Time to Try Again

Friends, I retired. 

It was the hard­est thing I’ve ever done. 

31 years old and retired. 

Liv­ing the dream? Hmmm.

It’s not like this should have come as a shock to me, this whole retire­ment thing, but some­how it still hit me like a tidal wave. Most unfor­tu­nate­ly I was not wear­ing water wings, nor was I pre­pared with an indus­tri­al strength pool noodle. 

(Because obvi­ous­ly those things would pro­tect me from a tidal wave. Duh.)

I’ve always known that my (for­mer) coun­ty only held your spot for 24 months of long term dis­abil­i­ty, but I nev­er in my wildest dreams thought it would apply to me. 

I mean, I knew the details, because, um hel­lo? I have an affin­i­ty for post-it notes and high­lighters. I do not miss details. 

But I always dis­re­gard­ed those details because clear­ly they weren’t going to apply to me! Every­thing is turn­ing around! I’ll be back in no time! Go-go-gad­get stomach!

Oops. 

In Jan­u­ary I got a call that includ­ed two of the following:

A. Tears from me

B. Free puppies

C. A unicorn 

D. A stern­ly word­ed lecture

(I know it’s a tough one, take your time — I nev­er liked mul­ti­ple choice either)

So appar­ent­ly when you retire, you are sup­posed to apply for these things. Also you are sup­posed to do this months in advance. In fact, at the exact moment that I went out on short term dis­abil­i­ty, I was sup­posed to start apply­ing for retire­ment, ya know, just in case. 

Just to review — when I was 28 and lying in a hos­pi­tal bed after some­one jammed a hose through my stom­ach, that’s when I was sup­posed to think “hey, I should apply for retirement!”

Good, now we are all on the same page.

But all (some­what jad­ed) sar­casm aside, it was the fur­thest thing from my mind. For the entire dura­tion of short term dis­abil­i­ty, I was just busy­ing myself with a few med­ical cat­a­stro­phes before I would return to teach­ing. Or at least that’s how it felt in my mind. 

I nev­er, in a mil­lion years, thought I would­n’t be back in a week, a month, a year…ever?

It nev­er even crossed my mind. Not once.

Short term dis­abil­i­ty turned into long term dis­abil­i­ty, and even when I decid­ed to go back to school and become a health coach, there was an een­sy-ween­sy part of me that thought how great it would be to use all that I had learned with my stu­dents and col­leagues, and health coach part time while I was teaching. 

(Which hel­lo, should have been my first clue that my retire­ment was immi­nent. Clear­ly I’ve been out of the class­room long enough to think for even a frac­tion of a sec­ond that I could both health coach AND teach ele­men­tary school. Ha.)

As the most recent months crept clos­er and clos­er to May 15^th, it was always in the back of my mind, but I kept it there on purpose. 

Except when I was fill­ing out the 293,847 papers nec­es­sary for retire­ment. And doing things like decid­ing who got my ben­e­fits upon my death, and if I want­ed them to get mon­ey all at once or in lit­tle “gifts” over the years –> ya know, like a lit­tle gold box that explodes with con­fet­ti upon open­ing it, “Sur­prise! Dead per­son money!”

Suu­u­u­u­per uplifting. 

Then it happened. 

And instead of writ­ing, to heal and process, I fell off the face of the earth. 

Yes, post-retire­ment some­one did secret­ly attach a high speed motor to my ham­ster wheel, and life has been Chaos with a cap­i­tal C, but most­ly I’ve been hiding. 

I won’t lie about it. 

(But if you’re respon­si­ble for the wheel motor, we need to have some words. I’ll bring cook­ies if you play nice.)

No, I did­n’t write because I was busy. 

I did­n’t write because writ­ing made it real. 

So very raw, and authen­ti­cal­ly real.

I always imag­ined that when I retired from teach­ing, it would be this big, fes­tive cel­e­bra­tion. I would have a par­ty, and my fam­i­ly, fel­low col­leagues and I would lift our glass­es to a suc­cess­ful career of teach­ing, while my hus­band and I began dream­ing about our retire­ment life of trav­el, grand­chil­dren, and excitement.

On the plus side, my sweet hus­band brought me flow­ers and a retire­ment card. 

(Sor­ry ladies, he’s all mine!)

So no, this did not go as planned. 

And it has been hard. 

Real­ly hard. 

[I can nei­ther con­firm, nor deny, an increase in Sweet Free­dom baked good consumption…]

But now the shock is start­ing to wear off, and I’m not hiding.

I want to swim back to shore.

I’m ready to get back to living.

My out­er world has changed, but not my inner world. I can’t let being a teacher sole­ly define who I am and what I believe in, for if it did, then this would destroy me.

And I won’t let it.

I have a lot more liv­ing, and lov­ing, and laugh­ing to do.

[Also cook­ie con­sump­tion. Equal­ly rank­ing in importance]

So teach­ing was my first try. 

I gave it my all, and I had big plans that went so severe­ly off course.

But now I have big plans for health coach­ing, and my busi­ness, and although it’s not the road I planned, it is now the road I choose.

So I’m going to take a big ol’ gulp of green juice.

I’m going to put on my big-kid pants.

I’m going to swim back to shore.

And I’m going to try again.