So, my new blog. To start off, hi, I'm Becky. Or Miss Becky, or Miss Teacher, whichever it is you fancy. I'm 20, a part time preschool teacher (sort of), and pretty much full time babysitter. And I love every bit of it (not entirely true, I can do without the tantrums).
In a way, I can't imagine my life ever going in a different direction. In another way, I never actually pictured being surrounded by kids as a job. Originally I wanted to be a lawyer. And then an actress. And then a psychologist. And then a youth pastor. It never actually crossed my mind that I could actually be with kids all day, then go home for an hour, then spend half my night with them as well. And perish the thought of enjoying it!
How did that happen, you ask? Through a series of perfectly orchestrated events by my loving Father. Apparently He knew my heart better than I ever did.
To start off, I've pretty much always been surrounded by kids. When I was little, my uncle had a stream of romantic interests with babies, and while they rolled around in the sack, I was tasked with entertaining the youngins'. At seven, that pretty much meant I used the babies as live Barbie dolls and tested out my mother's makeup on them. It was certainly better than forcing my younger cousin to don a curly wig and then getting pushed out of a tree for my efforts (although that did happen more than once for the message to sink in).
Fast forward a bit, and I became the neighborhood babysitter. There were several young kids in my neighborhood when I was in my tween years, and I was the only responsible one (read: not on drugs) around, I got paid ten bucks to watch them for the night. To my little twelve year old wallet, ten bucks was quite a bit, especially on top of my five dollar allowance! Claire's, here I come!
As I grew, my interest in watching kids waned. Why would I, a lofty fourteen year old with many varied interests (Orlando Bloom's newest movie was the main interest here), want to spend my time with little kids and their stupid little kid interests? Barney is SO 1995! So during high school I took several odd jobs. I worked at the zoo for a month (worst job ever), I waitressed a bit (quite fun, actually), went through several months of no job at all (buh-bye, Starbucks addiction), worked part time at a radio station (interesting is the only word I'll use here), and, finally, wound up as a nanny to a six year old boy.
During this time, my family was rapidly dropping like flies. First my uncle, then my great-aunt, then my grandfather, then my grandmother was ill, then my mother. These were probably the worst and most difficult years of my life, and I can't really picture anything being harder than losing almost your entire family within a couple of years. I worked not only to keep myself busy, but to help out. I hated seeing my family cry because we couldn't afford the electric bill during winter. So I took the nanny job, even though I didn't enjoy being around kids.
At this point, I was dead set on going to Belmont University to be a youth pastor. I felt that was my calling in life (spoiler alert: it wasn't), and no amount of bad internships could tell me differently. My full ride to the school told me that I had what it took, and I was cocky enough to not listen to my family's input. But as my mother grew sicker, I realized that I hated spending my time in the youth group helping the youth pastor. I hated hearing about the pre-teen's boy problems and how much their parents hated them, while looking at their horrible raccoon eyes (never mind that I was the same way when I was their age). Their itty bitty problems were no match to what I was going through.
And then, all at once, my mom was in the hospital on life support, and my world crashed around me. I felt like I had no one and nothing to hold on to anymore. I turned down the scholarship, I held on tightly to my friends and pushed them as far away as possible, all at the same time. I took off days from my nanny job and spent my nights more sleepless than I had ever been at that point. I remember constantly being dressed at night, sleeping in my bra and jeans and sweatshirts and shoes, because I knew that at any moment we would get a call from the hospital and I wouldn't want to waste precious time getting dressed.
And then, at 2:24am, on January 20th, a full twelve days since she had been admitted, the call did come. By 3:30, after begging my mom to please, God, please, don't leave, I laid my head on her chest and listened to her heart stop beating.
And after that, I stopped caring.
I didn't want to be around my friends. I didn't want to be around my church's pitying looks and the never-ending texts and phone calls with their sympathy. How did these people even get my phone number? I'm quite certain I never gave it out to that many people. I did what was easy; I threw my phone against the wall and let it stay there, broken, and then I stopped going to church and stopped talking to people for a very long time. I threw myself into my work, and tried my damnedest to not snap every time that little boy asked me what it meant to be dead.
After trying to help out at my youth group's winter retreat, a full month after my mom had died, my panic attacks became worse and it was harder to hide everything. There's only so much concealer can hide. So when the youth pastor and two youth leaders asked to talk to me, I let them talk without really listening, and then told them I was done with my internship. I left early that night and didn't go back in.
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