Our Teachers Are Afraid

Florida has long been a less-than-ideal place for teachers.  In fact, our teachers are some of the lowest-paid in the nation, yet they operate under some of the strictest scrutiny.  Micromanagement is an epidemic at every level of educational administration at the school, county, and state levels.  Gone are the days when teachers were made to feel as though they do an important job by educating our future generations.  These days, teachers are asked to do more and more with less and less and for smaller and smaller compensation.

This school year, the median salary for 10-month teachers in Escambia County is $40,187 (step 13 of 26 steps).  That may not sound so bad, but when you do the math, it gets worse.  Teachers in this county, on average, work 7½ hours per day at school.  While their contract guarantees them a duty-free lunch, high school teachers are the only ones who get that "perk" on any regular basis, meaning that they are on the clock for that 7½ hours each day.  Based on my own observation, I would say that it's not at all unusual for a teacher to spend 2 hours per night at home (or staying late at work) grading papers on weekdays and another 4-6 hours over the weekend.

$40,187 annually for a Step 13 teacher (32.825 on step 1 or 51.986 on step 26) (link) works out to a miserable pittance, once you take into account the hours that teachers spent "working" on their own time (working lunches, grading papers, and writing plans at home) during the school year and over the summer.  That is less than the average McDonald's employee (link)!  And those are the figures for a Step 13, veteran teacher!  Add to this the fact that teacher's pay is spread over 12 months, for most, instead of just the 10 months during the school year and you can plainly see that our teachers are being hugely underserved by the system that could not operate without them!

In addition to the low pay, most teachers spend their own money on work.  Teachers at several schools I know of each received a $100 budget this year to be spent on classroom and office supplies.  Teachers and aides also each qualify for up to a $250 tax credit on their annual income taxes.  Ask a teacher how much they spent last year on their classroom and work-related supplies.  It's very probable the number will tally far higher than $350.

And this is how our governmental system shows its appreciation for educators!

Accepting Un-Pretty

I spent most of my childhood being teased mercilessly by my peers, both at school and at church.  I have always been the fat, freckle-faced, redheaded, unpopular kid.  I didn't play sports.  I didn't have any particularly enviable talents  I didn't come from a "rich" family.  I rarely ever had more than one or two "friends" at any given time.  It didn't take me long to understand that I have never fit into the mold of what common society considers to be physically beautiful.  I probably understood this fact by the time I had finished elementary school—although acceptance of this fact would come much, much later.

As I grew into adulthood, I learned that it didn't really matter that I'm not beautiful.  I'm smart, I'm funny, I'm passionate, and I'm a hard worker.  I have learned that I don't need a hundred "best" friends, and I'm honestly much happier with a smaller, closer circle of genuine friends.  I have learned that who I am is good enough, and that I'm worthy of love and friendship and respect.  I've learned that I don't need to be beautiful, and I've come to realize that I'm not sure I'd even want the pressure that would come attached to maintaining a beautiful me.

Working around middle schoolers, these past several years, has given me the opportunity to develop an entirely different perspective on being "un-pretty" by watching it unfold through the eyes of my students.  While it's not something I point out to them, I have students who do not fit into the "beautiful" category.  Some of them may never fit into that category, and there's really nothing that they can do about it.  While the "un-pretty" seems to afflict both male and female students, it is the girls I worry about the most.

The problem I see is this:

When a girl goes crying to her friends, parents, or teachers, telling them that she has been harassed or bullied by someone who said she was "ugly" or "fat" or some other such derogatory term, it is almost always handled wrongly.  The first reaction or these friends and parents and teachers is to comfort the girl—and rightly so—and then to say something like "Just ignore them.  You're beautiful no matter what they say."

New Discoveries in an Old Routine

As I begin this post, it's 11:20p.m. on Tuesday evening, and I already know that I'll be dragging when the alarm clock starts buzzing in the morning.  But, I've had some thoughts circling my mind in a never-ending loop the last few days, and I need to get them out, so here I sit, on the couch, blogging when I should be already asleep.  Alas.

