You’ve been performing fine for so long you’ve forgotten what being real feels like.
You might haven’t had a breakdown. Or maybe you went on stress leave, came
back and still…
You show up. You answer the emails. You’re good at this.
And nobody sees the part that’s disappearing.
You’ve tried to fix it. A different school. Fewer hours. A better summer.
The books you almost finished. The journals you kept for two weeks. The
courses you bought on a hard evening and opened twice.
The feeling followed you.
So you’ve started to wonder if the problem is you. That you’re not strong
enough for a normal life. That other people manage somehow — and you’re
the one who can’t keep up. That doing everything right — the yoga, the
journalling, the leave, the changes — and still feeling flat means
something is fundamentally wrong with you.
It doesn’t.
Not in the way you’ve been thinking. Not the broken version of you.
The buried one. The one who got quieter and quieter because there was
never any room for her.
You’ve been blaming yourself for a signal you were trained not to hear.
Not because you’re weak. Not because the job is wrong. Not because you
chose badly.
Because the thing that needs attention isn’t out there.
It’s in here. And nobody has ever asked you to listen to it.
Here’s what’s actually happening
When you give everything — for years, to 28 students a day, to a system
that never stops asking — the part of you that knows what you need gets
quieter and quieter. Not gone. Just very good at being ignored.
The flat feeling isn’t a flaw. It’s a signal.
You don’t need to have the answers. You don’t need to have decided
anything. You need to hear yourself again.
That’s what The Staffroom is for.