The Side-Effects of My Job

I think I'm finally starting to get settled in my job. For the first two weeks or so, they had me at one school, learning the program there. Then in the past two weeks they've started to send me to other schools, including a lock-down facility. That took a bit more time to adjust to, because I'm not so good at change. Ironically, I thrive on variety, but I hate new situations if it means I don't know what I'm doing. At any rate, I thought I was handling it all pretty well. Sometimes I was frustrated by the fact that my unfamiliarity with the different schools made it hard for me to do much more than sit there and watch for seven hours, but I didn't think I was too stressed out by the kids themselves. After all, I realized once I started working, that most of the classrooms and especially the lock-down facility are so tightly structured that I'm probably safer there than I am in the halls of most public high schools.

But my subconscious revealed that I was a bit more shaken by the experience than I realized. Twice in my second week of work and then again right after I went to the lock-down facility for the first time, I woke up in the middle of the night and was creeped out by the fact that there was a man in my bed. I had no idea who the guy next to me was and I would start to panic, my mind trying to think who it could be. Of course it was my husband, but I remember trying to reason with myself: "You know this person [but who is he?]. You agreed to marry him [when did I do that?]. It's okay. You can go back to sleep." And then exhaustion would overtake me. One night, I even tried to remember whether it was an A day or B day at school (block schedule), as if that might help me figure out who the guy was. And the third time it happened, I was better at reasoning through my temporary amnesia. I seem to have moved past that stress because I haven't had another such episode in the last week, but in those moments, I realized what it really means to feel bumfuzzled.