About 6 weeks ago, Kaleb was diagnosed with ADHD by his pediatrician and began taking a daily dose of Adderall to aid him in regaining control of himself.  To say the least, it feels as if our lives have been transformed.  It took a bit of trial and error to settle upon the correct dosage for Kaleb—just enough to get the job done, but not enough to turn him into a pre-school zombie—but when the right dosage was tested, it was like a magic spell!  He's not a perfect kid, and we still aggravate one another immeasurably sometimes (he's 3 years old, and we are both redheads), but pretty much everything has improved by the introduction of this little pill into our morning routines.

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Many people who know me already know that Kaleb began Pre-K 3 at Escambia Christian School yesterday (Monday) on the first day of the 2012-2013 school year.  It wasn't something I had really prepared for, and was arranged on relatively short notice—the reasons behind our withdrawal from Malena's Mini School will be the topic of another post.

Remembering Bob

At some point, some person will become a part of your life for a short time, but will leave a very lasting impression on your heart.  This is an experience that most everyone will have, and it can be a unique experience, to be so affected by someone you've barely gotten to know.

This is the story of the brief time that Bob* was a part of my life.

From October 2006 to October 2007, I worked in the administration and monitoring positions at a residential facility here in Pensacola where newly-released inmates were court ordered to attend drug and alcohol abuse treatment.  Up to 60 of these clients at a time lived in our facility, taking part in individual and group counseling and working to get back into the job force.  Each week, some clients would rotate out and others would rotate in.  Though I spent 50+ hours a week working among them, I never truly got to know the majority of the clients as there was a need to maintain a clear separation between profession and personal life.

But, try as I might, I did still get to know occasional clients very well—nothing remotely inappropriate, but some of these people.....you just couldn't help but like them.  Yes, I knew many of the more troubling and disturbing details of their individual pasts, but I also knew that many of these people were struggling with addictions that had taken away their self-control along with their self-respect.  The majority of the clients were good people who had made very bad choices and ended up in very bad situations.  Then they had landed in our facility.

That's the Thing About Having Friends...

I've never been the kind of person who had—or wanted—bunches and bunches of friends.  I've always preferred to keep one or two close friends and simply maintain others at the level of friendly acquaintances.  I know this might not be typical for a woman, but there's a reason behind it.

You see, there's this thing about having friends: you have to open yourself up emotionally.

It doesn't sound like anything big or scary, but opening up emotionally leaves you open to being hurt or disappointed or mislead (intentionally or not) or embarrassed.  And none of those are things anyone likes, really.

Throughout my life, nearly every time I have opened up to a new friendship, at least of of those things has happened to me, and I can tell you that it is never any fun.  And each time it happens, I have to take a break and decide if that friendship is worth saving or if it's better to just let go.  Most times, I end up deciding that the value of the relationship doesn't outweigh the emotional toll it takes on me.  On rare occasions, I step back for a while, swallow my opinions (I know, hard for you to imagine), and push on through with a business-as-usual friendship.

Some of you may have noticed that I've been on a bit of "internet silence" the last few weeks.  Partly, this has been because work is pretty hectic this close to the end of the school year.  But mostly, I've been nursing a spot of hurt pride/embarrassment caused by a couple of friends.  I went out on a limb for someone, and it ended up biting me in the ass.  That old familiar sting came back, reminiscent of so many hurts and wrongs in the past, and I needed some time to myself to reevaluate.

I've had plenty of time to think now, and I'm back in the public arena of the internet again.  I haven't made any definite decisions about the status of this freshly-wounded friendship.  And, though I won't name the other party or even hint to their identity, the ball is now squarely in his or her court.

Friendship.  It's tough.  But for the opportunity to find those rare, true friends, it's totally worth it.

I [Don't] Enjoy Being A [Stereotyped] Girl.

I don't know about any of you, but I grew up watching movies that were musical classics: Singin' in the Rain, Shall We Dance, Holiday Inn, The Sound of Music, White Christmas, The King & I, and Flower Drum Song among them.  While I loved the musicality and exuberance of these movies—and still do—I have, as an adult, begun to see things in these movies that I never noticed as a kid.  Primary among these more recent observations is that these movies, to great extent, seemed to celebrate "girly" women, women who loved dresses and lace and being taken-care-of housewives.

And this one simple observation has caused my first feeling of complete disconnect from these movies.

