OT/
There' a lot of hard things out there that I've tried, and just can't find it in me to do.
I tried teaching. I worked for a while on an MAT (English), but when I student taught, the experience was altogether terrible. Teachers are hamstrung by the board, by the requirements, by the bad parents, and by the students themselves. The students aren't there to learn most of the time and don't understand why the subjects are covered. Sometimes the teacher doesn't know why subjects are being covered. And so many important things are cut from the curricula to dumb it down from what was skipped when they were younger. I know my class was among the last to learn to diagram sentences- my teacher explained that she wasn't allowed to teach it any more. I know I didn't know the names of parts of speech beyond noun, verb, adjective and adverb or what the conjugations of verbs were called until I took foreign languages, Schoolhouse Rock aside. There are supposed to be 8. I can name six if I try- conjunctions and prepositions are the other two...
I did kindasorta parent for a while. Very tough job but can be rewarding. My niece, who is the closest I'll likely ever come to a daughter, graduated college last May and is now working in summer stock theater- something I never had the guts to try. I'm excessively proud of her. I feel like a nasty person when I scrunch my nose up at that disruptive child and their inattentive parent- I have no right to judge, really, but I'd like to think I'd do better than that! But I feel weird when someone talks about their kids and grandkids around me, because I can only talk about the cats or the dog, and that's not the same thing, really.
And caring for the animals- oh my heart breaks still. I think about Buffy- the white cat declawed and de-fanged and absolutely ferocious with anyone not her owner but the owner died and Buffy came to us. I think about poor Cinnamon who had 28 puppies- she pushed out 4 in the first 48 hours and they died before we could help them, and Wilbur who was puppy #5 to be pushed out of the puppy nest. I had tried to help and bottle raise him, but I didn't know about the warm washcloth thing, and my ignorance killed him. All of Cinnamon's puppies found homes, but poor Cinnamon did not. I remember loading frozen cats wrapped in trashbags, tossing like frizbees onto the big truck to travel to another humane society that had a crematorium. How much of that can anyone take?
I did what I could, and I give when I can, but my heart really goes out to anyone who helps. They are real heroes to me.