It feels so soothing, stepping back

Away from lapping flames that lick

At body parts, scorching, scolding,

In a vicious way.

But then recovery is so much harder

That I’m sometimes left to wonder

Would it be much easier

To let the lot go up in angry flames?

I wrote the other week that I had a bit of a tricky situation in my tutor group when when of my tutees had a meltdown and started screaming that she was going to kill herself, to later go to a teacher and say I’d told her to go ahead and do it.

I decided to take a bit of a step back, for my own mental health. I’ve had terrible trouble trying to create boundaries in my life and it’s led me into some really dark places. So this time, I decided that I would give myself space as I was feeling really overwhelmed by that behaviour.

I still believe that it was sensible of me to do that, but now that I’ve been missing from their sessions for two days I wonder how easy – or hard – it is going to be to integrate myself back in?

When I’m stressed, I feel paranoid and like everyone is whispering behind my back, so I worry that they’ll all be whispering about my disappearance. I feel like I made the right choice at the time, but now I realise that if I’d just sucked it up and carried on, I wouldn’t have the drama of making an entrance.

This is a fine balancing act that I am still learning and I hope that I have done the right thing by myself this time around. And I need to keep reminding myself that the decisions I make need to be for myself so that I can serve the kids. If I make myself sick, trying to see things out, I’m no good to anyone. And this needs to be kept in the back of my mind at all times.

Much Love

Rachel xx