I Burnt Out Twice Before I Realized What Was Missing
Failing isn’t always what you think
“It’s not depression.” I wiped at the endless river of tears on my cheeks. It was as if someone else was in control of my body. These tears weren’t mine. I wasn’t sad.
The doctor leant forward and handed me a tissue. “I think it might be, Kelly. You’re burnt out,” she said. She sat in silence and waited. For what, I had no idea. I shook my head, every piece of the situation rattled and shattered in my mind like windows in an inferno: I’d been so exhausted for the last few months of teacher’s college, yesterday I’d yelled at the class on my teaching practice, and then the crying had started. The emotionless surge of tears. Depression was feeling sad, right? I was nothing. I was scorched remains.
A few months earlier, one of my lecturers handed me a slip of paper with my final five-week placement on it. I was almost done. Three years of teacher’s college and three years of simultaneous university papers had been overwhelming, but now my degree was one school placement away. I read the paper and smiled; I’d been hoping to get a charter school, a school with a special focus such as a religious or environmental one. It was the one placement I hadn’t experienced yet. St Anne’s was a small Catholic school in a poor area of town, the kind of place I was…
