Project Semicolon

So about a week ago, my brother posted the following "A semicolon represents a sentence the author could have ended, but chose not to. The sentence is your life and the author is you." I'd never seen this before but it certainly has a very profound meaning and impact to me and my family.  I mentioned this a bit in a previous post of mine, but five years ago my mother took her own life after struggling with depression.  I knew how my mother struggled, I watched her go through a painful divorce and become a shell of her former self.  She did her best to put on the brave face but ultimately she didn't feel that she could fight any longer.  Suicide leaves those around to go through a plethora of emotions.  There's the obvious pain and sadness that centers around death, but it's not that simple.  There's such conflict as you want to blame someone or something like a disease but that isn't available, you're left blaming that person, and it's hard to pile onto the woman who was my role model and strongest supporter.  And these feelings endure, five years later, I still feel the wide array of emotions as my mother never got to see me become a teacher even though we talked about me changing careers, wasn't there for my wedding, never got to meet her grandkids.  It's something that I live with, and have tried to learn from those lessons.
I bring all this up as I stumbled upon the hashtag #semicolonedu which looks at bringing awareness to teachers & educators that suffer from mental health issues and hopes to eliminate the stigma behind MHI.  There have been great posts, particularly by @thenerdyteacher and @Joe_Mazza about their own struggles and I think one of the great things is you have several other educators that have the courage to speak up about their own demons.  I'm no different, for the better part of a decade I've fought my own battles with depression.  I've thankfully never gotten to the point that my mother did, but it's something that constantly is present.  For me, it's a general apathy and anxiety that I fight.  So many times when I could be doing something productive or necessary, I end up sitting around doing nothing, wasting time on mindless games on my phone or doing the same sporcle quiz I've done a dozen times to avoid the task ahead of me.  Now I've gotten better and learned to cope and fight this as time as gone on, but it's still a struggle.  It's something that led me to the complacency that caused my failures as a college coach and my firing ultimately.  But because of that, I found my way to teaching, something I feel I was always meant to do, it just took me too long to find the courage to go back to school and get it done.  And oddly enough, that anxiety and apathy disappears when I'm in the classroom.  I've found my element, I'm not worried about failing as I was before, I'm no longer afraid to talk to people I don't know all that well, worrying about the impressions that I'll make.  I have a confidence and an activity level that help me fight through it, which I can't say I ever really had.  It's still funny, and probably odd, that I'm still such an introvert in "real" life while I'm loud and engaging when I'm teaching and at work.  But everyday I try to stay sharp, I've gotten a passion back for reading and for running (although getting out the door some days is near impossible), I spend time playing with my kids taking care of them over the summer.  At times, it's tough since I have little contact with anyone other than the twins during the summer, but they help give me perspective.  They need the best Dad, I can't slack for them.  And so I try to learn from the unfortunate and tragic lessons of my mother, and keep a focus going forward each day.  I mentioned previously the quote that my mother and I found and used it to try and inspire us as we struggled together with our issues.  I've since gotten it permanently done as a reminder to me around the tree of life.  I'm excited for my next tattoo as well; a semicolon.  Life could've stopped with my mother's death, I was out of work and as the one living closest to her, the executor of her will.  Life appeared to be in several different pieces and I know I had no clue what the future held for me.  I'm proud that rather than fall into the pits and traps that she did, I've used it more as motivation to live life to my potential, and enjoy everything about it.  It's so much easier said than done, as there are still days, weeks, months that are difficult and I feel myself slide into that creature that wasted away as life passed him by.  And I know that every day will continue to be a test.  I think I was once foolish enough to believe that I'd "beaten" my depression.  I know that's never going to happen, but hopefully I'll have the strength and confidence in my life to push through the down times.  It's a battle and challenge that I know I have to win, for my story is far from finished.

I truly thank you for reading, it's been very therapeutic to finally write about my mother.  For those looking for more teaching stuff, I'm hoping to do my first podcast Thursday.  I'll try to post something afterwards with it and my initial reflections on it.