What it looks like

 Good morning,

Today, living with my diagnosis looks like being up at 3:30 answering work emails because of a stressful situation that happened last week.  It looks like watching a Matt Nathanson video (headphones ft. LOLO) and crying when they bring hearing to a bunch of folks in Lima that haven't had it before.  It looks like feeling deeply even when I should not.  It looks like wearing my heart on my sleeve even when I wish I could don a mask.

It also looks like a weekend spent sleeping too much.  I suppose I was trying to sleep away the hurt inflicted last week at work.  It looks like introspection to the point of (almost) self harm.  They say anger turned inwards is depression - and I'm flirting with that.  It looks like having two steak dinners, solo, to try to make myself feel better.  It looks like doing work all weekend, sending an email to all parents and all students and adjusting all khan and quizizz grades by 25% because I want students to succeed.  It looks like working through lunch to try to ensure that everyone has the accommodations and modifications they are required to have, even though every student has almost unlimited extra time on every assignment and the IEPs don't even make sense given the pandemic.  What does extra time look like when every student can submit any assignment late, in perpetuity?  It looks like internalizing the failure of every student as my own failure.  My failure to engage them, my failure to get them to do the things they ought to do in class, my failure to modify the assignments enough so that they can feel success in accessing them at their level.  In class, if the students were there, I'd be providing the scaffolding via individual attention to students.  I'd remove a few problems for the students who were struggling.  When they are remote, I still try, but how do I provide 1-1 help while the other 20 students need it too?  How do I remove questions on a district mandated assessment that I don't have the power to change?

I am sometimes very alone in my feelings.  This is sometimes a blessing (I also feel joy deeply) but right now I feel pain and hurt.  I am mustering the courage and fortitude to make it to work today.  I will do it.  I will do my best to educate all students to the best of my ability.  I will make it through the day.  The resilience to do so isn't easy for me right now.  It takes all I have.  

So, I'll say this.  I hope that for those of you who don't have my diagnosis, this gives you a window into what my mental health looks like.  For those of you who do, please know you're not alone and that if you ever need to talk about it I'm here.

Have a great day all,

~Mark

Thoughts on Corona and mental health

Good morning all,

I recently saw a post on Facebook about what we can be grateful for during Corona/Covid19.  It made me think about what is good in my life during this time.  It also made me think about my disability, and what I can do to manage it during this time.  I recently had to go to more intense care, IOP, to battle my depression over losing a job.  It wasn't a good fit for me, but I blamed myself and my depression for losing the job instead of realizing it was making me incredibly unhappy.  I think I belong in an urban teaching environment.  It was where I was trained, where I learned about students and teaching philosophy, and where I felt I was doing good. 

In essence, I lost some of my identity when I taught at a suburban, more affluent place.  I was always the farmer, the lumberjack, the fisherman . . . things that my Hartford students were always incredulous at.  At my new school, this was all commonplace; many of my students were Ag-Ed, so they do as much or more of those things than I do.  I stopped donating laptops to my students, since not many of them had need, or I was too new to know what students needed it.  I wish I had tried to keep that @gr8fullyfeclub charity alive, by asking for donations from my students and parents and bringing them to Hartford or Waterbury, or even Torrington.  I felt like my students were going to succeed with or without my help, so I started feeling useless. 

It's impossible to say how much of that was my depression talking and how much of that was the school being a bad fit for me.  It's the first time I've really admitted to my bipolar disorder being a disability.  Through my career in Hartford, it usually helped me to be enthusiastic about my lessons, care about my students, and keep a positive attitude despite many reasons to become negative.  I've become a bit too excitable at times (manic) and that has led to problems, but with FMLA and proper care of my disability I was always able to return to work to fight another day.  My depression sometimes made it hard to do an effective job, but I was always able to work through it before, lean on coworkers who understood, and make it through.

