Don't worry, it's not you, it's me

You are SOOO far behind and that is because, as usual, I fell behind in proofing & posting. So my bad there.

It is done: I resigned today, which is to say, I gave the school my 3 months' notice.

Up until I knocked on her door, ESPECIALLY BEFORE I knocked on her door to talk to her, I was swinging back and forth like a God damned pendulum. It sounded like a lot of what I was going through was culture shock... except sometimes it didn't. Asking around sort of split it for me. But my anxiety is what really made the decision for me. I simply could not continue living like I was.

You know how you feel when you suddenly realize you did something terribly wrong/forgot to do something extremely important? Your stomach dropping, maybe feeling a little feverish (unless that's just me), etc., etc.? I feel like that for days. The only blessing was I wasn't losing sleep. But Tuesday I felt that way, fell asleep, and as SOON as I woke up on Wednesday, I felt that way again.

The only inkling I had that my anxiety was abnormal was when I was seeing a psychiatrist after a break-up, and he listed that as something I "have." We even discussed medication, but I decided against it. I have an appointment for a clinic that is good about that here, but it isn't for another 2 weeks. My options were: decide about this while my anxiety remains, as always, through the roof, or wait another month for the meds to maybe kick in, only to find out that the debate between culture shock and bad place was bad place because I was still freaking out, and am once again stuck for an even longer time.

Koreans supposedly never say anything negative to your face, but Hetty, the owner, did. Almost daily. So we're back to my boss seeming to not like me, which I interpret as getting in trouble when I was a kid, blah blah blah. Nevertheless, she is very nice and is always pleasant to me when she sees me. Naturally, she just bought the school, hence she's adjusting, while I'm adjusting, and while I was just starting to get a lay of the land, the land completely turned over and became new.

My feeling was this is not one of the bad hagwons, and indeed, I've never had any of the issues one usually has. Other than my deep unhappiness and nonstop anxiety. The only other time I had anxiety like this was an AWFUL job I had for just 6 months before I worked at MSI. Yet another reason that I leaned on this being less about my culture shock and more about this just not being the place for me.

Hetty was extremely nice. I thought surely she might have had an inkling, but she was very surprised, and said she was very said. I did not give her the letter I'd written, though I did reiterate what I did in the letter, which was devoted to saving face. She said that she knew I was giving the 3 months' notice, but would I be ok if I left by the end of this month/start of April? That was NOT my plan, but it does save me from another 3 months of this.

I am THINKING, though didn't broach it directly because Hetty needed to talk to Anna, the VP, as she's in charge of teachers, that I may be able to get my letter of release, which makes it A LOT easier to apply elsewhere. And would mean I won't have to fly back home for 9 months to wait out the expiration of my ARC card (thereby making a couple people very sad that I would be an alien no longer, lol). But she was so nice and reasonable that I am not worried.

In fact, it went so well I had decided that it really WAS all culture shock and I'd just quit a perfectly good hagwon. Thankfully, I met up with one of the really awesome women who reached out to me when I cast around on facebook for a lifeline amidst all this. Particularly due to the American teachers, the fact that it is truly, truly painful to go through ownership change at a hagwon, and that on top of culture shock anyway, and once I told Dani about where my anxiety is, she said SOMETHING there is toxic, or toxic for me, and I definitely needed to get out. That there are plenty of jobs here that WON'T require me to simmer in my own cortisol and adrenaline for months at a time. No job is worth that sort of hit on quality of life.

I've felt calm ever since, even while I was worrying right afterward that I'd definitely made the wrong decision. Could also be just meeting a new, likable person who tells you you didn't get it wrong. So we'll see how I feel tomorrow. Of course, moving on to a new place when I know right now that I canNOT complete another 9 months here, never mind take on a whole new 12 months lease, isn't awesome. But who knows? I might actually get an apartment that's wider than I am tall!