meltdown.

Today was the hardest day I've had since I got here - but not the way you'd think. I was up late last night putting together a test that probably shouldn't have been my responsibility and a couple of lesson plans, including today's, but it all came together. Along with my teammate Heather, I co-led two great, productive review sessions. My class was bouncing off the walls by the time I got there to teach, as they had just finished the test and it was the last hour of a warm, sunny Friday, but I had changed my lesson plans to reflect their energy, and we got through a noisy but productive session on descriptive writing. I sighed my way through the irritating "week in review" quiz, and along with my working group heard yesterday's terrifying rumors of a weapon on campus confirmed. It was a lot to deal with in one day, but I got through it, and I was still smiling. And then I went to the campus meeting.

The campus meeting is how we end every Friday, all 150-odd of us in our high school's gym. We call it the pep rally, as it's usually intended to make sure we end our exhausting weeks on an inspirational note. We'd all rather just go home half an hour earlier, but it's been made pretty clear that this is not going to happen, so we deal with it. Today, though, is the last Friday before closing ceremonies, and our high school has a reputation to uphold. Last year we entered closing ceremonies with a choreographed step that blew all the other schools' little chants out of the water. This year, the other schools are kicking things up a notch, and in the grand tradition of escalation, so too must we. At today's meeting, then, we were all supposed to learn this very complicated, but unarguably cool-looking step, which one of the advisors had put together. She and the other advisors led, and we were to follow. What could be simpler?

Something you might not know about me: I get anxiety. Bad anxiety. It doesn't come out in the classroom, thank God, or when I'm giving a speech or meeting new people, though these things of course make me nervous. It comes out at odd times, like when I have to cold-call someone I've never spoken to before, or when I have to approach a store employee with a question, or when I have to learn something entirely new, like driving. But mostly, it comes out when I'm in front of a big group of people, and someone asks me to do something I don't know how to do. It doesn't matter if those other people can't do it either, or if it's normal to take awhile to learn. The feeling takes over, regardless of logic. I don't know if you've felt anxiety before, but for me, it's just blind, irrational terror, flooding my brain, seeping into all the cracks, filling up the places where logic should be.

I sometimes tell people stories about when I was five and taking swimming lessons, because in all honesty the stories can be pretty funny: how I used to refuse to even put my face in the water, how I couldn't jump in even when someone was standing there in the shallow end waiting to catch me, or how I would try to hide in the dressing rooms and refuse to come out. But today I remembered what it was like to be that little girl, terrified of something horrible that I couldn't even name, something that clearly was not going to happen yet left me petrified anyway, to feel that icy hand closing around my insides. As a five-year-old, you can't articulate that, and people think you're just trying to get out of what you're doing, and force you into the water anyway. Today, I tried to shove it down inside, and just try the stupid steps. I got about 30 seconds into it before the thoughts going through my head were, "I can't do this." "I'll just skip closing ceremonies." "They can just put me on probation if they need to." I honest to God had the thought that they could kick me out of The Program over this, and that I didn't care. It's scary to have these thoughts. They're so irrational, so overly dramatic for the situation, and you recognize that, but you can't control them. All you want to do is run away and never come back.

The scariest part of it, for me, was that my advisor came over to my group, and when I told her I couldn't do it, that I'd just skip closing, the look on her face was like the one my mom had when I begged her to let me stay home from the pool on my sixth birthday. It said, For God's sake, just try it. It won't kill you. Stop overreacting. And, as I loved my mom, I respect my advisor immensely. She's more or less responsible for every bit of growth I've had as a teacher. So I tried again. And again, about two moves in, it was all I could do to keep from vomiting or running out of the buliding.

In the end I sat it out. My working group politely ignored my nonparticipation, and after it was all over, I went to my advisor and explained my situation. As soon as I opened my mouth, the tears started. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I feel like this. I don't know why I can't do this. It is so simple. I know I can learn. I just can't. I feel awful about it; my poor advisor didn't see it coming, and she was so gracious and apologetic and insisted that, no matter what, I would walk in with the team, because it's not the team without me. She understood, and she was so upset that she didn't know, or see it on my face. So I don't have to learn the step. But this does not make me feel any better.

There's irony to be had here, if you're looking. I've been such a rock through this whole experience, shaking off my worse days in the classroom, refusing to be upset about anything I can learn from instead, taking on more than my share of responsibility in my classroom, and having those late-night heart-to-hearts with really emotional people wondering if the Program is really for them. I don't think it's too boastful to say that I've been really strong through everything the last month has thrown at me. But today, faced with this stupid step, I just broke down. I feel horrible inside, like you do after a stomach flu, when everything aches. I'm intellectually over it, but still, I can't stop crying. I hate it that I can't just work through this.