The Link

"I'm telling you as your boss and someone who might potentially consider you a friend, take some down time....Trust me I learned the hard way. A scientist stays objective. We can't be ruled by emotion. But I put ten years of my life into that school. They called me Sadunook. It means mother. That kind of pain reaches back through the link."


Sometimes I take my work home with me. I’m not sure how many people can relate to that, but for some of us who work in service-oriented career fields it’s an inevitable part of the job. I try to decompress after each day. Erase my memory and start with a clean slate each morning, because if not I will be hung up on the failures of yesterday and never be able to get to the successes of today. Working with children it’s sort of an ongoing battle between being productive and succumbing to an overwhelming reality that suggests these children aren’t really placed in the best position to do well.

Yeah, I take my work home with me. Their link connects me as I pace through my apartment eating a bowl of Corn Flakes. I don’t want it to because I’m afraid what it may do to me. I got my job by the teacher before me choosing to admit defeat. I keep telling myself I am not that weak, but each night I understand more and more how one could come to believe that idea. I see the children’s faces all the time. Every time I try to play a videogame or watch a movie or just try to talk to somebody about my life outside of my place of employment I find my thoughts wandering to the pupils whose gains or losses feel weighted on my shoulders. The paraprofessional in my classroom told me about how she has been awakened in the middle of the night by notions of the students. She is often worried they will make poor decisions. She frets their behavior will never change and they will become one of the many news stories we see on NY1 of an unnamed minor gunned down or locked up. This rollercoaster swallows up sane reasoning that just tells you to brush your teeth and get in the bed.

In Avatar, Dr. Grace is urging Jake Sully to take a moment or two for himself, lest his work become a disappointment. I know what that’s like. Oftentimes I become so emotionally invested I can’t decide when to keep caring. And I feel it almost every day in class now. I have to out-loud literally talk myself into still caring. All of my kids don’t want to learn, but sometimes their obstinate attitudes suggest I shouldn’t even bother wasting my time. This job is truly a labor of love. And agape love is the most difficult thing to try to engrain into my being. It sort of makes me feel bad. I, a believer, have trouble loving someone despite how they treat me. It’s my burden. It seeps through everything that I do. No matter how hard I push to block it out—even after Mr. King takes off his tie and hangs up his suit—it’s there. After I take off the persona of Mister King, MJ still feels that panging twinge in his heart. I don't know what to do about this sensation....