the Struggle...

 Although I had a traumatic childhood, and life had been tough for me, until the age of 25, in the past 2 and half decades I have fallen on my feet, as it were, and these days enjoy all the comforts of  a middle-class middle-aged married woman, who has raised 2 children, who part-owns a couple of properties, and spends good money on good food and good shoes. I have passed through the treacherous waters that is a "mid-life crisis", have seen my kids out of home into independence, and I have embraced the uncomfortable facts about ageing and losing the youth I never felt that I had quite experienced. I have welcomed the next phase of this adventure, life, and have undertaken projects and pursuits which have greatly enhanced and extended me as a person.
 It doesn't end here though...so I've found.
 The odyssey, if you like, is just beginning.
 Somehow, I have managed to find myself neck deep in the quest to become a teacher, a goal I have had tantalisingly dangling in front of me for pretty much all my life. It never went away, properly, in spite of me dodging its inevitability over the years. I even enrolled in a Nursing degree, completing 1 year, and worked as a part-time nursing assistant for a few years, (which I loved). The nine years I spent working in a supporting role as an integration aide were fulfilling and challenging in many ways, but only served to remind me of what I hadn't yet become, and might yet be. Like a thorn in my side, the "vocation" kept "calling" me back, to an idea that was birthed in my heart, at the age of 18.
 And so, here I am, doing what I said for a decade I probably wouldn't do, working my butt off to get into a position where, as a middle aged woman, I will then be working even harder to find and keep that elusive teaching job, which, I fully believe, will be very tough work!
 I smile as I write all this... I have always had a love/ hate relationship with the idea of  "hard work". I hate that people can find themselves in situations where their quality of life is severely hog-tied by the fact that they can not get a job where they are valued, where they feel useful, and where they enjoy the fruits of their labours. I have worked in such jobs only once or twice in my life, but I know many who do this, year in year out. They pay their bills, they go to Bali, they see their 'super' grow. And they stay grey inside. You don't see them all week, and you know that they won't have one single thing they could tell you about their working week that was interesting, or different. They might be grateful for their job, but did their job feed their soul, did it extend them as a person? Isn't that 40 + hours a week they could have been getting meaning out of life, instead of feeding the capitalist machine?
 Ok, apart from the obvious "socialist" flavour to my sentiments here, I am really not judging your values, but I am reading my own feelings into the "worker-ant" take on life...and I know it was never meant for me...
...And so this is what I'm doing...
 Half-way into a teaching placement at a well funded school in an extremely low-economic area, and my world is turned upside down, yet again, I have to say, I wouldn't be anywhere else for all the tea in China. I wouldn't be doing anything else. The richness of experience I am enjoying right now tops anything I have ever done. I have to write lesson plans and deliver them next week to the toughest audience I have met yet. Forty kids, MOST of whom have had to endure trauma and suffering that no children should ever have to. Things that sadly, I can personally relate to. And I adore these kids. I know each one's name, and although many have emotional, behavioural issues, I can also visualise them as becoming wonderful adults.
 I know I haven't bitten off more than I can chew. Yes, I have assignments pending, yes, I have an infection in my sinuses, I am sleeping poorly, and I am emotional, BUT I am... I am GROWING....and since when did growing ever feel comfortable?