Of these movies, Flower Drum Song is the most obvious in it's display of these traditional gender roles, highlighting them in all their somewhat-outdated detail in the musical scene shown below.

I got to reading the words to that song a few days ago, and have been unable to stop comparing my real life to the realistically fictional life detailed in the song's lyrics.  As a formerly-married single woman, a single mom, and a woman with a full time job, my life seems to stand in near-complete contrast to these lyrics.  Below, I have listed the song's lyrics and contrasted them line by line.  Enjoy!

I Can't Do This!

When faced with a difficult task, it can sometimes be so much easier to just say, "I can't do this," and let someone else do it for us.

I notice Kaleb does this all the time.  Just tonight, he had trouble reaching the light switch in the bathroom and said, "Mommy, I can't reach it."  A short while later he was trying to open the plastic case that contains his play set of doctor's tools.  When the case's latches got stuck, he said, "Mommy, I can't open this!"  The difficulty he encountered trying to put a book back onto his slightly-overcrowded book shelf caused him to exclaim,"Mommy, this book don't fit on here!" Finally, as Kaleb's bedtime drew near, I told him to go take off his clothes in preparation for bath time.  He was wearing new pants today, and the buttonhole is still a little tight.  He called out to me, "Mommy, I can't unbutton my pants!"

And in our house, this is a very typical evening.  Whenever Kaleb runs into trouble trying to do something on his own, his first reaction is to call in Mommy for help, to do it for him.

As children, we learn to depend on the grown-ups in our lives to take care of us and provide for us.  That trust and reliance is an important aspect of the parent/child relationship.  While we grow up, those grown-ups begin to teach us the skills necessary to grow up to be self-reliant.  And then the cycle begins again once we are adults, and begin to pass along these skills of self-reliance to the children in our lives.  This cycle has been repeating for millenia throughout the animal kingdom, and is not unique to we human creatures.  What is more unique to humans (and some other primates), however, is this desire to proclaim we "can't" and have someone else handle things for us.

So, did I turn on the bathroom light for Kaleb tonight?  Or open the case of toys?  Or put his book back onto the shelf?  Or unbutton his pants?

Honesty: It's More Than Just Words

Looking innocent in the winter of 1992.

When I was a child, honesty and I were near-complete strangers.  Right or wrong, it's the truth; and it's one truth that I have spent many years pretending didn't exist.  I lied as naturally as I blinked my eyes and nearly as often.  The older I got, the better I got at lying and getting away with it.  Sure, there were plenty of times someone figured me out, but there were plenty of times that no one did, and I learned from those "successes."

Over the years, my lies resulted in hurt feelings, disappointments to my parents and family, the losses of friendships, and some not-so-fun punishments.  Was it worth it?  At the time, I was fully convinced that the benefits outweighed the down sides.  However, as I became an adult, I began to see that there had been nothing gained from any of it—not the lying, not the deceit,  not from any of the dishonest behaviors.

I admit, I'm still not perfect.  Lying can become as addictive as any drug, and I spent well over a dozen years in the grips of that addiction and in denial of the problem right in front of my eyes.  Now, however, I see those faults in all their damaging detail, and I actively work to be honest with friends, family, and anyone else with whom I come into contact in my life.

P52, Somewhat: Week 9, "Distance"

This week's post topic is "distance."  I could think of plenty of distant objects the photograph: a setting sun, a tree in a field, a storm looming on the horizon, a boat heading out to sea.  And any of those shots, along with a multitude of others would be great practice for a photographer using this photo-a-week challenge to bolster their photography skills.  I, however, am not a photographer; and while I may see some improvement in my amateur photography skills by the end of this project, it is not my primary motivation for participation in this challenge.  Rather, my motivation for attempting this was to help bring some added variety and diversification to my blog and give me a chance to further build and exercise my writing skills.

So rather than deciding on what photo to write about, I decided instead to write about something that I could find a photo to complement.

What comes to mind when I think of the things in my life that are meaningful yet distant?

Jack.  Of course.

Friendships worth having require a great deal of shared work and mutual responsibility to keep them healthy.  And maintaining such relationships over long distances grows exponentially more difficult.  For it to work, you must care enough to work for it.

