.
But still, I felt like an infidel. A heathen who had lost faith in the process of life and the process of manifesting. Someone who turned away from the Big Guy...
Someone who NO LONGER BELIEVED. Oh ye of little faith.
The guilt was killing me.
To make matters worse, I knew I would have a hard time getting any writing done. It's not like I was thinking I could pull both things off at the same time. (Been there, done that and burning the candle at both ends gets real old and so do you).
But like I said, I did it anyway.
Because the bottom line is, I'm still a single parent. Sure, the boys are older. They do their own thing and they've been independent all through school with loans up the wazoo, but the fact remains... we're a unit.
When one person makes it, the rest follow suit. We're all in it together and trying to reach critical mass. The tipping point. I was hoping this book I wrote might do that - if not financially, then at least on some psychological level.
Because reaching the tipping point takes precedence over everything else. Why? Because it has a domino effect on everyone and everything in its vicinity. Everybody benefits.
And that, was the deciding factor.
One of the boys is entering a professional faculty and will need all the stability he can get. Finances will already be tight in spite of a student line of credit that was in all honesty a bitch to secure, (triggering all sorts of conversation about how post-secondary studies is slowly becoming an option for the elite only but I digress).
It's a miracle he is going at all...
During the up and down yo-yo of not knowing whether he could secure the finances he needed, there was an impending doom hovering in our midst.
And everybody felt it. When the banks (or a co-signer) said 'no', it felt like a death. When it was 'yes', it felt like a rebirth - until they changed their minds at which time our collective legs and arms went weak.
When it was 'maybe', everyone held their breath like a scuba diver in deep waters who knows his tank is almost empty. It was burning everybody out.
This went back and forth for a number of weeks, until it finally resolved itself favorably just a few days ago.
The weird part? Everyone felt it. Everyone described their emotions throughout this loan-seeking madness in exactly the same manner.
It was the strangest feeling. The energy shifts we thought we were experiencing vicariously through one person - the one trying to get the loan - was actually happening collectively.
Because there is no one else, no separate person.
This experience was felt as one unit, feeling the same feelings of alternating joy and despair with every glimmer of hope followed by every rejection or uncertainty.
All it took was a look, a shake of the head, and we knew what the others were feeling for we were feeling the same.
Quite frankly, this time, it almost broke me.
We've had one too many "almosts" in this family... one too many "we were SO close"... one too many "oh so near" the tipping point but never over. And it's not from lack of trying, (or smarts, or talent, or lack of a positive attitude).
For whatever reason - call it destiny - that's just the way it has played out.
We've been like a roller coaster car that reaches the top of its apex but just doesn't have enough juice to get over the hump and slides back down to its starting point...
until now...
But being part of a unit has to do with recognizing those critical moments that have to do with that tipping point and then acting on them.
Call me crazy, but I actually felt a real shift when everything fell into place. And so did everybody else.
As for my panic-attacks? I think it's going to take a while for my body to catch up to what my soul already knows: that we finally reached critical mass.
Our tipping point is finally here...
