Part of the Process

December 4, 2013 By 2 Comments

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All of the blogs and websites and guidance say that I need to give myself time to grieve.  Time to grieve the Bar I didn’t pass and be sad for what could have been.  The issue I am having is that I am not just grieving over the Bar, I am grieving over the life that I thought I wanted – or at least the life I thought I could be happy with.

I have spent the past year of my life working at a firm, on and off, and I have hated it with every fiber of my being most days.  My life was spent pushing paper from one desk to the next – not really helping anyone or making the sort of changes in others’ lives that I had always hoped to.  I sat at a desk and typed.  And as much as I attempted to convince myself that it would get better with Bar results or that it would get better when I got more experience – it wouldn’t.   The kinds of cases I would be handed would do nothing to satiate my need to feel that I was making some sort of a difference.  Almost everything I worked on came down to petty fights and arguments over the wording in agreements.  What can we hold them to?  Rather than, what was actually trying to be said? 

I never wanted to work at a firm.  I didn’t go into law for the big paycheck.  I never wanted this.  And somehow I landed here, realizing now, that I have been trying to stuff myself into a position that I have no interest in.

I guess I am 2 years late on my quarter life crisis?  27.  27 and I still don’t have it together.  When does that happen?  I honestly have grieved that I didn’t pass the Bar and have made my peace with the fact that I have to do it all over again.  What I haven’t mourned is the last three years that I spent, thinking that this was the path I was supposed to be on.  It is times like these that I think it would be so much easier to just fall into something, rather than to attempt to approach things with a goal and a purpose.  You don’t get blamed for not liking something you just “fell into.”  You do get blamed, and mightily so, for going after something with gusto and the realizing it isn’t ever what you wanted.

I am caught between this desire to do something meaningful and “make a difference” whatever the hell that means, and wanting to do what I can “be okay” with.  I am tired.  I don’t know how long I have been tired, but I would guess around.. three years?  Maybe four?  I would love to find something and make a difference and be that person for someone, but I would also like to take a nap. I am tired of looking.  Tired of attempting to find something that says, here I am! This is it!  I don’t think I am physically as tired as I feel, I am 27 for goodness sake.  I am emotionally tired of hunting.

As I have said, I have a couple of ideas that I am getting in motion, but implementing them is going to take so. much. work.  And I really do need that nap.  Though.. one of these plans brings me so much joy, more on that soon.

So here I am, studying for the Bar for the second time, while knowing that the legal field is quite possibly the last area I wish to be in.

Photo of Bears Mill, by my lovely husband. 

Filed Under: Anxiety, California Bar, Random Thoughts

The Power of Cats

November 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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With my grandpa passing away this spring, it left my nana in a giant house with two aging poodles (read: should have gone to doggie heaven quite awhile ago).  Both the poodles got to the point where it was no longer humane to keep them with her.  Thus Nana now was really all alone in a big house.

Except, this summer, a cat moved in under Nana’s shed.  She proceeded to have five kittens.  Nana fed the mama and kittens from afar, all of them being too timid to approach.  The kittens were completely feral, not a fan of humans at all.  Believe me, I tried.  Ouch.

But mama, now named Calico, was a different story.  She got braver and braver until she would purr and purr around your legs, tripping you as you tried to feed the kittens.  Eventually, she got bold enough to use the poodles’ old dog door.  She wasn’t much more than a kitten herself at the time, scrawny and thin.  Nana and her caregivers fed her as often as they could, but she was still nursing the kittens that were rapidly becoming just as large as she was.

She moved into the house while her kittens moved on, still uninterested in people, impossible to catch, though not for a lack of trying.  They still hang around for food, which Nana gladly gives them, but they aren’t interested in making her backyard their home.

Calico, on the other hand, has taken to sleeping on Grandpa’s side of the bed, or curled up on the couch.  She has endless food and toys and love.  She’s still on the thin side, but definitely a healthy little cat.  When visiting this weekend I said, Nana, you saved her! Nana said, No, she saved me.

I am not sure I believe in Grandpa being able to send Nana gifts from the beyond, but if he could send her anything, it definitely would have been a little cat that needed a home, just as much as Nana needed a cat in her empty house.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

Failure

November 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

It is true, failure is a part of life. I am grateful that it hasn’t been a huge part of my life.  By the grace of God and through working my ass off, I have been successful at a lot of things I have set my mind to. This was not one of those times. I failed the Bar. Yes, I did.