Frequent readers of my blog will already know who Jack is and how we met.  (If you missed that post, you can catch up here.)  Jack and I share a relationship that neither of us quite know how to properly label.  We are friends, for certain, but there is more too, and it is the addition of this "something more" that makes our friendship so valuable to us both.  And even over the 10,122 miles (16,290 km) between here and Jack's current home in Japan, that "something more" gives a reason to stay close.

P52, Somewhat: Week 7, "Love"

It's hardly surprising that the P52 topic this week was "love," being that this is the week of Valentine's Day.  I have plenty of things I love: my little boy, family, friends, pets, books, shoes, chocolate....the list goes on and on.  I could think of plenty of things to photograph for this week, from the mundane to the extraordinary and from cliché to unique.  But I couldn't narrow down my options and decide what sort of photo I wanted to take!

To: Minha ruiva! [My redhead!]
Love: Seu devoto! [Your devoted!]
(Brazilian Portuguese [English])

But today, my sweet Jack solved the question for me, sending me a gift with a story.

Most people who read my blog have heard of Jack.  He's my....well, I don't know exactly what to call our type of "us-ness"....but there's definitely something here.  He's my friend; he's the person who knows every single one of my secrets; he's the first person I want to talk to when I've had a bad day, or a good day, or a day that's notable for any reason at all.  I could spend all night extolling the virtues of Jack, but that is not the purpose of this post.

♫♪ Let's start at the very beginning....♫♪

In December of 2002, I was married to a guy in the Marine Corps and we were living in Ramona, CA just north of MCAS Miramar where my then-husband was stationed.  Several of the other kid-free military wives in our apartment complex had begun volunteering at a V.A.-run recovery center in downtown San Diego where a number of recently-wounded Marines were living while undergoing extensive physical therapies for a range of injuries.  The other wives invited me to come along with them, and it sounded like a worthwhile cause, so I went.

P52, Somewhat: Week 6, "Texture"

Monday, January 23, 2012 marked 9 years since I met my friend, Jack.  As he does on many holidays and special days, Jack had a gorgeous flower arrangement delivered to me at work.  I kept them at work to show off and admire all week, then took them home on Friday afternoon to enjoy them longer (they usually last a couple of weeks).

It was nice to have the flowers at work all that week, giving me something to jump-start happy thoughts during the occasional low points in my days.  It struck me how many of life's situations we tend to describe using "texture" words.

• Work was tough today.

• This car has a smooth ride.

• Marriage is a bumpy road.

• Single parenting is rough.

Friendship is another situation we describe with many words, and the descriptions can change over time.  The friendships that last the longest seem to be the ones that make it down the bumpy roads, past the rough times, and into a smooth comfortable closeness...never giving up when the going gets tough.  I have been lucky enough, in my life, to have had a cherished few friendships like this.  I have some amazing friends who have shared the good and the bad with me, and who have remained my faithful friends though it all.

Stepping Back Into Sanity

Kaleb is home from a fun sleepover night at my mom's house, and I'm in much better shape than I was when I dropped him off at daycare yesterday morning.  Things had been a little tough lately, and I'm so thankful to have had a day to focus on me and to do some mental and emotional housekeeping.  As anyone who's a parent already knows, you can't be as good a parent if you yourself are falling apart!

A Rough Start to 2012

Back on New Year's Day, I resolved that 2012 would be my Year of Acceptance.  What I have discovered is that accepting things as they come my way means that I am unable to ignore them and simply hope they will go away.  Life has shown me that ignoring problems rarely solves them, and I'm also learning that facing problems head-on is both the most-productive and sometimes the most-painful way to handle them.  And I don't know about you, but I would rather just bite the bullet and get things over with than try to draw them out and deal with that dull ache over a prolonged time.

Several weeks ago, I had to take Kaleb out of the daycare he had been attending since he was only weeks old, a daycare that I once loved and highly recommended to others.  We've found a great new place, but Kaleb's adjustment to a new environment and my adjustment to an altered morning routine have been a little bit stressful.

Of course, there's also the ever-present stresses of parenting, not at all diminished by my being a single parent.  I love my son, and I love spending time with him, but it was begin to wear on me when I'm with Kaleb every waking moment that isn't taken up by work—except for the shorts drives back and forth between my work and his daycare.

