Will I Ever Go Back to Teaching?
When I tell people what I’m doing now - that I sold my house, left my job as a teacher, & I’m traveling the country in a camper - inevitably, someone always asks, “Do you think you’ll ever go back to teaching?”
& I get it. The choices I’ve made in my life recently are scary & uncomfortable for people. They want to know that eventually, I plan to go back to safety. They want to know that at some point I won’t be suspended in this uncertain, seemingly unstable phase of my life.
But I’m used to uncertain. I’m an artist at finding structure where there is none.
When I think of my childhood one word comes to mind - & that’s chaotic. My mom was a single mother raising 3 kids by herself. One adult with three children - I just want to emphasize how incredible that is. But, ya… It should come as no surprise that the environment was often out-of-control lots of the time. I deeply craved structure & stability as a kid.
I saw examples of stability at other people’s houses. My neighbors had a stable, two-parent household & three kids. Walking next door felt like stepping into my dream. The contrast between our house is still a stark visual in my mind. My house felt dark, like the walls were closing in on me, with kitchen counters covered in a mixture of crumbs, butter, undefinable sticky mess, & dried spaghetti sauce. I remember having to clear a space, moving keys, old batteries, coffee-stained envelopes, & tattered construction paper to butter my toast. Walking in the neighbors house felt open, bright, with sparkling white & functional countertops. Rather than prepping food straight on the counter - they used a cutting board! Revolutionary. & even more incredible was that when you finished using a plate, there was a system in place to get that plate clean. This was utopia. I was convinced.
I spent lots of time at other people’s houses as a kid - either at my neighbor’s or at my best friend’s. Partly due to my mom’s need for childcare, and partly due to my need to witness and experience stability in some form. I had a best friend from first grade through eighth grade who I went home with after school. Her house also had counters with space to prepare snacks. & a clutter-free kitchen table to sit and enjoy your food. When we got home from school, we knew what to expect. We did our homework, had a snack, and then were free to enjoy ourselves. It was predictable & felt safe. I wanted that. Through adolescence, I hid the reality of my home life from everyone, pretending I had the perfect clean counters and being whoever I thought the clean counters girl would be like.
& from the time I graduated high school on - I made it my goal to create that kind of life for myself. I played field hockey through high school & around junior year I realized that playing a sport in college could be my way out. That could be my ticket to finding certainty & stability. So I applied to schools & got scouted to play at UC Davis.
After college, I continued building the ideal life I’d created in childhood. I’d read the script to find a stable life & clean countertops. The script was offered to me subconsciously through childhood experiences & media. This was it - you go to college, not a community college (that’s for losers & dropouts), you meet your future spouse at university, & when you graduate you start your career. You & your college partner get married, buy a house, and have a family. That’s life.
It was so clear, so linear, so defined. & 25-year-old me was doing it! She was also sobbing in the bathtub listening “22” by Taylor Swift, but that’s a story for another day. I’d met a boy my junior year of college & after three years together, he proposed. After four years together - he’d bought a house. I wondered to myself daily, if I was doing it all right, checking all the boxes, if this was what I was supposed to be doing - then why was I so miserable?
So when I was 26, in one of the scariest moves I’ve ever made, I went off the script. I decided, “Not this,” and broke up with my then-fiancé. I didn’t know what came after, if I’d ever find that person who would propose to me and build a home and family together with. But this was not it.
I bought my own house. & decided to stop following the script, stop searching for someone to rescue me, & let life unfold a little more casually for a while. Though - very much - trying to keep my life going in the direction I wanted. When I met my current boyfriend and life partner, I had no intention of dating anyone for a long long while. I was in the fun, single girl phase I’d seen in movies & was intent on sticking with it a while longer. It felt like the right thing to do. But we fell in love & my heart opened in ways I never imagined it could. Falling in love with Jered felt like freedom. For the first time, I could see the endless opportunities life had to offer. But I was still too scared to break free from the stable & certain life I had to live the wild, adventurous life I wanted.
Then 2020 happened. & the perfect life I’d rebuilt was met with more uncertainty & instability than I’d ever prepared for. “Uncertain times” seemed to be the catch phrase of the year. The perfect Jenga tower I was slowly adding the finishing pieces to was knocked down AGAIN in an instant. & this time it wasn’t my choice. I saw behind the curtain of the dream I’d been sold & realized - we are on a floating rock. Everything is uncertain all the time. & any illusion of certainty or control I’d had was a facade. I started wondering if everything I’d worked so hard for could be devastated so quickly… Then why was I working so hard at stability? I started asking myself, what would I do if I could do anything? The deepest desire of my soul was to explore, meet new people, experience new ways of living. & to me, living in a camper was ultimate freedom.
It’s hard to put into words all the ways the pandemic changed me. But coming out of it, I’d discovered new truths. Life is inherently uncertain. Life is fragile. Time is a nonrenewable resource. Relationships & community are essential & there is no substitute for in-person human connection. I found a sense of faith that everything is as it should be. And that doesn’t mean that things are perfect, but total disarray creates space for restructuring. I trust that unrest, whether internal or external, is leading to a truer more beautiful life & version of the world.
Coming out of the pandemic, all I wanted to do was explore & see if these new truths were accurate. I’m like a scientist, checking the efficacy of my experiment. Are these real, certain truths, or another script? Is life really this relentlessly brutal/beautiful?
& right now it seems to be so. This life I’ve chosen isn’t linear or stable. It’s often scary and really hard. I know where I want to go. I can visualize in my head an A-frame in the woods with a carport under the deck. I wake up early, make tea, and write from a cozy corner in the living room - glowy morning sun shining through the big trees & into the windows. In the summer, we eat dinner outside, sometimes with friends and neighbors, sometimes just the two of us. We throw a stick for the dog from the deck down the dirt driveway & go inside to watch movies and cuddle when its too dark to see how much wine is left.
But I don’t know how to get there & that’s what’s scary. Before, it was so easy, I knew that if I followed the steps & stuck to the script - I’d have what I thought I wanted. This is different. It’s a life I never dared to imagine because it was never modeled for me. It’s true & beautiful & all mine.
So I don’t know if I will teach again. I left my job one year ago & it still feels like we’re just getting started. There’s a part of my soul that will always be a teacher. I miss the butterflies on the first day of school, the overwhelming mix of joy and grief and intensity of the last day, & all the weird, messy, hard, & impossible days in-between. But mostly, I miss deep connection with a community that I get to lead. & it’s scary to not know if I will ever be in a position to lead a community like that again.
Teaching served an important purpose in my life for a long time. The daily routine, the steady paycheck, the 401k, the consistent yearly schedule provided me with the stability I’d been searching for my whole life. & once I realized stability is an illusion, all I wanted was freedom. I have broken free from the script & I’m creating a life on my own terms. There may come a day when I want the stability of teaching again & I give myself permission to return to teaching whenever it feels right. But right now, going back would feel like settling. I want to give this creative entrepreneurship life a chance. & it’s scary as hell, there are highs & lows, days when I’m consumed with self-doubt, but damn… It’s beautiful. It’s a relentlessly beautiful life. & I do not want to go back to predictable.
Yours,
Marissa
P.S. I’m working on getting comments to work on these blog posts. & I don’t know why the pictures are so enormous. Thanks for reading!