...because this semester isn't over yet and I am a martyr...

These days I see myself as more of a martyr, rather than an individual.

In my mind I try and make people understand. Usually I say things like, “Don’t you see that I am having to take tests all the days of the week?” But sometimes I say things like, “Has it crossed your mind that maybe a baby cried for two hours straight which caused her to vomit on my shoes and I couldn’t do anything to help her?”

This futile attempt to make them understand occurs I think, because a) the kids are always screaming at me. It seems to me that after this child aka littlegirl leaves I will be suffering from PTSD and will flinch every time a child cries. Not because I mind the sound of crying, but because I will feel hopeless because maybe that child will be like littlegirl, and nothing I do will ever soothe them.

Anyways, so I scream at people because they don’t understand me. They don’t grasp that I go to work and I love it but it can be difficult.  In addition these peoples also don’t get that b) I have school everyday. University and tests and tutoring and internship-ing. They don’t understand that I come home and I do my homework and occasionally that child is still screaming at me.

These people I talk to in my mind, they don’t understand that c) days of rest seemingly don’t exist.

These adults, the ones that watch over us students/workers often attempt to coddle us. “We understand how busy you are,” they say. Oh yes, they understand-right? And yet I’ve never heard someone say, “Take another day on that assignment” or “The test has been lengthened for your convenience because I remember what it was like to be a student and have all of my teachers teach on the same schedule and give me tests every two weeks all semester at the same time and then have class time right during prime test taking time so that there is no time to study or take your test.”

Almost always my mind is saying things my mouth won’t (a good thing).

Most often it is screaming mad at people for not understanding.

Sometimes it is just a dull pounding that lasts throughout the entire day, a “why doesn’t anyone feel bad for me?”

At times it is cluttered and I feel claustrophobic and no one comprehends that I’ve been working all day and I just remembered another assignment, another lesson and there is no room to fit them in my schedule.

Other moments my mind goes blank. People try to bring me back, but I like to feel nothing-no screaming, no pounding, and no closing in of the walls.

However, on a rare occasion there is a small, rational voice-that one that has reaches me as I hand off that child to her mother, or as I see that “good job” at the testing center.

I am a martyr, you know.

Because I am the only busy one in the world.

Nobody else has ever had multiple tests to take on one day.

Nobody else has had to listen to a screaming child for two hours straight.

Nobody else has problems.

Everyone else is living a stress free life.

So I am a martyr.

I expect a plaque.

And I am very sorry if, in my mind, there is screaming. And I am especially sorry if it is at you.

It’s the children’s fault.