Thanks, God

I prayed for calm last night. Lately my body feels like it's falling apart: persistent leg pain, chest tightness, crampiness, sporadic sinus problems, increasing waistline, exhaustion. While there's no doubt that I need to see a doctor for a physical soon, as it's been a while, I know myself well enough to believe that many of these symptoms are stress related.

I've been reading through the New Testament, as that's part of my 30 Before 30 list. I know I've mentioned it from time to time here. A while back, I read something where Paul was exhorting one of the many churches he wrote to that they should pray often and ask God for many things, as that was a testament to their faith. (Something like that. I'm paraphrasing.) I'm past that book, whichever one it was, and on to Timothy (Timothy 5 last night - with a lot of instructions on how to deal with widows in the church). But anyway... I read Timothy 5 and then turned off the light, and realized that it was going to be another night of struggling to breath deeply and fall asleep. So I prayed for calm.

I feel better this morning. I usually do after nights like that. I have a takehome exam due at 8 o'clock tonight and then it's cramming the absolute last bit of knowledge I can stuff into my brain about federal courts (hopefully I have room for half a syllabus) before my Wednesday exam. And then, finally, my Human Rights exam on Friday, which I'm just throwing my hands up in the air for and hoping that my past knowledge about human rights and international law will help me somewhat. So it's gonna be a crazy week. But I know that I can do it.

I tend to be my own worst enemy, playing around on the computer to the last minute, feeling sorry for myself for not doing anything while actively choosing not to do anything, etc. But today, I've done more in the first three hours of the day than I did any other morning over the last two weeks. And I'm not too terribly worried about these exams. So, thank you God, for listening to my prayer and helping me through this little hump.

My struggle

Other law students in my classes have a serious advantage on me this semester. It all comes down to my struggle: inability to focus. This is serious. I stare my computer for hours, wasting away time playing WordTwist or obsessively scouring facebook for new or missed updates from people I haven't spoken to in years. I read about feminism and racism and chat with Fox News readers in the comments section of the DREAM Act articles. (My new nickname, which I like to think of as a term of endearment: "Troll.")

What I don't do is work. I should be either (a) outlining for my two remaining seated exams or (b) completing my take-home exam due on Monday night. On any given day, however, I spend anywhere from 2-4 total hours doing actual, honest-to-God work. On days that I don't have something due the next morning, that number hovers around 2. And it's inexcusable given that I have the entire day to get work done.

This isn't some cheery, "oh, you know LAW SCHOOL" post about how annoying this work is and how much of it there is. This is a real struggle that I'm dealing with. I'm so proud of myself when I get twenty minutes of work done that I take the next hour off, which inevitably ends up in me getting into something that distracts me until dinnertime or some other clear break in the day.

The thing is that I'm smart. I know that I am. I'm very capable of learning new and complex concepts and I learn them well under pressure. But it's a razor-thin line between "works well under pressure" and "waited to the last minute and paid for it." I'm pretty good at walking that line, but I can be clumsy. And even when I gracefully tip-toe my way to firmer ground, it's a nerve-wracking and time-consuming experience. And I can't help but wonder how I'd do if I wasn't constantly fighting this internal battle.

Some of this may just be an innate difficulty concentrating. Some of it may have to do with poor time management, and the desne reading material. Some of it may have to do with my resentment of law school, a passive-aggressive refusal to take this all seriously. Some of this is probably burnout. And some of this problem may even harken back to childhood, a regressive re-experiencing of the pressure that was placed upon me as "the Smart One" in my family at a very young age. Some of this all may be excuses. I suspect all of the above are true, to some degree.

All I know is that the longer I sit here distracting myself, the worse I feel. And the madder I get that it's another Friday night, another one of a limited number of weekends in my life that will be dedicated to this struggle. I feel like I'm missing out on life, and that, for me, is the hardest part of law school. Even as a 3L.

NaBloPoMo (blackjack edition)

27) Play blackjack in a casino

Sweet!

My bro and I took a bus to Atlantic City yesterday. It was so much fun. And yes, after writing about being depressed, and drinking, and being generally unhealthy, gambling sure does seem like a step in the wrong direction. Haha. But for real, it was something we'd been trying to do all week, and playing a table game at a casino was on my 30 Before 30 list. So there were good, non-self-destructive reasons for going.

