Wanted: Days of Yore

All at once tonight, in the midst of a good Facebook scroll, all the change in my life hit me like a huge truck and I couldn't figure out why or what was going on with my emotions.  Was it just the dust getting into my eyes that caused them to get a bit teary?  Was it just the exhaustion that a week full of go-go-go workdays hold?

No...no, I feared it was all stemming from that dirty word...change.

As I was doing my last Facebook skim for the evening, I noticed several of my Facebook friends (who are in education) were writing about their Open House night at the various schools they teach at.  Their statuses were indeed glorious, sweet posts about the general excitement this night brings.  Statuses brimming with smiles discussing seeing old students and how they're getting back into the swing of the life they have created at their school.  They wrote the post I would have written if I were still at one of my previous schools.

But...I'm not.

So, for the second year in a row, I will not be seeing my sweet former students who boost my confidence for the new year.  I will not be greeted by, "HEY MS. B!!" or "I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!!"  I had a good 5 year stretch of those sentiments.  Rather, tomorrow night, I will be greeted with new faces and see a hallway full of big kids with smiles, running to greet their former educators.

I don't know how this post sounds.  Maybe I sound bitter...I'm not.  Maybe I sound mopey...I'm not (okay, I am a bit).  I don't, BY ANY MEANS, want this to sound like I regret my decision or I'm not so, so excited to begin my journey within the halls of Freedom, I most definitely am.  I just miss those little things that working at a school for a number of years bring.  I have "mourned" my status as a veteran teacher within a school for the past two years.  It was hard last year and it's hard this year.

The thing is...life takes different directions.  I would've never guessed this time last year that I would be sitting in Morganton getting ready to begin my (hopefully long) tenure at Freedom.  The past several months have been the strangest ride so far in my life.

It just hits me sometimes.  How much I miss the "familiarity" that years of being at the same school brings.  But, I have to remember that this was exactly how it was my first year at Rockingham.  By the next year, I had kids coming back to see me.  I had developed more student-teacher relationships.  So, for now, I will just be a little jealous.  I'll be a little envious of the teachers tomorrow night who get those greetings and hellos at their doors.  I'll mourn the days of yore when that was me.  I'm guessing they'll be a few times that I get to missing my babies who really aren't babies anymore.  But I'll be okay.  I'll be ready to embrace this new journey and trust that in the end, it'll all be worth it.

#herewego