And talk about it I am. It’s getting close to March 28th. On that date one year ago, I was on the receiving end of a phone call that honestly changed my life. I only remember the specific date because it was on Holy Thursday. The day that my school got out for Easter break. It was the worst spring break that I have ever had because of that phone call and yet, that phone call led to the best decision I have made in a very long time. It was the reason I quit my job of 19 years. It was the reason I am where I am right now, free of that toxic work environment, free of the one person who made it toxic, and the reason I am now experiencing a brand new season of life that I am enjoying more than I could have ever imagined.
There are only a few select people who know why I really quit my job and what was said during that phone call that made me quit. My husband was the first, a friend from work was the second, and the third was my group of online knitting friends who knew every detail of that traumatic school year and never stopped encouraging me to quit but yet said they would support my decision to stay if I felt that’s what I wanted to do. I feel like if this was a movie, me finally walking away from this job after all I was put through would be the moment when the audience stands up and cheers.
Those people who knew the truth, they repeatedly told me that I should tell people what really happened. I should tell the superintendent or other people up the chain of command. They felt that whoever took my place needed to know what they were getting into, because the person who called me wasn’t going anywhere and would be in that same position for the new person coming in. But I never shared the truth publicly. When I quit, I said I would finish out my contract which didn’t end until June 30th. I didn’t want to make things even worse for myself. Although, I did vow that if this person ever talked to me like that again I would quit right then. She never did, but I was ready just in case.
I also never said anything because I wasn’t ready to burn the bridge with that person. She had been my supervisor for many years and I felt that I needed to have her as a reference on future work applications. After all, she was the one who taught me never to burn a bridge. However, I realized one day that she technically wasn’t my supervisor that school year. The pastor of the church was. I didn’t need to have her as a reference and eventually I stopped putting her down. And now that I have a new job and a new supervisor to put down in case I go job hunting again, I am ready to burn that bridge straight to the ground.
Since I have a new found respect for using my voice, and since it’s almost been a year since it happened, I am ready to tell the truth about that phone call. It might not matter to the people reading this, after all, you don’t know this person. Maybe when this post is shared and people I know in “real life” read it, they might recognize who I’m talking about. If that’s the case, I’m good with that. I am done with keeping quiet about what I have been through. Like it says at the top, if this person wanted people to look at her better, she should have treated me better. And as I’ve alluded in other posts, I’m not saying anything that’s not true. Absolutely everything is the truth.
Without being very long-winded with the back story, I was a teacher at a small, Catholic school for 18 years. For 16 of those years, I worked under the same principal. Over the years, I was subject to harsh criticism and brutal honesty on her part. She frequently said very blunt things to me (and others) and would shrug off the rudeness of her comments by saying, “I’m just being honest.” She was intimidating, and when another teacher told her she felt intimidated by her, she commented on how offended she was that this teacher was intimidated by her.
Long story short, while this woman was the source of much of my anxiety and stress, she also groomed me. That’s the best way I can describe it. She fed me just enough encouragement so that I would feel valued. Because of all the extra duties and responsibilities I took on (various committee chairs, mentor, testing coordinator, accreditation team lead, all the things), she often gave me a raise when other teachers didn’t get one. She made me feel appreciated.
She also had a plan for her own retirement and exit from the school. That plan involved me taking over for her. I rejected her offer of going into administration twice. The third time she asked me, it was a now or never situation, and I said yes. There’s a lot that happened between that ‘yes’ and my final ‘no, I’m out’. But ultimately, she worked out an arrangement with the superintendent and the pastor of our church who was also the person the principal reported to. The deal was that my second year of grad school, which was to be my internship year, I would be the acting administrator of the school. I couldn’t be called interim principal because I didn’t have my master’s degree yet. I also had to have a mentor, as dictated by the university I was attending. So, she was going to be my mentor. She would retire, but still get paid to be my mentor, and I would run the school, with her guiding me behind the scenes. Then, after I graduated, I would interview and go through the official hiring process to become the permanent new principal.
There’s a whole back story of how I have a hard time saying no. I’m a people pleaser. With her, I was actually pretty scared to tell her that I had changed my mind and didn’t want to be a principal. So I went to grad school anyway. I felt like I wanted to help her out. Make it so that she could retire knowing the school was in good hands. She loved that school because she was a student there when she was a kid.