2012 State of the Union — My Reactions to Some of the Events of Last Evening

Last evening President Barack Obama delivered the third State of the Union address of his presidency.  As I do every year, I watched the entire speech.  Kaleb got to stay up later than usual, because I didn't want to miss any of it.

I think that it's important to watch, if at all possible, any time the President addresses the nation.  And I don't think that it is any less important if the speech is being delivered by a President you may not be particularly fond of.  When George W. Bush was in office, I watched his SOTU address every year and, while he never said much of anything I agreed with,—and certainly never spoke eloquently on any subject during his term in office—I still was always glad to have taken the chance to hear what the country's leader had to say.

I can honestly say that I do not regret having voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and unless some miracle candidate comes on the scene between now and the 2012 election, I will be voting for him again this coming November.  In 2008 I was excited to be voting for someone with such innovative ideas and grand plans for making positive changes in the country.  I knew that the office of the President was one endowed with only very limited power to affect change, but a Democratic President coupled with a Democratic-majority Congress gave me hope that things really could get better, and I had a renewed faith in the U.S. system of government.

In his first year or so in office, Obama was able to work with a mostly-friendly Congress to begin making some of those changes.  Then, in 2010, enough Democratic Congressmen lost their Congressional seats to Republicans, giving the Republicans the majority control of Congress.  And overnight, the progress being made came to a screeching halt.  Congressional work spiraled downward into a quagmire of mud-slinging and party bickering; too many Congressmen stopped thinking rationally and began voting strictly along party lines, even on issues that many from both parties actually would have agreed upon; the ensuing governmental standstill brought an abrupt end to my tentative hopes for positive change.

Responsibility, Part I: Friendships

"But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away."

~Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859

Although they are often neglected or taken for granted, friendships require a great deal of responsibility to be maintained and kept healthy.  Since you cannot control the actions of others, take responsibility for your friendships upon yourself!  If you act responsibly within your friendships, doing all that you reasonably can to keep them healthy and happy, then you will either have satisfying and safe friendships—or you will know, as you walk away from toxic friendships, that the source of the toxicity is not with you and that you are walking away to preserve your own well-being.

[Guest Blogger] Friendship

This post was originally published by a fellow blogger, Sharra, on her own blog on December 6, 2011.  I thought there was a lot of truth to this post, and so I have asked her to repost it hear for my readers as well.

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What a crazy wonderful but sometimes horrible thing friendship can be. I have gone through many friendships in my short 32 years. Some of them were wonderful and still bring a smile to my face, while others leave me still feeling hurt. Through my years I have come up with a few simple rules suggestions truths about friendship. These come from my own experiences and may not all apply to you and your situations friends but I am sure you can still get some thing from them.

2011: A Year of Firsts and New Experiences

The Pensacola Pelican Drop Pelican

Here we are at the end of 2011.  At some times during this past year, the days have seemed to fly by; at others, time seems to have been moving soooo sloooowly.  But slow or fast, the time has passed.  It's time to close the book on 2011 and prepare for 2012.

At the end of 2010, I blogged about the year in a post entitled "The Obligatory Year-End Blog Post."  The title, of course, was to make a joke of the fact that pretty much every blogger of any kind writes a New Year or End-of-Year post.  But after putting a lot of work into my blog this year, updating and formatting and improving and writing more often, I've come to see that blogging isn't such a joke.  Even if no one else cares to read my writings, I've learned that writing is my therapy.  Any time I've had a bad day, a good day, a boring day, a challenging day, or any other sort of ordinary or not-so-ordinary day, I can use my blog as a place to chronicle the events of Kaleb's and my life.  And on particularly emotional days, writing is more cathartic than crying, more of a release than talking, and more comforting -- and healthier -- than all the standard comfort foods.

Originally, I had planned to wait and post this on New Year's Eve, but I've decided to go ahead and post a little ahead of schedule.

And so, as we launch into 2012, here is my look back at the past year:

Un-Subscribed

Near the end of every major sports season, I find myself un-subscribing from the statuses of one Facebook sports-fan friend after another in order to rid my News Feed of the constant sports-related updates and team rivalry and posturing.  This could happen during the Stanley Cup, World Cup, World Series, Super Bowl (or other bowl games), March Madness, or numerous other "big" sporting events.

