It is weird to me that the first time I have had the inclination to blog in months has been today, driving home sad from work. You would think – at least I certainly would have thought – that driving home sad would have meant instead that I drove to the stupidmarket for a good bottle of red and went home to settle in.

I don’t know, is this, like, grown up stuff?

The reason I’m sad you ask? Well, I’ll tell ya dear diary, let me tell you.

After five years my girls are moving on. Yes this is a work post. Not a crazy restrictive diet post because I think we all learned our lesson there – heal thy gut by eating nothing blogger me was a failure, it was doomed from the start and achieved essentially nothing – this is instead a work thing. Because really, outside of my fucked up insides and my stupidly busy work life what do I have to write about? My sub-par parenting? You don’t want to hear about that.

Anyway back to why I’m sad. At my school you Dean for the length of time that the cohort attend, from their first day of Year 9 (third form for us oldies) to the last day of their Year 13 (seventh form). And it’s quite the ride. The girls arrive aged 12 ish and leave aged 18 ish. That’s quite a gap – and it’s a significant period of time to give yourself to someone. Let alone 300+ someones. Needless to say that the job takes it’s toll.

And I mean give yourself, because I firmly believe that without an emotional investment you are doing yourself and the students you care for a disservice. Yes, over the years I have learned how to pull back when necessary and how to ask for help or leave stuff at work. And I have never brought a grrl home to sleep on my couch – no matter what hell she has described to me – and I have known why and what would have been wrong to do that but jebus. You hear some stuff.

But apart from all the obvious stuff that is hard about Deaning; what I am going to miss is the joy. The reason I kept going – the reason I will miss it and the reasons it’s weird that they will go on Friday and be ‘not mine’ anymore – and it’s hard to process I guess because noone will really get why I’m so sad. The GD can try – but in fact he has been doing all the parenting this week and I would be really fucking surprised if he had the emotional faculties to give a shit – and he wouldn’t get it anyway.

For 5 years anytime these girls moved or breathed or made a sound and how they made other people feel about those movements, breaths or sounds reflected back on me. If they made a heap of noise I got an angry email or rant because I obviously hadn’t made it clear to them that they needed to be silent as mice all the time (this is a niggle with me – bear with me). If they were kind to juniors or polite to visitors I heard about how wonderful they were. My cohort received a record number of academic and effort based scholarships this year and I bask in their glory.

300 + young women spending their every day living their lives. Getting on with their shit, not thinking about anything but what was ahead of them and what they needed to do to get through their plans and in no way should they have been doing anything but that.

I can’t describe in words how proud of them they are so I won’t try. They give me hope, they give me life, on bad days they made me smile.

And now I have to figure out how to fill the gap they will leave.