Read Love Is a State of Mind: Nobody's Life is Perfect for Free Online

exhausting and after a time, I did relax a little, but it was always stressful for me.  Teaching was not what I should have been doing all these years.  Unless you’re in total control of your classes, it’s a hell-hole.
    Why couldn’t I swan into school, like him?  He was universally liked by pupils and staff alike, seemed to do his marking in his free periods and was hardly ever seen preparing lessons, but he got brilliant results.  How did he do it?  I’ve no idea … but hence, the fast track to Head.  I, however, floundered around, barely coping, with a reputation for being a push-over.  When the kids told me their dog had eaten their homework, I’d believe them.  If they arrived late to class, I’d believe some half-baked story about another teacher keeping them late, in a previous lesson.  If someone in my class wasn’t wearing the correct uniform, I didn't demand that they left the class, I’d say lamely, ‘make sure you’re wearing it tomorrow’, and of course, they never were.
    I was too trusting to be a teacher – you have to question everything a kid tells you and believe nothing.  You have to pretend you’re angry, when you’re not.  You have to start the way you mean to go on, not go into a class like a right old softie.  You also have to like kids – and for the vast majority of my career, I’ve disliked them intensely. 
    Don’t get me wrong, I love my own children, but other people’s children, en masse, are another thing altogether – like marauding pack animals, who’ll eat the weakest one alive – and I was the weak one.   You try teaching ‘Black Beauty’ to a classroom full of fourteen year old boys, half of whom can’t really speak English.  To be fair, that didn’t happen at this school, but it happened on my teaching practice, all those years ago.  I was told to read a book about a girl and her lovely black pony, to a load of kids who lived in the roughest area in Birmingham and whose relations were often living at her Majesty’s pleasure in the prison, opposite the school.  Not a good start – and I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from it.  I was set on a path towards a career where I was permanently … bewildered, for want of a better word.
    So, all things considered, I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher, but I’d done it for years … and survived.  My results were average, my attendance was good and I was conscientious – David had helped me through … bolstering me up when I’d had a particularly bad day, telling me I was a good teacher, even though I wasn’t. 
    Without his backup and with the situation now so impossible, I began to wonder why I was doing it. 
    The end of term was always such a relief – I’d walk out of school on the last day with my heart lighter and my head, stress-headache free.  David, on the other hand, would always miss school and find the holidays ‘too long’.  This seemed unbelievable to me – surely most people go into teaching for the long holidays, don’t they? 
    This particular end of term was a two-edged sword, however.  It was going to be so good to get away from David and Suzie; so good not to have to mark endless essays … but so odd to be on my own for six weeks.  What would I do with myself?
    That swim was the start of my new regime.  To get out, to get fit … to get a life.  The other part of my plan was to face the fact that I didn’t want to do it any more – teaching, I mean.  Surely, I’d tried long enough?  Surely … enough was enough? 
    My only real friend at school, Lisa Parsons, a colleague in the English department, put the idea into my head.  Lisa is also single – she got divorced five years ago and lives with her two sons of twelve and fourteen.  She's a good person to talk to about my current situation; she's younger than me, but her husband left her for someone else too, so she knows what I'm going through.  I think we became friends originally as we could see in