And I'm glad we did. Because I started with $20 in my pocket, spent $5 on food, and ended up with $65 in cash on the busride back. My brother and I really just pooled all our money together, a whopping total of $80. But we wound up with nearly $300, which is some pretty good beginner's luck, if you ask me! (Although JC is no beginner.. apparently he played a lot in the casinos around Denver, and got pretty good on one piece of advice about craps - bet on the 6.)

So now I am addicted to craps, feel dangerously confident about my ability to play blackjack, am still amazed that you can order any drink you want and it's free, and will definitely be going back to the AC with T for a date night sometime. (T is in VA this weekend. I stayed behind to catch up on school work.)

Incidentally, I did get my P this morning (TMI or whatever), and I do feel somewhat better today. But I'm also still quite concerned about things I need to change about my lifestyle, and about my mental health in general, and looking forward to having a quiet house again next week, so I can catch up with T and we can make a game plan for improvements in our routine.

NaBloPoMo (depression edition)

Depression creeps up on you. Depression is like someone poisoning your food, a little at a time, so you don't realize you're getting sick, you think you're just having an "off" day. You're tired a lot. Little by little your mind is shutting down. You go numb.

I'm at a point where I don't know and don't care if it's something to do with the medication or my cycle or what. Does it matter why I'm depressed? Is there even a reason? My period could come tomorrow and I might feel completely different about my life. I feel guilty about the fact that I have a loving husband, that I'm healthy, that I have so much, and yet I am unsatisfied. There's another symptom. Guilt. It doesn't really matter. All I know is that I fell asleep in a library chair at school yesterday, after getting 10 hours of sleep the night before because I'd fallen asleep in all my clothes at 10 p.m. And then I remembered.

There was another chair I used to fall asleep in. It was a red chair. It sat in the corner of the room where I used to watch kids at a homeless shelter. That was my first job out of college. I was depressed then. And when the kids had naptime, I would sit in that chair without the energy to do anything else. I would doze to escape my thoughts. Sitting in that library chair yesterday, dozing, not caring what time it was or whether I was late to class, I remembered that I have been here before.

Drinking is one way to ignore depression. To stave it off. There are other ways. Sleeping. Watching TV. Working late. Distractions come in all forms. The thing about drinking is that it's a double edged sword. You can ignore things to a point, and then the floodgates are opened. Once your inhibitions are gone and you start talking, it all comes flooding out. And it's ugly.

Depression thoughts are ugly, as a rule, and I hate them. I hate to look at them. But once you let them out, you have to look at them. Once you share them with someone, they're hard to ignore. And then all you can do is muddle through it. If you're going through hell, keep on moving, right? This isn't hell. But it's an unpleasant place to be.

NaBloPoMo (overwhelmed procrastinator edition)

Is this why law students drink so much?

Right now I have the following concerns running through my head:
- I need to read, like, the entire textbook for Human Rights. I really should get on that.
- I've only outlined the first day of class for Crim Pro. Need to catch up. I really should get on that.
- What happened? I was doing good in Fed Courts but I'm so lost now, I can't make myself open the casebook. I really should get on that.
- I can't believe I didn't even know my ADR professor's name so I could get her exams from the library. I really should get on that.
- This fellowship ain't coming through. I need to start applying for jobs. I really should get on that.
- If I want to do deportation defense, I have to stop lurking around the offices of the clinic attorneys that I admire and actually initiate conversations. I really should get on that.
- Wasn't the State of Virginia trying to audit my taxes from 2005. I was supposed to follow up. I really should get on that.
- Running low on cash, but somehow I've gotta find some gas money so I can take my brother to Atlantic City on Friday. I really should get on that.
- Where are all my friends? It's been too long since I called my BFF and I feel like I never talk to anyone anymore. I really should get on that.
- I can't believe how many days I forgot to take my Prozac before remembering this morning. Plus, I don't have a doctor's appointment for when prescription refills run out. I really should get on that.

Man, I could use a drink. I really should get on that.

Protruding stomach

I have a protruding stomach. When I sit down, my stomach hangs out and it looks like I have a big ol' gut like my dad's. I don't necessarily hate it. I've gotten used to it in a lot of ways. I do hate that the bottom half of me is wider than the top half. That much I do hate. But what I hate the most is the way T reacts to it. He tries to play it cool, and a lot of the time he does. But I can tell that he doesn't prefer my fatty fat round belly. And of course I don't blame him. I was pretty thin when we met. I'm expanding and it's hard to stop it. He deserves a wife that tends to her appearance. And considering he likes me better without make-up, tans and fancy clothes, it's not the hardest thing in the world for me to make an effort on this one front. The more I think about it, the worse I feel. And that's the cold hard truth.

