Tough Decisions

You know those moments when you have to make one of two choices, and neither is good? So you feel like you're trying to make the least-worst one that will offend the fewest people in the smallest way, but you still know it's going to hurt others and whatever your decision, it's going to suck.

That's me right now. It's kind-of a long story, but I made a decision at the end of last week that will seriously affect a lot of people, and not least of all my future. It wasn't an easy one to make, but I'm confident that it was the lesser of two evils. At least, I've made my decision, and now the fallout is hitting, and I feel about 300 times more awful for it. There are people who are furious with me, and I kind-of wish I could tell them I understand. I'm furious with me too. My decision caused me to quit on and disappoint a lot of others, and most of all, to abandon my students who seriously need some stable, loving, supportive adults in their lives. But the thing is, as I was, I was not a stable adult. I was (and still am) emotionally and psychologically unstable due to circumstances that had absolutely nothing to do with the students, teachers, and administration around me, but which had to do with my readiness to tackle teaching entirely on my own where other student teachers were not. I was being expected to dive into it entirely on my own with very little guidance and very little structure, even when I was trying to reach out for it. The problem was that I was diving in and sinking, not swimming. And I figure that if I'm sinking, my students eventually will, too. I have to feel and be competent in my teaching before I can build their competence.