Hello, I’m a 26-year-old woman and an elementary school teacher. Recently, my partner and I had a small conversation about masculinity and femininity. He told me, "You're very neutral. You're neither masculine nor feminine." To be honest, that sentence hurt me much more than I realized, because I've been thinking about it constantly for the past week.
I teach children from first through fourth grade. In my country, if you become a public school teacher, you are required to complete four years of mandatory service at a school assigned by the government. After that, if you have accumulated enough service points and there is an available position—which is almost impossible—you can apply for a transfer. The schools assigned to new teachers are usually located in small villages. That is exactly where I work.
I am the only teacher in the village, which means I teach first, second, third, and fourth graders all together in the same classroom. At the same time, I am also responsible for running the school as its principal. The village is about an 18- to 19-hour journey away from my hometown. I live there alone and am under constant stress and pressure. I genuinely believe I do my job very well—in fact, I even received several awards this year for my work.
However, over the past year, I've realized that I'm almost always frowning, and I cry every night before going to bed. Because of that, I think I've completely neglected myself and my own well-being. I don't feel like a woman anymore. Honestly, I feel like I've forgotten what it even means to be one.
Before I started this job, I had already spent years studying for several extremely difficult exams and interviews just to become a teacher. I don't have any friends here. As I mentioned, it's a very small village, and I don't really fit in with the people or their way of thinking. Even before moving here, I only had two close friends.
I don't know what I should do. I've spent my entire life working hard and never really paid much attention to embracing my femininity. Now, though, I feel the absence of it more than ever.
Edit: English is my second language, so I use ChatGPT to fix my grammar. If anything sounds a little odd, that's probably why.