So… my voodoo worked.
My work nemesis — the co-teacher who backstabbed me last summer and with whom I’ve been co-parenting a classroom for the past fifteen months — unexpectedly filed for long-term disability retirement.
She’s been on prescription painkillers just to get through the school day. And while part of me feels sympathy for her, that feeling is tangled up with the memory of betrayal. Empathy doesn’t come easily when trust has been broken.
What surprised me most wasn’t that she was leaving, but how she left. She refused to tell the students — not a word of goodbye after sixteen years at this school. No closure, no explanation, just… silence.
I felt bad for our students. So, I told them a small lie — that my “best friend in the States” was very sick — and asked our fifth and sixth graders to make her get-well cards.
Sixty-eight fifth graders and eighty sixth graders eagerly drew, wrote, and signed over a hundred cards. Their kindness touched me deeply.
The day before she left, right before the long Chuseok break, I gave her the bundle of cards. My friends said she wouldn’t care. But when I handed them to her, she seemed genuinely surprised — maybe even emotional.
I didn’t do it for her. I did it for the kids — to give them a quiet kind of closure she wasn’t willing to give.
My friends and husband were quick to remind me that she would never have done the same for me. And they’re right. She’s always been self-centered, always absorbed in her own world. But that day, I chose to act for the students’ sake, not for hers.
Now that she’s gone, I mostly feel… empty. Not happy, not sad. Just done. Maybe that’s what healing looks like — not fireworks, just quiet detachment.
So yes — my “voodoo” worked. And yet, I still extended a bit of grace, even when I didn’t feel like it.
Because in the end, we all have to decide where to spend our energy — and I’m done wasting mine on people who don’t care.
Good luck in your next chapter, Ma’am.
And as for me — I’ll keep moving forward, lighter than before.
“Sometimes closure isn’t a conversation. It’s peace in your own silence.”
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