"So, he was like.."

School was hectic today. Trying to plan this week’s lessons but also next week’s for the couple of days I’m taking off for the funeral is manic. I’m almost there though, I think. Year 7 today were adorable as usual, but even year 8 were better - I think I’m finally getting somewhere with them! I was really impressed with the work one of the girls produced today - she’s been a real pain lately as she has a bit of thing for one of the main troublemakers and the flirting and giggling was starting to really irritate me. Today though, she was great. They’re obviously still friends so I don’t know what’s happened, but I’m not complaining!

Year 11 tomorrow - that will be scary. I’ve made up a seating plan based on their appalling behaviour last lesson - don’t know how well it will go down next lesson! We’ll have to see. It’s awkward being so close to their age, and I know the lessons aren’t exactly great fun, but they have to revise writing styles somehow. Tomorrow we’re looking at Stephen Fry and his views on the peculiar habit of replacing “said”with “was like”, so they might enjoy that! They’ll certainly see themselves in Fry’s imagined dialogue - “so he was like, ‘can I sit here?’, so I was like, ‘no way’.” To be honest, it's something I'm guilty of occasionally, but it still drives me mad!

I’m not teaching Year 9 for a while as they’re working on their projects and then I’m out of school for their lessons. A bit of a relief to be honest - I really struggled with them last time, and at the moment I’m just too exhausted to fight kids if they kick up a fuss. Weirdly though, all my ‘problem’ students are bright kids. They understand the explanations that they don’t bother to listen to. They do the work I ask them to and generally do it pretty well. They just don’t do it quietly - and that’s what irritates me. The constant whispering grinds me down! I can take the one-on-one confrontations I get in my other classes, the lower sets - and that surprises me. I thought, honestly, it would be the other way round. But no - I can cope with the kids who genuinely struggle or are obviously defiant and a bit angry with school or authority in general. (I say cope - I don’t teach them well, I’m not as good as I should be with them - I just mean I’ve got the patience for them). It’s the kids who talk over me or jab each other with compasses when I’m explaining things, only to turn around and go “Miss you’ve not told us what to do” who drive me up the wall.

Last thing on my mind though, really. It’s been a week now since I heard about Tom, and it’s started to sink in now.

I’ve just become friends on facebook with another member of staff at school, so I was checking my profile for any potentially.. ‘inappropriate’ status (of which there were none!) when I came across a random wall post from Tom. From just over 10 days ago. I’ve seen the message before - in the last week - and it didn’t affect me. This time I was crying before I’d even finished reading his greeting - and didn’t even realise I was crying, initially. To see a message from him, so recently, just hit me. I’ve seen it before but in a sense it had simply confirmed my persistent belief that it was all a bad dream and he was still alive - he must be, because here he was leaving me messages and there were photographs of him taken recently, etc. Now they’re just reminders that that was the last message I’ll ever receive from him.

I began training last night for my half-marathon: I’m following Macmillan’s 6 week guide for beginners to 5K at the moment. When that’s done I’ll move onto a 10K training plan, and so on. Last night I ran 1 minute at 10kmph then walked 1 minute at 5.5kmph, and repeated that 10 times. I covered over 2.5km in 20 mins, which is not at all great but I haven’t run since I tore my ligaments and I really want to avoid further injury so intend to go very slowly. I’m hoping that approach will also make me better in the long term.

I hated it - I have to be honest. I’m just not a runner! I was spectacularly bored by about 7 minutes in and resorting to watching ‘The Weakest Link’ on the gym TV. But afterwards, I felt really good actually. My thighs ached a bit today but not as much as I expected! We’ll see how I get on tomorrow…

Break, Break, Break

It’s been almost 3 days since Tom died.
I still don’t know how I feel. I wore myself out with crying on Wednesday afternoon, but I haven’t really broken down since. My phone goes virtually nonstop, but the more people I speak to the more unreal it feels. Like we’re talking about a book we read for a lecture, or a celebrity we never knew.

I genuinely feel I wouldn’t be surprised to open my inbox to find an email from him, or receive a text. It just hasn’t clicked yet. I think that’s helped by the 300-odd mile distance between me and the rest of my uni friends - when we’re all together for the funeral that will change. How different to last week’s reunion…

I’m going to start running. I feel at the moment all I’m doing is hiding, and pretending. I expected the kids at school to drive me mad, not keep me sane. But they are doing. When I get to school at 8 o’clock and know that I will be standing in front of around 120 kids that day, talking about fairytales or politicians’ speeches, it focuses me and makes me block out everything else. At the end of every hour I’m amazed that I’m not crying and that the kids - my kids =o) - don’t even think anything has changed since last lesson. It’s a wonderful tonic but I’m sure it’s just temporary. Everything has changed. The more you shut things out the harder they’ll break through.

I don’t think words are capable of describing emotion, really. They can’t quite capture bliss, or grief - because as soon as you write it down it becomes confined to marks on a page. And overwhelming emotion is too powerful for that. How can you represent something which is consuming you with a line on a piece of paper?

So I’m going to start running. Tom ran, cycled, swam - thought nothing of a 4 hour cycle ride out for lunch, then 4 hours back. Ran miles before breakfast. I can’t even run out of the apartment to my car in the rain without feeling tired.

By running I want to tell Tom that I miss him, and have always admired him, and I’m sorry I never texted him back on Saturday when he asked how the reunion was going. I’m going to sign myself up for a 10k run in March - start small! - and ask Tom’s parents in a few weeks whether any charities have particularly helped them. If not I’ll raise money for Cancer Research.
Tom would laugh at me for thinking 10k is a big deal - but I know he’d be pleased too. I can picture the way his eyebrows would raise slightly with his wide smile, and can hear the laughing tone in his voice -"yeah? You’re really gonna run that?"

Well... in a fashion. It might be more staggering and panting than actual running, but I'll have a go.

[ You act as though we will be together for ever. You act as though there is infinite pleasure and time without end. How can I know that? My experience has been that time always ends. In theory you are right, the quantum physicists are right, the romantics and the religious are right. Time without end. In practice we both wear a watch. If I rush at this relationship it's because I fear for it. I fear you have a door I cannot see and that any minute now the door will open and you'll be gone. Then what? Then what as I bang the walls like the Inquisition searching for a saint? Where will I find the secret passage? For me it'll just be the same four walls.
—Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body ]