Anyway, what has helped me fight off my depression this time is the strange new freedom that we are experiencing.  I now get to spend time with my family all living under one roof, which is new (a custody issue which I won't get into here), and see nature every day.  My 8 year old is in love with fishing and wants to go every day, so that helps me focus on beauty and get outside in nature every day.  My 18 year old just built a computer, and is helping me do tech projects around the house, which keeps my technology brain active.  I like living vicariously through his energy at building his own gaming desktop, and working with him to snake cables, or learning about whatever video game he's passionate about and why.  All of this keeps me from self pity, and has let me have the confidence to start applying for jobs and thinking about what's next in my career.  It may be teaching, but I think it will be an urban setting like Hartford.  If it's not, I'd like to work with computers - programming, help desk, crunching data.  Either way, I need to have an identity that isn't wedded to my work.  Losing a job shouldn't tear me down to my foundations the way losing this job has.  I suddenly wasn't a teacher, I was just a guy who failed at teaching.  Again, I think this was the depression talking, but I lost an essential part of who I was when that teaching job didn't pan out the way I'd hoped it would.  I felt like I'd let everyone down (my family, my friends, coworkers who believed in me, my students, their parents).  Teaching is hard, and teaching in a new place after 15 years of one type of teaching is harder.  I guess I have learned to cut myself some slack.

nervous when I'm happy

Hi all,

I hate my head sometimes.  I can't be happy without being introspective about it.  I can't be sad without it possibly being depression.  To quote X Ambassadors, "I get nervous when I'm happy, I get nervous, 'cause what goes up,  must go down."  I've been sick and persisting past it for 3 weeks.  Every day I wake up, cough out some green and yellow goo, and get ready for a day of school.  Apparently, I have been exhibiting manic behavior during this time too.  I don't see it.  I have been sleeping well, eating well, and not doing things that normally indicate mania.  I'm mostly enjoying teaching, interacting well with students and parents, and doing my job well.  I'm working out intermittently (at least a few times a week) and being social. 

Here are the warning signs (I guess).  I'm not always considerate to the level I usually am, or on time for things that aren't work, and I have been spending some money.  However, I almost bought a truck, a better audi, and a computer this summer and I managed to keep myself from doing so.  This restraint to me basically means that I'm not dangerously up.  I suppose, objectively, that posting videos with car-aoke, even when having a long road trip and suffering from boredom . . . could be seen that way. 

Anyway, I'm tired of it.  I don't want to have to constantly monitor myself and worry that I'm too happy . . . and I don't want to have to deal with whoever wants to tell me I'm too high.  But I guess it's my cross to bear, like diabetes or some other physical ailment.  Either way, have a great day all. 

~Mark
   

Can I be loved? Do I deserve it?

Hi all,

As you may know, I have bipolar disorder.  This causes me great pain, and sometimes makes me super fun and outgoing, but other times leads me to hibernate in my chair by the fire and be reticent/recalcitrant.  I guess my question is: do I get to be loved?  I know it's hard to deal with my peaks and valleys, and it makes me sometimes untrustworthy, and other times not fun.  To quote a band, "I get nervous, when I'm happy . . . I get nervous, 'cause what goes up, must come down"  My highs are fun for me, but I'm sometimes inconsiderate and kind of a jerk.  My lows aren't fun for anyone, because I'm so down on myself that I can't even motivate myself for the good of others.

I guess I'm asking whether that is something that I can fairly ask anyone else to deal with.  I can deal with it for myself, and I can use therapists and psychiatrists, and the medicines available, to curb the effects and stay as stable as I possibly can.  I can use diet, exercise, meditation and self reflection, and I can blog (haha) when I'm "in my feelings" about it, as I am currently.  I have a disorder which leads most of my fellow sufferers to be jobless, leads many of them to be alone, and leads others to jail or at least to pretty serious brushes with the law.  Many self-medicate, or don't take care of themselves well.  I'd like to feel like a shining example of success, having kept my job after two brushes with mania, and winter depression almost every winter, which persists until at least April and sometimes into May or June.  I've kept some long term relationships going, which requires sacrifice on my part and on theirs.  They have to be willing to take my ups with my downs, and sometimes to take me as less than my best self.  I have to be willing to prioritize the needs of the relationship over what I need mentally.  This sometimes costs me my mental health.

