This morning I was sitting in a workshop (about treating anxiety disorders, haha) when I received an email message from my principal telling me I have to share my teaching space with Crazy Sue on Wednesday afternoon. I felt my stomach start doing all the things the speaker was talking about. I stopped listening to the speaker and indulged in a small panic attack.
The thing is that I know it's irrational for me to allow Crazy Sue to cause me so much stress. I do not care about her opinion of me. I do not want her friendship, I do not crave her approval. I do not respect her, I do not like her, I do not want anything to do with her. I should be able to shrug off her crazyness and stay away from her. I should be able to apply an intervention that breaks the negative feedback loop and relieves my anxiety, but I cannot find one. Or more honestly, perhaps I do not want one. Perhaps I want to stay caught in this deadlock with Crazy Sue because letting go of it somehow lets her off the hook along with me.
I talked to my Department Head about it, about how much it bothers me, even though I know it's just one afternoon. My Department Head said that the new principal who just started last month probably will not care about this kind of thing next school year. Meaning that it's entirely possible, likely even, that Crazy Sue and I will have to share a space every day, not just once or twice or a year in special circumstances. And that once or twice is already so painful. The old principal understood that it was in everyone's best interest for Crazy Sue and I to be separated.
There really aren't many things that get me upset, especially at work. I'm a person who gets along with everyone. Surviving Wednesday is one thing, but picturing an entire school year of being forced to be in the same space with Crazy Sue is another. I will need stress leave by October.
I am doing some voodoo now, some Crazy-Sue-Moves-To-Another-School voodoo, and some Lisa-Switches-To-Full-Time-Counselling voodoo, in hopes that something changes.
My first thought was to go upstairs to the office and talk to the new boss, explain how crazy Crazy Sue really is. Tell her about the time Crazy Sue wouldn't allow me to borrow a chair from her classroom for the holocaust survivor to sit down in. Tell her about Crazy Sue shrieking at me in front of a roomful of students, jamming her foot in the door to prevent me from closing it. But the problem is, the boss is new. She won't know if these things are true, or if I'm a crazy girl who makes up stuff about Nice Sue. Because Crazy Sue can appear to be Nice Sue. Not for any length of time or anything, but it's only been a month since the new principal got here.
I decided not to go to the principal even though I really wanted to, to go in there with my trembly hands and voice catching in my throat, stomach threatening to heave the morning coffee on her desk while describing the way Crazy Sue makes me feel. But I didn't do it because I want to believe it's not going to happen. Not Wednesday, because Wednesday will happen. But not next year. There has to be some other solution, because I think I now have a boss who will not change her mind even if I throw up on her desk.
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Tomorrow is my birthday. And one week from tomorrow I am leaving for Italy.
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5 comments:
I want to read the whole Crazy Sue saga. (you have a label for the baldwins, but not crazy sue???)Then I want to tell you how we're going to handle her crazy, anxiety causing ass.
You need to MAKE the boss care. A nice, brief professional email with no mention of crazy. "There are longstanding tensions between Sue and I that make a shared workspace a very difficult environment for us to work in. Could we explore ways around this?" or somesuch.
I wonder why this woman has chosen you to be her target.
I know, my labelling is ridiculous. I actually thought I was making a joke when I started doing it, not one that makes any sense to anyone but me. Now that you've said so, though, I think you are right that Crazy Sue needs her very own label considering how frequently I feel like writing mean things about her.
She's kind of psychotic with everyone, but she specifically targeted me in 2010 after we were forced to share a classroom (we both teach Drama, but she hates it and I love it) and she decided I was attempting to sabotage her career by making the kids not like her. Or something like that. But I'm not so special that I'm the only one she is mean to. She just likes yelling at me the *most*.
I like Therese's suggestion about how to email the principal about it. But I'm so sorry you are having to deal with a crazy colleague at all.
Happy Birthday!
Thanks for the birthday wishes and for the sympathy. I like the email idea too... but then I'd have to follow it up with some sort of intelligent dialogue, and I feel more inclined to cry than to participate in a discussion.
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