That school year, my internship year, was incredibly traumatic. That’s also a long-winded story. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. It was a trial by fire and behind every stressful, anxiety-inducing thing I had to deal with, she was there telling me what to do. Every time she told me what to do or I asked her what to do, I thanked her. That’s important to know.
Fast forward to Holy Thursday and this infamous phone call. I had turned in a letter of resignation a few weeks before that. She convinced me to rethink my decision. To humor her, I did. Tuesday of that week, I told her that I had changed my mind and I would stay. Thursday, she called me. On Tuesday she had been happy with my decision to stay and praised me for it. On Thursday, everything was different.
During that 20 or so minute phone call, she berated me for being ungrateful. She said she didn’t expect me to kiss her ring but that she expected me to thank her and show my gratitude to her because without her, I wouldn’t be where I am. According to her, she gave me this job on a silver platter. The other people in my grad school cohort would kill to have their own school right out of grad school and here she was giving it to me. She said that maybe it was how I was raised being that I’m from the north. Where she was raised, in the south, she knows how to show her gratitude. She said that she thinks I am threatened by her and that’s why she thinks I don’t like when she visits the school while I’m there. She went on and on in a narcissistic rant like that. The whole theme of it being that I’m ungrateful and she is offended that I haven’t shown her gratitude for everything she gave me with this job. Apparently all the thank you’s I gave her every time she helped me weren’t enough. I guess I should have maybe let her know that I didn’t even want to do this in the first place and I only agreed because I wanted to make her happy.
Looking back, I feel like one of the members of a political party who gives the democratic/republican response after the president delivers the State of the Union address. Thinking back to what she said during that phone call, I have a response. In fact, in therapy, my therapist had me deliver my response to her as if she was this woman. It was very therapeutic. It helped because I never got to tell this woman what I really thought about her and everything she put me through. I never got to give her the real thank you she deserved. The thank you for that phone call because without it, I might still be stuck at that place subjected to her. Come to find out, even if I had stayed and become the permanent principal, the superintendent wanted her to stay on as my mentor because I needed “more development”. Excuse me, but fuck that and fuck her. I don’t like to use such strong words in my posts. But this is warranted. The feelings are that strong.
It was that phone call that ultimately made me decide to quit for the final time. I grit my teeth and got through the remaining months of the school year. On the day before my last day, she stopped by the school and after our final meeting, she said that this wasn’t goodbye because she doesn’t say that. But it was for me. I knew that the second my contract ended, I was going to block her number and cut off all communication with her. I was going to make it so that I would never have to communicate with her again. And I haven’t. Although I never got to tell her how I really felt…I had daydreams of her sending me a Christmas card and me sending it back with a well written letter telling her how I felt…my husband pointed out that the real F you to her is the communication blackout. I didn’t tell her I wasn’t going to respond to her calls and daily texts anymore. I just blocked her number so I didn’t get them. I’m 100% sure she initially tried to call and text, but obviously she got no response. It’s not how I imagined telling her how I really felt, but it’s how the message was sent anyway. And that’s good enough.
For the first few months after leaving that job, I was euphoric. I couldn’t believe how good it felt to be out of there. Then that feeling turned to anger. So much anger. Anger that made my heart race when I thought about it. I spent many therapy sessions addressing my issues with the trauma I endured because of her. And it was trauma. I went from escaping the trauma my father caused me straight into working for this woman who treated me just as badly as my father did. My therapist has helped me heal from her. Now we’re working backwards and starting to work on healing my inner child and what she endured early on.
So there it is. The truth about the phone call that changed my life. That’s not an exaggeration. It did change my life. If she didn’t call me and rage like she did, I might have stayed there. I cringe to think of that alternate possibility.
There’s a country song from the 90s that I’ve recently added to my “inspirational” playlist. “Independence Day” by Martina McBride. Sure it’s about a girl’s mother killing her abusive father, but the line that says “Let the weak be strong” makes me tear up every time. That woman made me weak with all that she said to me over the years. But that phone call made me strong. Strong enough to stand up for myself and say I will not put up with this anymore. When March 28th gets here, I will make sure to listen to that song again because it really will be the one year anniversary of my own personal independence day.
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