I’m running out of energy or enthusiasm (or ”too many painkillers in one week“)

I'm probably breaking some sort of law with how many presciption painkillers I've been taking to keep myself upright during teaching. Some days I just want to stare at my students because they keep coming saying "I have such a hard life - I don't want to learn today - I hate school - I'm tired because I was up until 3am texting/myspacing/videogames."

You know what? I was up at 2 am because I have a burning pain in my abdomen that won't stop and keeps getting worse. I'm going to have to have my belly cut open for the second time this year and it takes me a month to get up and moving again whenever they do it. I'm constantly up too late trying to come up with fun ideas to make my students learn and working on my stuff for graduate school. I'm dropping weight because I'm always running around class trying to help each of my students out.

I want to hear no more comments about how hard life is out of any of my students. Perhaps I'm turing bitter, but they need to zip it around me.

I don't know about their lives and how hard they are but my life is no picnic right now. My body is falling apart and I'm just trying to keep on top of things and still lead my normal life of teaching. Of course, if I'm taking pain killers all the time then I start to hate my job and I think to myself "what am I doing here... these kids need someone who believes in them and NOT another bitter person." I joined this cause to help my students learn and succeed. I can't do that if I become another one of those horrible teachers that outwardly hate them.

I hate this. I want all the pain to stop. I need to be here for the kids and not turn caustic.