In advance of un-subscribing from anyone, I generally post a status myself to let them know.  Tonight's post went like this:

Initially, I meant my response to my friend, Richelle, to be funny.  But after posting it, I realized that it was actually more accurate than I had planned.  I do un-subscribe from people from time to time; we all do, and modern technology makes it easier and easier all the time!

You've done it, too.  I promise.

Flowers For No Reason Are The Best!

Flowers I received 10-25-2011.

I have the most amazing friends of anyone I know.  But one friend, in particular, goes far beyond what many others are able to do.  My best friend, Jack, is a man who was raised to understand the power of a flower.

In Jack's family, it was well known that his mother -- and later his sister -- deserved flowers for special days: birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, Christmas, etc.  And Jack's father, Darren, passed on this knowledge to both his sons.  Later, he imparted this wisdom on his son-in-law as well.

Over the years, Jack and his brother continued the tradition of giving beautiful gifts of flowers to the women in their lives.  They joined their father in surprising their mother.  Along with their brother-in-law and father, they would send flowers to their sister.  When Jack's brother, Darren Jr., became engaged, his future wife was showered with flowers from men all around the family.  She once told me that, for about 3 weeks after becoming engaged to Darren Jr., her apartment looked more like a florist's shop than a residence.

Side view of the flowers received 10-25-2011.

When Jack and I became friends, it didn't take me long to notice that the women in his life -- both friends and family -- never went a holiday or special event without an arrangement of gorgeous, fresh flowers.  And so, it was no huge shock to me when I received flowers for the first birthday I celebrated after starting a friendship with Jack.  What has shocked me, however, has been the frequency with which I have received these gifts from my friend.

I get flowers for my birthday.  I get flowers for Christmas and Mother's Day.  For Valentine's Day I get flowers, sometimes accompanied by balloons or chocolates or fruit.  I even get flowers for our annual Friend-iversary!

But more amazing than any of these is when I get flowers on non-days....days that aren't holidays or particularly special for any reason.  I get flowers, sometimes, when Jack knows I've had a rough day or when I'm not feeling well.  Other times, I get celebratory flowers when I've had a particularly great day or have had a small victory or success in some area of my life.

The flowers pictured in this post are flowers I received this past Tuesday.  The card said, "I thought going back to work after a nice 3-day weekend would be a let-down for you, so here are your favorites to cheer you up! Have a great day, and I can't wait to talk to you tonight!"

Perfect. ♥

You Don't Know Jack.

Knowing that I'd been a bit more stressed than normal lately, my darling friend, Jack, sent me surprise flowers at work today -- for no reason other than the fact that he loves me.  So, Jack, in case I didn't tell you enough earlier, THANK YOU SO MUCH for being the best friend I could want in my life, and I love you dearly.  You are an amazing man.

♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥  ♥ ♥ 

So, for the record, my Jack has spectacularly wonderful taste and always managed to find the most gorgeous flowers and gifts to send me.  Don't believe me?  See for yourself!  Below are the beauties he sent me today.

 

See, I told ya!  Ain't he great?!  ☺

Matthew, Part IV: An Emotional Evolution

• Matthew, Part I: Parallel Histories
• Matthew, Part II: The Aftermath of Poor Choices
• Matthew, Part III: A "Dear Matt" Letter 

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These last few days have taken my emotions and feelings on a roller-coaster ride of change.  When I first began receiving texts and calls from friends who were concerned about me and checking on me, I had no idea what everyone was talking about.  At first, I got only a very little bit of information.....just enough to scare me.

Luckily, public information doesn't take too terribly long to update locally, and I soon was every to read every terrible detail contained in the police reports.  After reading the "Local News" versions of the story, I was completely and utterly horrified to think that someone I had known so well and for so long could possibly commit acts of the type of which Matt has been accused.

Over the following day or so, I went through a range of emotions:

     Shock at the idea that Matt could be capable of such terrible things,

     Fear over wondering if I had been in danger from Matt and hadn't even realized it,

     Worry, both for Matt being in jail and for the welfare of the victim and her family,

     Anger,

     Disappointment,

     Confusion,

     And mixed emotions in trying to decide how I felt about Matt on a personal level.