Remember to Breathe

"The beatings will continue until morale improves" is a quote that has in times past amused me more than anything else. I understand the irony—I am an English teacher, after all—but thought of it as satiric hyperbole more than anything else; I'd never been in a situation where it was all-but-literally true.

Things change, however.

For the last couple of years, I've labored to maintain my native optimism in an environment where the beatings, though figurative rather than literal, were no less humiliating and no less demoralizing for the fact that they were figurative. I'm optimistic by nature and want to believe the best of everyone, so although insult after insult and injury after injury would drive me to the depths of despair, I would rise again and again, optimistic about people and their motives.

I'm still doing it, too. After more than two years of insulting, degrading, dehumanizing, demoralizing treatment, I still haven't learned to stay down; while I can be driven deep, I still pop back up like a cork in the ocean.

I'm not happy about that, though.

I'm tired. I'm tired of being treated the way I am. I'm tired of my comrades being treated the same way. I'm tired of optimism; as things stand I have no good reason for optimism in the short term. A big part of me wishes that I wasn't so irrepressibly optimistic—it would be a relief to give up, throw in the towel, surrender my dreams and ambitions—but in so many situations my optimism is a blessing. Lately it's a bit the worse for wear; it's gotten quite a workout keeping me "up," and I'm not sure how much lift remains.

It's a sad thing when one is so demoralized as to almost wish for an end to optimism.

I'm just grateful that I only feel this way in one part of my life. Granted, it's a big part—so big that changing my circumstances would mean a change in almost everything about my life—but it's still only a part of my life. In the rest of my life, I'm pretty happy and satisfied. My morale is high in other parts of my life.

I have an escape planned, should my ability to endure run out before circumstances change. It'd mean a big change in every aspect of my life, but I'm not afraid of change; I relish it. And knowing I have an exit strategy makes it just a little bit easier to endure the current situation.

In the meantime, "The beatings will continue" and morale will continue to decline. And all I can do is remember to breathe.