Wednesday 19 March 2008

Stress - it's all relative

Stress? Before the outbreak I used to think I was stressed. Rushing around with the kids; marking homework; managing behaviour; completing mindless paperwork; keeping the house - they all contributed to what I thought were high levels of stress. How wrong I was! With the benefit of hindsight I now realise that they were completely stress free. My favourite recurring dream is thinking of us all around the house, trying to get ready for the day: snatching breakfast on the move; fighting over the bathroom; helping with last minute homework; and a quick kiss before we all went on our way. It's after this dream that waking up is such a nightmare.

Stress now takes the form of whether or not we will have enought to eat; will we have power to heat the house; will kids turn up at school tomorrow or die in their homes. The images from yesterday keep flashing back and trigger so many of my own pictures that I've been trying to keep suppressed. So how am I managing - especially when I thought I was near my stress threshold in my past life? It's a recurring question and one which makes me wonder what I might have been able to achieve if I had only known I'd had all this spare capacity within me.

At least in this world there are no trivial complaints - "no one has cleaned my room", "My photocopying is late", "I hate Class 3B". I think we all quietly realise how lucky we are to be here and although it's never spoken we just accept our situation and focus upon making the best of it - come to think of it I've never heard a complaint since we opened the school.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I take it everyone is dead then and this story has been put out of its misery? Have you read Blindness by Jose Saramago? Shit in the streets and people killing each other for food.. shitty murderous real humanity in a crisis and not a school in sight.