I'm currently fat and out of shape, but riding a slight high.  I might estimate that I'm at between 105% and 115%.  This isn't dangerous, and it's dropping every day.  I have a cold, school has started, and the stressors that come along with school usually drop my high pretty quickly.  I like the highs . . . I'm willing to be honest about my condition and I am highly productive during these times in my life.  However, I have to be careful not to stay there too long, or the accompanying low will be longer/worse.  I don't want my November and December to be bad, so September can't be as fun as I'd like it to be.

standing up for the "little guy" (or marginalized class)

Hi all,

Without getting too preachy, I think that people ought to be nice to one another.  However, in the current political climate and the state of America, even in progressive CT, my students are marginalized.  I'm in almost every case a frontrunner on a privilege walk.  I'm white, male, from a good socioeconomic background, tall, bearded (yes I count that as a privilege not a right) and outspoken when need be.  I'm also well educated at a fancy private college (Bates) and then a prestigious public one (UConn for my masters).  But through all this I have struggled with Bipolar type II - or manic depression, as it was formerly called. 

We had an author at Classical Magnet School yesterday who spoke about how important it was to have authors representing different backgrounds.  She spoke to the idea that there aren't very many hispanic authors, and this struck a chord with me.  People are ashamed of my disease, because it is vilified in the media and in the public eye.  I am no less diseased than if I had need of insulin twice a day, or MS or some other horrible disease.  The difficulty with mine is that it is invisible to all those who look, except when I am either very low or very high. 

Mania has shaped my life twice.  In 2008, I believed it was entirely sane to throw an old computer out of a classroom window to demonstrate gravity.  It was my personal computer, and the students helped me clean it up afterward.  However, this is just one indicator of my mental state.  I thought I could do anything, be anyone, teach any way I pleased and that everybody else would have to get out of the way because this is the new way of doing things.  Luckily, I had a principal who valued me, and I had built up enough karma in my 3 years there that he wanted me to get over it and come back.  He was wise enough to know that I was generally very good at my job, and very dedicated to the school, but that my problem was something he couldn't have me face while at school.  So I got help.  Because I'm large and was then athletic, I was placed on the high security floor of a mental hospital, where they placed the violent and deranged, as well as the suicidal.  I was none of these things, but I still had to live without a belt, shoelaces, or a shaving razor for several weeks.  I picked up smoking, because it was the only thing we could do that was still somewhat fun or social.  I made it through, took the pills they told me to take, and after graduating from that floor, had a part time program called the professionals program at Hartford Hospital.  All told, I was out of my classroom for at least a month or two, and because my principal was on my side, I still had a job when I got back to school.

In 2016, I took an herbal supplement that was supposed to help my brain stay healthy.  It was supposed to help me think better and avoid Alzheimer's, which I'm afraid of because my grandfather and his sister both suffered greatly from that affliction.  Unfortunately, it also wreaked havoc on my mind.  It made me think, again, that I could change the world and didn't have to listen to anybody else.  I racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt helping others by buying hundreds of dollars of McDonalds to feed folks who were hungry, paying for people at CVS a few times, and helping people who didn't really deserve it too.  Again, I was unable to continue at school, and again, I ended up in a hospital wing which took my shoelaces, belt, and pride.  I had a few harmless interactions with the law, mostly made innocuous by my friends, family, and others that care for me.  Luckily, I had friends who recognized the signs and confronted me before I was all the way gone, where I would listen to reason (mostly).  I eventually worked my way back to the classroom, and though I got middle school remediation instead of my normal job upon my return, I did manage to keep my job and not lose what I'd built over a 14 year career. 

