Grounded

My thoughts no longer flow the way they once seemed to. My life somehow seems so much more grounded in reality than it ever was before. Or at least, I’m more grounded, I think. And I wonder whether I’m evolving or regressing, maturing or settling, seeing the world for what it really is or simply learning to shut it out. I worry what this sense of adulthood means for me.

Because although I’ve always been mature for my age, my favorite moments have always been those of immaturity, those moments of blissful confidence where nothing seems to matter but the moment itself. The moments when I’ve danced like a fool, and jumped into freezing bodies of water with no clothes on, and laughed so loud I thought I may burst into a million tiny pieces. Those are the moments I look back on with fondness and satisfaction. Those are the moments I consider my legacy.

These past few months I’ve dedicated everything to teaching. I’ve sacrificed my writing and most of my social life. I’ve convinced myself that loving what I do was somehow more important than loving who I am, or perhaps, that loving what I do was all I needed to be happy. Of course, in so many ways it does, and I’m grateful to be able to love my job so effortlessly. Still, it isn’t enough.

I miss writing. I miss my friends both in and out of this blog world. I miss those pieces of my life I treasured so before I began this new chapter in my journey. I wonder how I could so easily dismiss them. I feel as though I’ve been really unfair.

The thing about being with children all day is that you forget yourself. For at least nine hours each day I’m thinking of no one, nothing, but those 18 little smiling faces. Which is both why I love it, and why I think it’s been so easy to ignore myself and the other aspects of my life. I’ve just had so much less time to sit and think.

And when I do stop to think, it’s about managing money and time, about lesson plans and paperwork, about what my students know and what they need to learn. And suddenly, days have gone by, weeks, months, and I haven’t called back a single friend or written a single blog or read a single book. And I worry what all of this will mean for me when I finish this chapter and move into the next, whenever that will be.

I worry that this will be time I’ll consider lost. Even if I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time, some small part of me weeps for that longing in my soul to write, to socialize, to become a better, healthier, smarter person. Some small part of me fears that I’ve narrowed the definition of myself to my occupation. Some small part of me mourns the loss.

But perhaps that’s just growing up. I watch movies from my youth, remembering a time when I promised myself I’d be the person I still aspire to be – that artsy, deep, selfless activist that I’d created in my head long ago. I never wanted to be what I considered an adult. I never wanted to settle for reality. I never wanted to become grounded.

So at least once a week, my coworker and I put on cheesy pop music or those goofy Wiggles and make our students dance with us like fools. We use them as our alibis for acting like two year olds, back before we ever worried about those frivolous things like money and paperwork and responsibility. And we dance and sing and jump, making sure to cherish the instant before our feet fall back on the earth, before we are once again grounded.