”And she pointed out the errors and mistakes until she lost control again.”

Today was terrible. I hesitate to lay blame either on myself or on some outside agency; somewhere in the middles lies today. I’ve been trying to juggle my irritation and play the social game of “let’s pretend we all like each other” but today after a morning of “I hate this school/I’m so glad to be leaving!” I dropped all the balls. One half-joking comment to the school gossip and half the department was avoiding my eyes. I was reprimanded by Grace, both for this comment and for a (totally) joking comment to Theresa yesterday (“Screw you guys; I’m going home.” The black irony is that I only said it because I felt comfortable with her, but Grace overheard and connected it to today’s slip up.) I managed to hold it together while Grace was dressing me down and even found myself on the end of her pity when I told her that I’d had a breakdown in therapy last night (which is true). I almost hated the sudden rush of sympathy as soon as she could see how much I was and am suffering.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of humiliation: completely losing it in front of Theresa and covering my cute black shirt with snot; hiding in another office to avoid the “injured parties”; apologizing to the gossip queen who spread it around the entire school as I’d obviously freaked her out; and crying sporadically throughout the day as I hid out and read The Road to Wellville. I finally slunk out after everyone else left. I’ll be skipping the department lunch tomorrow and the staff meeting the day after; I just can’t stand the humiliation of other Hogsboro High teachers wondering if I’m just psycho enough to snap. I broke the unwritten golden rule of society: pretend you like others so that they may pretend to like you.

I suppose I’d be happier about the impending summer and my final farewells to these three if I wasn’t about to spend my July in the same room with Princess and Betty. The Boy told me flat-out that he doesn’t want to hear about them anymore. His advice about this July is to establish myself early as a solo act and never give them a chance to reject me. His advice about how to deal with the staff of Hogsboro is to flatten, become two-dimensional and boring. (I think he picked up the idea from Douglas Copeland.) So if you see me this summer I’ll be so flat and independent you just might mistake me for a stamp.

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 6/28/2005 09:16:00 p.m.