Lysol Wipes and a Secret

No one knows what the F%&*! they’re doing.

I’ve been reading Emily P. Freeman’s, “The Next Right Thing,” very slowly over the last few months and the chapter that has stayed with me encouraged the reader that it’s ok to be a beginner. To admit that you don’t know all the things. To start over and have to ask for help or clarification.

As an Enneagram 3- I hate this advice. Loathe it. I would rather bury myself under the weight of expectation and stay up all night googling something to then show up the next day exhausted, but informed. This has been my way.

My way stopped working over a year ago.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been a High School English teacher for the majority of my adult life. In all transparency, it was my plan B that quickly became my plan A when I made the very grown-up decision to get married at 22, during my senior year of college, and one of us needed to not work at the mall.

It was an easy decision on the surface. I love the content. I could teach The Odyssey all day and cry every single time I get to Book 12 when Circe describes in great detail how Odysseus can usurp all obstacles in his way to get home to his wife and son; leaving her broken-hearted, and behind. The conversations we had about how, if Odysseus would have only lived in our day and age to have received the kind of mental health support he needed for his war-time PTSD, we would have had a much different story. I love how stories bring humanity to the forefront.

I believe to this day that being a great communicator in both verbal and written forms is the single most powerful skill to become an effective and empathic global citizen and it was nothing short of joy to feel that kind of authority on a day-to-day basis. I also, love teenagers. In an inordinate, nearly uncomfortable kind of way. I love their aggression and swagger; their insecurities and their acne. I love watching bonds between them form and knowingly assert which groups will still be meeting in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot when they’re in their 60’s and which ones won’t remember each other’s names in a few years.

That’s perhaps why it was shocking to me and those who know me when, after the last academic year in 2021, I bowed out of education for a while to catch my breath.

I’m still standing on the corner, looking in, breathing heavy.

Teachers have always had so much to contend with outside of what our actual job entailed. The pandemic years just highlighted what was wrong; so much so, that for me, I needed to re-evaluate.

In truth, I thought that by now, in 2022, I would know at least where I would be headed. I thought I would have ironed out decisions. I thought I would have a certain peace. I thought so many things that just aren’t true.

I found myself wandering Target at 9 a.m. this morning lost in these thoughts and before I could stop myself, I audibly heard my own voice proclaim,

“I don’t know what the f%&*! I’m doing.”

A very sweet sales associate overheard me so I had to make up a quick story about finding Lysol wipes; to which he responded by actually leading me around the store and putting them in my cart himself. Sweetheart.

To those of you who really thought you’d have figured shit out by now, and did your own version of the Target-amble, I am with you. Let’s attempt to take Emily’s advice- though it cuts to my literal core to be considered a beginner at anything.

It’s ok not to know. It’s ok not to know the first step in order TO know. It’s ok to buy the Lysol wipes so that people don’t think there’s something else wrong with you other than your life’s direction.

And it’s more than ok to ask for help. To seek it out, even. To reach out to people and say, “Hi. I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I’m having a pre-midlife crisis in a not a nervous-breakdown or buy a car kinda way, but more of, I don’t know what I’m doing. Can I talk it out with you?”

The ones who don’t run scared are your people. The ones who draft you a new resume, who drop your name in circles, who make your family dinner and drop it off are family.

Love to you all.