The other harmful thing that happens nearly every year is winter depression.  I generally hibernate like a bear, sleeping more than I'd like, and get less active.  With this lack of activity comes some flabbiness, unhappiness and an unwillingness to do anything about it.  I'm not mean or ornery, but I'm basically blase - unexcited and unmovable.  This leads to me being more boring than I'd like as a teacher, and less willing and less able to explain things to the class in full detail, or loudly, or well - which I'm perfectly capable of - but don't believe I'm good at - during these bouts of depression.  In fact, there's very little I think I'm good at at these times.  I beat myself up for being too fat, too ugly, too stupid and logey, too uninteresting, or whatever else I can think of to self flagellate.  At any rate, this reduces my effectiveness as a teacher, as well as as a person. 

I suppose the solution to all of this is resiliency.  My psychiatrist has chosen it as the name of his practice, with good reason.  Every time a high has made me ashamed of my actions, I have had to persist until I got over it.  I never forget fully, but I can stop beating myself up about it.  Every time a low has made me think I have nothing good to offer the world, I have had to be resilient until I overcome it and get balance again.  Perhaps this is my lesson to offer the world: persist.  Be resilient, even in the face of insurmountable odds.  It has led me to help educate thousands of students, despite a malady that keeps many from steady work, or from working at all.  I could easily give in to this monster in my head, but I refuse. 

Anyhow, thanks for reading - I hope it's helpful, or at least interesting, to you. 

Have a great day,

Mark

Optimism in the face of negativity

Hi all,

It's been a long time since I blogged.  I guess I feel the need to get this off my chest.  I like to believe that the world, and people in it, are good.  Sometimes things happen that challenge that belief, but I think it's still important to maintain it.  For instance.  My significant other has an ex husband that is not a very nice person.  He seems to put what's best for him above what's best for their 6 year old daughter.  Instead of being able to move her to a 6 acre field with a garden and a swingset, he wants her to stay in his town, where she lives next to a halfway house, drug deals and a neighborhood riddled with crime and sex offenders.  Well, I find it hard to believe that he'd actually make that choice if he'd carefully evaluated the options for the safety and security of his daughter.  But in effect, this is what his choices have led to.  Instead of being able to move and halve her rent, my significant other needs to stay in his town or a 20 minute radius, so that he has easy access to his daughter . . . despite the fact that usually parents can only block out of state moves.  In fact, no one I have talked to about this has ever heard of a ruling like this.  How can I understand his motives and come up with anything other than self interest and selfishness?  I want to believe he has his daughter's best interest at heart . . . but wouldn't that lead to a decision that leaves her mother with more time, more help, and less cost, even if it meant that he'd have to drive a little more?

At any rate, I'm struggling to see the good, but I hope I can.  Even though it makes my life harder and more expensive, I guess I have to keep believing that what seems selfish and short sighted might have some motives I'm not seeing.

snow day gratitude, and how to keep on keeping on

Good morning all,

I hope this snowy New England day finds you all well.  As a teacher, I find that sometimes my life is pretty good.  Snow days are the best surprise days off ever.  This one happened to coincide with a generally tired mood, and some overall frustration with the profession/life.  In short, necessary or not, it felt like it. 

In response, I'm trying to find all the positivity and inspiration I can during the day today.  My girlfriend and her family help with this, as does just having a break from the students.  It's the time of year that unerringly leads to strife between teacher and student.  Everyone's cooped up together, and there isn't enough sun time and active time for everyone to be happy.  Maybe I'm personalizing a bit, but it seems to me that no matter what students I have, how interesting I think my lesson plans are, and how well prepared and research based my instruction, this is a time of year where the best laid plains of mice and men are subverted by the season. 

I want to be the reason kids want to come to school, to learn things.  I want to find the passion I have for math and for teaching it, and share that with my students.  Instead, I seem to be finding naught but roadblocks and anger and frustration at not understanding.  Worse, the students aren't emotionally mature enough to realize that their frustration should be directed inwardly to help them find more motivation, instead of outwardly at me and what a terrible teacher I am. 

So how do I find and keep the joy it requires to let the strife, teenage angst and stress of my job wash over me?  Maybe today I'll start by watching the snow gently rest on the ground, its fractal nature coalescing in such lovely preponderance. 

Have a lovely day all,

~Mark