antiprincess

I have never spent a year being so ambivalent about so many things in my damn life.

Today was my last day at my afternoon job, where I worked at an afterschool childcare program, with K-5 graders. I'm so happy to be done there, and it was so sad to leave. They threw me a little surprise party yesterday, and a lot of the kids made me good-bye cards. It was so sweet.

Sometimes when you work in childcare, kids are like ticks. You're just going about your business, and before you realize it, they're attached to you. And worse yet, you're attached to them. And sometimes they hurt you, sometimes they're a pain in your ass, and you know if you don't remove them soon, they're going to drive you crazy. So you do, you know it's the right thing. But it still hurts.

I imagine melancholy means a kind of malaise, a minor depression of sorts that's hard to shake, usually associated with nostalgia or longing. That's not what it means, exactly, I know that, but that's how the word sounds to me, and that's how I'll continue to use it.