ALL NAMES ARE FICTITIOUS, FOR PRIVACY REASONS.
I’m finding it hard to adjust back home in Geelong.
I’m restless and apathetic. Time seems to have no meaning. I hardly have the inclination to get up, to shower, to shave. I miss and worry about the girls back at Tiwi. My girls, I used to say. Months of looking after, hurting with, being excited with, putting up with, cleaning up after, cooking for doesn’t fade so quickly as I’d like it to.
Abigail, only 12 and having trouble with a boy, Adam, who likes her, and being teased about it is considerably distressed. He is traumatised, having found his father dead several days after he’d hung himself. As much as I feel for him I want to protect her from him; at least till she’s older. I could list more; I could say something for every single one of these kids. I have no power; any I had was, in human terms, hung on the apparently arbitrary decision of one individual, the CEO, who being rarely present knows what goes on in the school only distantly, second hand.
What gives him the right?
I’m sorry if I sound bitter. I am. Hopefully I will get over it.
I thought I had and for a week or so it seems ok, and then its all back in your mind again.
