Note to self: eat and sleep

I've stayed till six or past every night this week, not because I wanted to, or even because I meant to. I just don't know how to leave. There was a time when I was getting better at just walking away from it all, but I feel like I've regressed from that point. What's frustrating is that I'll stay and work but feel like I'm spinning my wheels, nothing gets accomplished. Although today I did finally accomplish two tedious tasks that I had been insistently avoiding since the new year.

Yesterday I got SO MAD when I realized I had saved over a lesson that I'd spent a good 30 minutes on. Usually I'm a little more zen about things like that, but I could not let it go. As I rode home under the train tracks on Roosevelt Avenue and the 7 clattered and roared above me I screamed into the wind just to hear my voice get lost in it. It was like the old days, the period I refer to as the "dark times," when I would ride home from work repeating to myself over and over again "Forget! Forget! Forget!" like a crazed, desperate mantra, hoping the wind in my face would somehow clear the clutter from my mind.

I realized later I hadn't eaten for hours and then probably not enough, and that was a large source of the problem. I fell asleep at 8:30pm and slept for ten hours and, miracle of miracles, today was a lot better.

I loved them today, they all seemed so precious and unique. Sh-- did an extra credit report on Gandhi (by report, I mean printing ten pages off the internet, but it's initiative nonetheless, and made me happy since he's Indian, too). N--- noticed symbolism in the read aloud. A--- returned from a month in Bangladesh and clung to me when I hugged her welcome back. She seemed wide-eyed and dazed and still far away, as anyone might after returning from such a journey, and after meeting all those relatives for the first time. Later she threw up, probably more from anxiety than from any kind of virus.

They do follow you home, though. You close your eyes, and there they are. You try to eat dinner and check your email and you hear their voices. They sneak up on you, get into your head and won't get out. Scenes from the day or last week or last month swirl around in your mind as if they're trapped - a bee who can't find its way back to the open window, or a tornado inside a jar.