On the one hand, I want to get in shape and take better care of myself because it seems like a good way to care for myself and show myself some love. On the other hand, I feel obligated to do it faster! quicker! better! because it's what my husband deserves. And to not do it is to be a bad wife, a lazy wife, a fat slob. This is real. When I feel that way about myself, all I want to do is crawl into a hole and give up. I start to make excuses about how when you start encroaching on 30 your metabolism slows down, it gets harder to keep off the weight. And that's true. I am mad that it's so much more work for me now than it ever was. I'm mad that I have to bust my butt to do what happens to T naturally. And I'm mad at myself for not being a natural at it.

If I were motivated from a healthy place, I would probably get a lot more done. This summer I stopped drinking beer because it seemed to be a major culprit of empty extra calories. But then the school year started. I've fallen off that wagon. It's hard to feel empowered and focused on the positive when there's a million deadlines hanging over your head and it feels like your future depends on each of them. I can't focus on more than one thing at a time: school reading, fellowship deadlines, keeping fit. These all require a lot of effort and I'm not in the habit of making any of them second nature. Right now, fellowship deadlines are #1. But after that? It'll probably be replaced by other job-searching efforts. And an endless litany of excuses for carrying around an extra 15 pounds will be sure to follow.

So instead of being motivated by feeling really on top of my game and wanting to take care of myself, I'm motivated by lingering glances and minute gestures that indicate my belly has not gone unnoticed. I'm motivated by shame and self-hate. And these are not very motivating factors in my experience. For some people they are extremely motivating: some people turn shame and self-hate into a militaristic regimine of dieting and brutal exercise that works wonders. That's really what I wish I could do. Turn my negative emotions into something productive. In moderation, it's probably a good thing. Better, at least, than wallowing, which is what I see myself as doing. Wallowing with the occasional fitful attempt at getting off the couch. But like a half-finished course of antibiotics, partial attempts at exercise inevitably make the malaise harder to beat. Sure, you're up and running one night, or even one week. But eventually you stop. And the next time you want to get up and try again, you remember how you failed the last time, which once again raises the volume of that little voice in your head saying, "What's the point? You always give up eventually." Until eventually that little voice is the only thing you can hear, and it's all but insurmountable.

I think I need a support network.

Unpacking my baggage

I don't share much about myself. Not just on this blog, but in life in general. A conversation with T this weekend got me thinking about that.

We were standing on a street corner waiting for a bus on Saturday night. I was in a rotten mood, stemming from some news I had received earlier in the day that triggered some difficult emotions. I've been struggling with this one particular problem (yes I am being purposefully vague again) for a while now, but I don't feel like I can talk to anyone about it. Which is what I said to T.

"The worst part is I can't talk to anybody about it." T nodded his head in supportive silence for a moment. But then I guess he thought about it. Because his next words were, "Have you talked about it with your mom?"

That was an easy question. "No!" I scoffed without missing a beat. "Of course not."

Apparently the answer wasn't so obvious to T, because he asked me why not, and wouldn't I feel better if I did.

And that's when I reconnected with an old issue. "No way," I said to him. "Anytime I really open up with her, I feel like I have a bad hangover the next day. Like I drank too much and embarassed myself the night before."

So there it was in all its warped beauty. My Baggage. I've been thinking about it today. Why I feel like I can't talk to people about the things that truly weigh on my mind. It's a problem, a road block to intimacy, if you'll pardon the cheesy self-help speak. Of course I do not count T in this equation. I've felt comfortable opening up to him for as long as I've known him. And my best friend since middle school is also excluded. But, see, that's all part of why I have these questions in my head.

Why can I talk about my problems to my BFF but not any other people I consider friends? And why did it take me so long, and do I continue to avoid, talking even to her about this issue? More to the point, I wonder: What am I afraid of?