It has sunk in, even though last night was just a mess.  I went to bed at 8:00 P.M. wearing a onesie with cats on it. But I did what I do. I freaked out for a bit and then made a plan.  So I have a plan.  I am going to do it again.  But this is it.  Even before Bar results I had decided that I don’t want to enter into law in the traditional sense.  I would rather do something in the intersection of law and policy, which does not require Bar results.

But I am going to do it again, for me.  I can’t allow myself to give up after one try.  That’s just sad. So I am gearing myself up to do it again and to do it better.  So far I have decided two things.

  1. I am not going to let myself look like a pathetic mess the whole time. I feel better about myself and my life when I have clean hair and eyeliner on.  Maybe this is me letting the male half of the species win, but I am doing it.
  2. I am finding a therapist. I had an awesome therapist all through law school but she was employed by the school.  I wasn’t allowed to see her as a graduate. So I went without during the Bar.  Let’s just call this a poor life choice.

I am not saying that I am going into this without trepidation or the fear that history is going to repeat itself, but I have a plan dammit.

 

Image from Today is Going to Be Awesome by Nicole Lavelle

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Ain’t Nothing But A Family Thing

November 18, 2013 By 2 Comments

 Today my biological dad hung up on me.  He hung up on me after I pressed him about his drinking and driving. After I refused to gloss over the call I had received from the police Friday night, asking me if I would be willing to pick him up from jail.

This has been a further step in his downward spiral that has taken a turn for the worse in the past six weeks.  The hell he has put me through is nothing compared to what he has done to his wife and her family. And yet, I am sure it is still much worse for him.

The drinking has always been bad, but not that bad.  He was a highly functioning alcoholic for many many years.  It got worse when he retired, having nothing to do but sit on the couch and drink his boredom and his life.  And then suddenly, he unraveled completely. And that was it.

The police have been called several times.  I have called the cops on my dad.

He was in rehab and then he was at a bus stop with all his things.  He was out, and sober and not quite right.  He wouldn’t sit still. He wouldn’t stop.  His wife, a nurse, knew.  Something was wrong.  He started drinking again.

No, there are no psychiatric appointments available for weeks.  He bought a sound system.  And another.  And another.

Finally, an appointment, an evaluation, a diagnosis.  Bipolar. Everyone is surprised.  No one is surprised.  He says, “This is horseshit, I’m not going to the loony bin.”  Takes another sip of his rum with a dash of coke out of his coffee cup.

He spirals further.  Two more evaluations, same. Bipoplar. He drinks to self-medicate.  He swings back and forth wildly between wasted and manic.  He buys a trailer and leaves, gone for two weeks.  All of us praying he doesn’t hurt anyone along the way.  He speaks forcefully, you want to believe his words are true, but none of it is based in reality.

He turns up at home, no longer welcome in the house.  Staying at a hotel.  Countless insane phone calls, a DUI. He needs a gun, he has no reason to live.  He wants to live.  He wants to buy me a house.  He wants to see me.

My life over the past month has been fragmented and painful.  Broken, at sharp points, by phone calls from a delusional man.  By questions from my boss, what is going on? By questions from my family, are you okay? Questions to my sister, what do we do?

 At this point, I have decided I can’t partake in his delusional phone calls anymore.  Either he is getting help or he isn’t.  He refuses to talk about it, he is fine. You aren’t fine! If you were fine, would I be getting calls to bail you out of jail?!

 

…

Click.

He’s gone.

But, I’ll be here, ready to help. Ready when he’s ready, but not until then.

 

image found here.

Filed Under: Family

Creature Fear

November 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I hesitate to write about the specifics of my job here, or anywhere, because how many cautionary tales are there about people that wrote about their job or their coworkers on the internet and were the fired? Plenty.  However, I need to come out from hiding and just state this:  I hate my job with the fire of a thousand suns.  We are talking that deep seated hatred that makes you feel capable of all sorts of mayhem.

At this point, I am attempting to determine if I actually hate the entire legal profession or just where I work.  Because those are two very different things.   I do know that being near tears every Sunday night is not something I want to do for much longer.  However, I can’t say that the thought of any law job evokes such a response from me.  This isn’t my first legal position, but this is the first job that makes me feel physically unwell on a regular basis.

So, I am inclined to think that it’s just here.

Image found at dethjunkie.

Filed Under: Uncategorized
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