I want to rot in my room
2003-01-20 || 8:36 p.m.

I have that awful feeling like something bad is going to happen. It's making me feel sick.

I worked so hard on my planning over the weekend that I feel super organised at work this week. I got everything organised last night. I got my back pack packed with stuff, both the carrier bags. I got up at just gone six this morning and did all the usual morning stuff, I went to leave the house at 7.30am only to find that unknown to me the dog, has at some point, chewed through one of the straps to my back pack. To say I was pissed off is an understatement. I wanted to get to work early and I ended up spending another ten minutes looking for another bag. It was raining and windy and I got absolutely soaked. It was not nice. I'm surprised I didn't get run down, my hair was all over my face.

At break time I had an interview with some top Kent Educational people. I had no idea what I was meant to be saying but they wanted to talk to me about literacy in the school. It would seem that I made the right noises in the right places because they seemed impressed. Mind you, one of them did that glasses on the end of her nose thing and peered at me, which was a bit disconcerting to say the least.

During assembly Maria read a prayer for the kids to parrot back at her. It started off something like, 'God please bless all the people who love me' and then 'God please bless all the people I love' and very quickly moved onto 'God please bless all the people who love all the people who I love that love me who love the guy down the road and that cat I saw on my way to school and the pink wafer biscuits they sell in Sainsburys Amen' or something like that. The kids were bemused. I was bemused. I laughed out loud - I couldn't help it.

Maria's assemblies are brilliant. She should be on the TV.

Helen reckons she only reads through what she does two minutes before she does it. I don't even reckon she does that.

My new boy is a trial. He is walking all over the desks and stealing stuff. Its very difficult. I don't want to nag him but I'm finding him very hard to deal with. He does no work whatsoever. I think I need to have a chat with him, maybe whilst he plays with some lego or something, to try to find out if he is unhappy about having to change schools. This is his third school in as many terms and it cannot be easy.

Another boy just will not take letters home. He has taken to throwing them away in the boys' cloakroom. I had to go out to see his Dad tonight. I have spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about what the problem might be and how to solve it positively but I just couldn't think of anything. His Dad looked pretty annoyed but I just didn't know what else to do. I kept saying, 'so if you can think of anything positive we can do to help Joe, we really need to work together on this' etc. I can't think of anything that won't make Joe feel a fool but I cannot understand why he throws the letters away.

So how do I feel?

Well, good about putting the kids and school first. I'm arranging two trips for them, keeping up with my marking.

Other than that its very hard to describe how I feel because I feel empty. Totally empty. There is nothing inside me at all.

There are some things I am very happy about. I am happy that others are happy. I truly do hope I can be the only person who feels like this. I'm sure it will be okay. I'm sure that the worse I feel, the better others must feel.

I feel bad and self-indulgent if I write things like this down though. No-one can understand how much I despise myself. I am truly thankful that no-one will ever have to be emotionally involved with me.

I want to cultivate and improve this shell until I have perfected my isolation.