I have a gutteral reaction to feeling like my emotions are on display. I'm far, far better at analyzing my feelings than displaying them. One of my strongest memories of this tendency is from when I was a teenager, feeling very hurt or upset by something my mom had done, and yelling at her when she came to talk to me about it: "Of course I feel sad. Who wouldn't feel upset about XYZ?! You did XYZ!" Not exactly opening up emotionally. I would just kind of describe the emotions and the reasons for it in a very detatched way, at the same time being very angry that I had to spell it out (and be vulnerable).

So is it vulnerability? I guess that's probably it. I don't like the idea of people knowing that I feel deeply disappointed, for example, about something that I didn't get that I really wanted. (To be honest, this doesn't happen often, though.) I don't want people to tell me why it doesn't matter, or why it'll work out. I don't want people to feel sorry for me, or to treat me as weak, fragile. I don't want people judging my feelings, my fears or my desires. So I keep them all to myself. Which isn't a very healthy way to go, nor does it help in building strong friendships.

I have to learn to let go of other people's reactions to the things I say and do, and see others' reactions as reflections of their experiences, fears, desires, lifeview; not as a reflection of the worthiness of mine, or anything about me. I already know I can't control other people's opinions. But I haven't learned to accept that, and instead try to keep everything cloistered and hid out of sight. And this blog post is a perfect example of everything I've talked about here.

Secondary trauma at work

**Trigger warning**

I want to talk about something that's been on my mind. It's something I get the impression we aren't supposed to talk about as lawyers*, advocates, professionals. I want to talk about secondary trauma, the negative emotional affect that hearing the traumatic accounts from clents can have on us, the listeners. Except, I'm not going to talk about "us" because I can really only talk about "me."

Me...I've been coping with some residual discomfort in my life lately as a result of the tales being recounted to me by my clients. I remember a similar feeling from when I worked at the 1-hour photo shop when I first got out of college, and occasionally the DFS would bring rolls of films to be developed so the pictures could be used as evidence in parental termination hearings. It's a little different here, though. I'm supposed to be unaffected. As a lawyer we are zealous advocates and guardians of the law. We analyze and deliver. We take raw facts and forge them into powerful arguments. We don't let ourselves be phased by the reality of the situations. Do we? Oops... I switched back to "we" again.

"Do what you need to do," the mafiioso speaks calmly into the cell phone. "If you cooperate, everything will be just fine. You know we'll have to do our job if you don't follow our instructions. You can only imagine what will happen to your daughter." The man gathers his wife and kids, hitches the first flight to the United States, goes straight to customs and asks for his family to be taken into custody.

"Keep screaming, it turns me on." And then later, "That bastard baby in your belly is not mine. If you don't abort him, I'll do it myself."

"Did they kill many people?" A pause. A translation. A nod. "They shot them?" Translation again. Words exchanged in another language. A finger drawn across a throat. "They cut off their heads?" A pause. A translation. A nod. A hand covering eyes.

I told a new client I was going to send her an appointment card today. The panic in her voice when she said, "No, no, no! Don't send me anything, he inspects everything! Here, I'll write it down," it was unmistakable.

I just...I don't know what to do with these feelings. Nobody at work appears affected. And most of the time, I'm not either. When I'm actually sitting there with a client taking an affidavit, or translating, or reading a case file, I'm not in tears and I'm not indignant. I'm not stone-faced either. I thing I'm pretty okay at being sympathetic and respectful of survivors of trauma. I try (emphasis on "try") to treat others the way I would want to / have wanted to be treated. I try to keep a little distance, acknowledging the difficulties and strong feelings that come up, without reacting to them personally. I'm really not a basketcase at work.

But I've noticed that I find myself thinking about these stories in those pockets of time that I'm alone and undistracted...riding the bus, falling asleep, in the shower. Not constantly, but enough to know it's affecting me. I don't understand why I never hear the attorneys I sit in with say to their clients, "I'm sorry you went through that." We're not counselors (aside from legal counselors), I get it. But is it a distancing technique for the emotional health of the lawyer? I don't want to not be cognizant of the humanness of my [future] clients. I don't want to see one story after another and have them bleed together until it's all just a blur. At the same time, I need to know where to draw the line and protect the integrity of the client-atty. relationship and my own emotional health.

I guess I'm not going anywhere with this post. I just want to get it down on record that this is something I'm thinking about and learning about right now. I'm curious to see how my thoughts and feelings on this evolve as I become more experienced in this profession.

