If they knew the truth, it would break them.

Everyday I come to work with a smile. The kids love coming to my class. It’s high energy, engaging, and intense. The learning environment I have worked so hard to create is a place where students want to come in and work. They learn something new everyday.

It’s also exhausting and a lie. My smile is false, my energy is a fabrication and a wall that I have created for my kids. To them, I am always positive and encouraging. Every second I am awake, I am bombarded by negative thoughts to the point that I get very little sleep. They don’t know that. They will never, can never, know that truth about me.

My fellow teachers come to me for inspiration. The school principals love to bring campus guests to my class first in order to see my class in action. Always a smile, always a mask. This same mask, this facade, crumbles the minute I get in my car to go home. Sometimes, when I get a minute to myself, I allow the mask to come off, even if just for a second. The second someone comes in my room the mask comes back on. I’m so tired.

Please don’t misunderstand, I love my job and I love my students to death. I just wish I loved myself the same way I love those kids. Sometimes I can feel the mask falling apart, and it takes everything I have to pull it together when they are in my room.

I have to remain a positive for these kids, for so many come from worlds that are negative and harsh. I have to pretend, for their sakes. If not me, then who? Who will help them see that there is positives in this harsh and unforgiving world they have found themselves on. I’m a hypocrite, I know it, but it’s for the kids.

I should get some help, I know. I probably won’t. I’m afraid of what will happen, what unholy thing will manifest when I speak the truth. Besides, it’s better this way, to suffer in silence.

That’s not true, and I know it. Like I said, I’m a hypocrite. I don’t know any other way, and I’ve been going down this dark and horrible path for so long that I don’t even think there is another way.

Besides, it’s for the kids.