The only way out

So many things are on the "not any more" list... some of them I've been able to "sort of" deal with, but this one is a BIG one.

The latest addition to the "not any more" list. It's finally sinking in... High-school teaching. I don't do that, any more.

Definitely high time that I faced that. I've known it was coming for a while, but now the time to say the final farewell to the office, to the classroom, to the whole place, has finally, inescapably come. Doesn't matter that I've known it was coming, and have been working on it for a while. Still... it's hard. Really hard.

And I think I'm actually, finally, starting to deal with this properly...

Mourning.

My state is making my walking not so good, my dealing with the world (just in simple, practical terms) worse than it's been in a while. I hope I can go to the block-away grocery store tomorrow, and get something to make for dinner tomorrow. I think I can. I'm not sure if I can. And I may not be able to...

But that's OK.

Gonna go back to the school Monday, do a final bit of office cleaning. Not a lot of that left to do, fortunately, probably just one or two not-really-that big loads to haul home. Things that added life to my classroom and my office... some books, a couple of posters. The pad I bought so I'd have something comfortable to lie down on, in case I needed to use the floor for more than "walking."

I saw something in the last Harry Potter book... Harry's musing on how he, and Voldemort, and Snape, all regarded Hogwarts as home—the only real home any of them ever had. This school wasn't, thank goodness, my "only" or "real" home, but it definitely was home. Even now, in summer get-ready-for-next-year mode, it's home, because I spent many summers doing just that, there.

But it's not home any more. Not the way it used to be, anyway. And I still have to really and truly process that.

But that's OK, too.

Sometimes the only way out... is through.