* Okay, I get that I'm not a lawyer yet. But I'm getting closer. And no, the clients aren't MINE-mine. But they're my responsibility while I'm at my internship, which is close enough for these purposes. I feel like a tween getting close to her 13th birthday and reading Seventeen magazine.

The Five Steps and other shrinky-dink advice

Pardon the self-help speak, but it so happens that I'm a big fan of lay cognitive psychology. Internet and armchair mental health diagnoses have helped me through some tough times when I didn't have access to or didn't think I needed an MH professional.

It was this old bag of tricks that I found myself turning to this afternoon, in a moment of panic and anxiety over an incident that occurred just as I was preparing to leave work and threatened to ruin my entire evening.

Allow me to present to you the Five Steps.* This is a trick that helps during those times when your world feels like it's caving in on you. It helps you to move past overwhelming emotions that threaten to paralyze you. I used to have this problem a LOT more, before I was diagnosed with PMDD and got treatment. But from time to time (i.e. today) it helps to remember ways to get past a tough moment.

So... the scene is this: I'm headed to the back of the office to drop off my case files for the day, when I run into my supervising attorney, signing out for the day. He catches my eye and, with a mouthful of food, says, "JE, come see me tomorrow afternoon so we can talk."

"Sure," I breezily reply. "What's up?"

And then The Very Fleeting Moment. He averts his eyes, pauses midbite and kinds of shrugs. I quickly jump in.. "Oh, okay. Just...stuff, right?" He immediately nods his head. "Yeah, just to talk about a few things."

Now, we just got together yesterday to review all my cases, so I know this isn't about what's going on with my case load. I went into his office to drop off my files, and saw the lastest assignment I'd turned into him, sitting on his desk with scribbles and notes all over it. For a split second, I thought about scanning over it, but his door was open and another attorney would've had a full view of what I was doing.

Nope. I was just going to have to wait. And stew. Thoughts immediately began running through my head, but they were incoherent. They took the form of a dark cloud appeared over my head. I messed up. Hiring me was a big mistake. He's terribly disappointed with the caliber of my work. I spent too much time with the FIFA games streaming on my computer. I'm not dressing appropriately. I shouldn't have called his cell phone (to tell him I was going to be late... I panicked!). I bug him too much. I don't communicate enough. I'm the worst intern they've had in a long time... on and on. You get the picture.

Enter: The Five Steps

Step One: HALT

Am I Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?

Well... yes, I am kind of tired. Later it turned out that I was hella tired, because I fell asleep for two hours after I got home. But at the time, I mostly just felt weary from a long day at the office. Not hungry, not lonely and not angry. It's possible that my exhaustion was exaccerbating my emotions, but I doubted it...

Step Two: Define the Problem

The problem was that ever since my boss told me that he needed to talk to me tomorrow and I realized that he had reviewed my assignment, I felt really anxious and inadequate because I knew that the product I turned in wasn't in the format he wanted it and it still needed a lot of work, so I was panicking and I was petrified of how I would feel in the meeting tomorrow.

Step Three: Think of (Exactly) Three Courses of Action

Okay... One, I could think through my feelings and then talk back to my twisted thinking (e.g. "I can't do anything right!... Wait, that's not true. I was complimented on my research skills by ED yesterday.") Two, I could wait until T got home and then talk to him about it. Three, I could distract myself and push the thoughts out of my head.

Step Four: Pick One Course of Action

I really wanted to spend more time thinking about what was bothering me. I also wanted to just forget all these uncomfortable feelings altogether, but I suspected that would just make me feel worse in the morning and I'd be cranky all night. So I picked #1, and decided that if I still felt bad, I would also do #2.

Step Five: JUST DO IT!

Well, I was riding on the bus when I was working through these steps, so I couldn't exactly write down my thoughts. But I did go through them silently to myself. I won't bore this blog with the innerworkings of my mind (anymore than I already have), but I will say that after spending some time when I got home identifying my twisted thinking and working to untwist some of my thoughts, I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up, I felt 95% better! And that's good enough for me.

* I didn't come up with this. Please see this website for more information and tools for panicky, reactionary minds. All the concepts mentioned here come from there.

Crawling out of the hole

Ok, ok. I feel better now. Trial's over. We only prevailed on one of our four counts, if you go by the jury's verdict. But if you go by how badly I owned my cross-examination of the defense's star witness, I'd say we kicked royal behind. :P I love cross-examining. I got good feedback on my closing too, though I caught myself vouching a couple of times, which is a big no-no according to my last semester trial ad professor.

