Purgatory

I didn't think it'd be easy. I didn't think it would be this hard. In my head, I guess I just thought it would feel like every other transitional period I've gone through. But it doesn't.

Sometimes, just for a minute, I find peace. Then, reality and doubt collide, and I'm left to pick up the pieces and try to hold it together, swimming through this limbo summer the best I can. I feel like a part of me, the strongest part, is missing. Just, gone. Feel free to reference a Thanos snap if you want.

It's been almost 4 months since I found out I was losing my teaching job. A lot of things have happened, including witnessing some incredible people overcoming an impossible situation. I was able to do my part, to finish my own story in those halls and classrooms. It was an amazing sacrifice, an unrivaled experience, and it's over. I no longer am an instructor at my alma mater.

And it hurts.

Truth be told, a lot of things are better since the end of that chapter. I get to see my kids every day, get to tuck them in bed almost every night, and I get to choose when I work. I have more time for my clients, and I have been filling my time with as many clients as I can. I get to watch my daughter play her soccer games (which is hysterical), go on walks with my family, go to pretty much any concert I want to without conflict, and am dangerously close to having a routine.

Sounds pretty great, right? For the most part, it is pretty awesome. My kids love it, my wife loves it, and I...well, love most of it.

And yet, this gaping hole in my heart seems to drain, or at least siphon the joy that I feel. I'm not one to feel satisfied normally, so it's not a surprise that I don't feel content. But I do feel like I should be feeling some sense of peace, some sense of belonging with what I'm doing. My passion seems to be ebbing out, dulling the joy that I always thought I would feel doing all of these things.

This is all starting to sound like a setup for a Dashboard Confessional record.

Let me clarify.

I don't want to go back to working weird hours, being away from my family, having no time for anything else. What I am really trying to get around to saying is that I miss the strength I got from those things. When I was in the classroom, I knew exactly what needed to be done, what I wanted to do, what I needed to do, and I could look in the mirror and know who I was. I gained a lot of strength knowing my mission, knowing that I could complete it, and knowing that I could repeat it.

And now, a big part of that strength has been removed. The mission, the purpose; it feels different. It feels like everything I am doing is for survival, and not for the bigger picture.

It's like I am reading the Lord of the Rings, but starting with Return of the King instead of Fellowship of the Ring. The gist is there, and you kind of get what's going on, but trying to fill in the holes is difficult and tenuous at best. I know what I should feel, what I should see, but it's hard to make sense of it. I'm also no Frodo.

When I'm not working on a client or spending time with my family, it's in the quiet moments that the emptiness creeps in. Driving home from work. Quietly laying in bed. Even on a family camping trip, the free time became my own prison, my own personal purgatory. In large part, I find myself horribly distracted by this chasm I keep falling in to. This distraction creates a HUGE wave of apathy or papercuts of sorrow.

It's these in-betweens that are killing me. It's in the in-betweens I see my school family all moving on and excelling in new ways in new places (I am so proud of all of you), and yet I am still grieving, still suffering. Trying to decide who I want to be or who I should be in those moments stings with every second that slips by.

I feel like I am caught in a daily loop, going through the same cycle day to day. I am who I am at home; I am who I am at work. But who is in-between? This cycle is like tripping on the same step day after day, or slipping on the same patch of ice over and over again.

The issue here, like I said, isn't truly about teaching. If that was it, I would just find somewhere else to teach.

As I said, it's not about teaching. That's just the proverbial name on the grave. For me, I think, my problem stems from a sense of belonging, from a sense of purpose. Identity.

You know me. Some of you better than others, but still. We all know I'm not exactly an orthodox person. I have spent the majority of my life looking for a place to call my own, a place that I fit, somewhere I belong. The school was the first place that felt like it could be that place.

In a lot of ways, I found myself during my years there. I didn't have to be anything other than me to have a place there. Maybe it was my coworkers, my friends, my students...I don't know. But I belonged there.

So if I truly did find myself there, why would my sense of belonging disappear without it? Wouldn't it become a part of me? That I belong to myself?

From a rational place, this would be the part where I say that I belong where I am: as a father, as a husband, as a bodyworker. And I do. I love being a dad, and I love the work that I do. But outside of those occupied moments, the in-betweens take their toll.

I know who I am as a father, as the head of my little family.
I know who I am when I am working on my clients.
I can see the overall composition of what this puzzle creates, but it's like I am missing a single piece.

This is the part where some people start thinking "Wow, mental health much?" To which I say, always, and also, dead wrong.

My mind has its issues, but it's my soul looking for comfort right now. There aren't pills you can take to give you a sense of direction or belonging. There isn't really a way to sit on a couch and talk to someone enough to fill in what feels like anti-matter in your sense of identity.

What I am looking for is still the same thing that I've always looked for; my own place in this world. Not as a father, not as a bodyworker, or a musician, an author, or anything else that I do. It's about who I am as a human being.

I belong to my family.
I belong in my field.
I belong in my passions.
Why don't I feel like I belong to myself?

This all feels very trivial to me. I am irritated with myself as I read over these words because I know how they sound. "What the hell does it matter who you are on your drive home from work? Aren't you the same all the time?"

And that, my friends, is the point. Without that sense of identity in the in-between moments, I don't feel complete in all of the identity-solid ones. These holes reduce the stability of the other moments, preventing the feeling of being whole.

I get it. Everyone goes through times of questioning who they are and who they want to be. I'm not vain enough to think that this hard time makes me different than anyone else. But I don't live anyone else's life. I live mine. And right now, I am trying to live it the best way that I can. My life belongs to me, but I am struggling because I don't feel like I belong to my life.

This summer has been truly difficult. I will find my way through the dark days, as I have done my whole life. I will find my way out of Purgatory and back to the land of the living. I will do what I do best; put my head down and go to work. That's the easy part. I will either find the missing piece or carve a new one. These things take time. But today, I will ask questions that may not have answers.

Thank you so much to everyone who has reached out to me over the last few months, shared their love, or just taken the time to check up on me. I have amazing friends. You all mean the world to me. I am so lucky to have you in my life.


Sb.