At the end of the trial, as we were packing up to head to the bar, the Judge asked me to hang back a second. "Ms. JE, can I speak with you privately a moment?" It took me a little while to figure out how to reach him, on account of we were in an Article III courtroom, and I still don't understand how the Judge gets to his bench.

Anyway, I eventually figure out where the secret door in the wood panel wall was located. So I slipped back stage, where the Judge in his black robes told me I should audition for Trial Team. He thinks I have skillz and need to build on them. I didn't get into it with him how I was brutally rejected this past fall. I was too flattered that he was going to give my name to the Team coordinators as one of his recommendations. That's a win in my book!

Now I am done with two of my six classes, and when I get this final paper in on Tuesday, I'll be halfway there. I just ran into 3L at the coffee shop where I'm writing this, and she said, "If you think you're doing the bare minimum now, just wait. Next year, you'll be taking slacking to a new level." Somehow, that's comforting to me. Haha.

With my new prescription filled (and 6 refills, to boot!), warm days, a few classes under my best and the weekend ahead of me, things are feeling slightly better round these parts.

The petulant child & the sulking casebooks

You can't make me. Nobody can make me.

That's what the small child in my head seems to be pouting loudly at every responsibility thrown my way, over and over throughout the day. I swear the only reason I made it to class on time this morning is because I thought I was going a half-hour late.

Right now I am just so resentful of law school and all the endless nagging responsibilities it entails. "Write me!" demands the paper due on Tuesday. "Make me clever!" comes the cajoling voice of my cross-examination for tomorrow's mock trial. "Hey, don't forget about us over here," my dusty old casebooks cry from the corner of the living room, where they've gone untouched for days upon days (weeks?). Ugh. Leave me ALONE!

I determined that there are only two times I really don't feel stressed out or annoyed at the albatross necklace that is law school: 1) When I'm at work, where I feel like I'm actually producing actual product and being clever and there's a point to all of what I'm doing. 2) When I'm defending a motion or doing a cross examination for my trial ad class. (Not to be confused with preparing for trial ad class, which I don't do.) These are the times I feel pleased with myself. Otherwise, I'm just really effing annoyed or burying my head in the sand with Super Mario Wii, in which I've worked my way up to Level 7 of the Star World.

I'm mad at law school, and I wish law school would just get mad at me back and decide that I'm not worth it, and leave me alone. Grr.

Oh, Jon Arbuckle

Garfield Minus Garfield

Today, I finally refilled my Prozac prescription. While I was at it, I also bought myself a little mini-notebook and a 20-pack of blue ballpoint pens. I slept through my first class today and had no excuse for it, except that I couldn't drag my ass off the couch. I haven't had that bad of a mental health day in a long time. Funny, then, that filling my prescription is like an automatic "feel good" ticket. Without even popping the pill, I already feel better. It's the whole empowerment thing, I think. Knowing I'm taking care of myself.

I don't usually feel this bad after going off of my medication. I think it's a combination of the gap in medication, PMS, the encroaching finals season, law school burnout, my parents' health problems and panic over my upcoming 29th birthday. Anyway, one foot in front of the other.

(I am trying to ignore the little voice in my head that says I shouldn't bother to blog, because I am just coming across as whiny.)

Grumble, grumble...

I waited until precisely 7:45 p.m. on Monday night to begin the assigned "re-write of a Supreme Court decision in light of recent developments in the law" that is due tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. And by "begin" I mean starting to figure out which SCOTUS opinion to re-write and why and what the hell I'm supposed to say. Not begin writing.

Thankfully, it's only a draft due tomorrow. I get to re-write my re-write before it's graded. This is the last one of those softball assignments though, so I need to thinking a little ahead.

Seriously, this is NOT NORMAL for a 2L without a summer job to be doing, right? I mean, what is wrong with me. I feel fine, for the most part, but I just don't want to be doing all this work. During the day, when I'm procrastinating or trying to talk myself into getting back to business, I have little conversations in my head about why I'm slacking off. I wouldn't call them pep talks. I'd say they are more like therapy sessions.

Me: "Why are you so obstinate, JE? What happened to you?"
Me: "I just don't want to work."
Me: "But why? You were doing so good! You even made Deans List the last two semesters."
Me: "Yeah, so maybe I'm a genius. I don't need to work that hard."
Me: "You're a cocky sumbich, that's for sure. Get your act together!"
Me: "But I'm mad. I don't want to."
Me: "Why are you mad?"
Me: "Because I don't want to have to do all this work. Why should I have to?" *pouts*
Me: "...Because you signed up to go to law school. And some thing about having a good career for your future family and being a good role model to your future kids."
Me: "Yeah."
Me: "Yeah."
Me: "I'm going to get a cookie from the 24-hour cookie truck."
Me: "Wait up!"

notice and a hearing

"i notice that i am feeling anxious."

"i notice that i am feeling guilty."

"i notice that i am feeling ashamed."

i notice that when i notice and acknowledge my feelings, i feel a hell of a lot better than when i try to pretend they are not there. when i try to ignore them (my natural inclination) they follow me around like shadows, casting a pall over my day. (talking only about the negative feelings, here.) my stomach gets twisted in knots or my face falls down toward the sidewalk as i move about my business. i get irritable and blame it on all the wrong things. this is what happens when i make no conscious effort to feel my feelings.

in fits and spurts over my adult life, i have tried to be better about this habit. since we moved to the Big City and i started school, however, this is an aspect of my mental health that i have paid less attention to. in therapy, i worked on it. but out of therapy, i take my medicine and hope for the best. of course i learned some tricks, challenged some assumptions and dealt with some crap back in therapy that has made life generally easier to handle and given me important every day skills. but the fact is that i am still more likely to crank up the radio, immerse myself in Spider Solitaire, crack open a beer or get hooked on a television show when i am dealing with tough emotions, rather than sit down with a journal or even just take a deep breath and say, "i notice i am feeling..."

it seems so simple. its surprising how easy a habit it is to forget. for the most part, its a habit i have felt little need for in recent times. sometimes i wish i could just wave a magic wand and i would suddenly be an expert at handling my emotions. i guess everybody must feel that way sometimes.

3 good things about my day

today was awesome because....
- i got to cash in on my health insurance! the awesome benefits of being married to an awesome guy who works for a pretty cool company (as cool as owning Lexis Nexis can make you) include getting to be put on his awesome insurance! and now, thanks to my love of filling out online forms, i have been able to get a mental health assessment, check out discounts on gym memberships and even get the number of the doctor who lives literally one block away from me and is accepting new patients! so many of my hypochondriac tendencies are about to be reckoned with...

- we ate in chinatown! just last night i was laying in bed griping about how i feel like we don't do enough fun things in our life, and how its been so much easier to kick back a few drinks than come up with something interesting to do. just last night, T was saying how he wants to explore new places, starting with chinatown. and then this afternoon i had a serious craving for egg drop soup, and we were working so closeby... voila! our plans put into action! we discovered a crazy bizarre 2-floor warehouse-sized shang-hai market full of books on chinese characters, colorful paper lanterns, silk robes, mysterious board games, bird and fish kites and an authentic acupuncture room in the back. there was some street percussion group with two dragons dancing around the street like a stationary parade. then we had a 10-dish dim sum sampler for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant someone recommended to us a few days ago. delish!

- i found myself neck-deep in a labor contract at work! i've never been involved in a labor dispute. where i'm from, unions are fairy tales told by wistful employees in in breakrooms across the state, scary stories passed around by executive types at corporate retreats to keep each other up at night. but today i actually got to read a worker contract and interpret the grievance procedure and figure out whether our client can bring a claim to get his job back! today i was useful AND i learned something. and as if that wasn't enough, i actually managed to learn the whereabouts of two clients who had been evading me for weeks on end. it was productive today. way more productive than i suspect class will be tomorrow.

I remember

I'm only updating because I happened to already be logged on from leaving comments elsewhere. Otherwise I probably wouldn't bother. Why? Oh, I don't know. I just wouldn't.

I have been having some trouble lately. T & I ate dinner on the floor last night (at my insistence) and I confessed to him that I am freaking out lately. (As if he hadn't noticed.) As we were talking, words tumbled from my mouth and it is as if they landed brick-like on my toes, startling me into realizing their full weight. "When I grew up, I was kind of always waiting for everything to completely fall apart." Duh. I really was. I remember standing at the window of my parents' bedroom, watching my mom walk through the snow to her car and drive away after a loud, frightening fight. I remember being afraid, like she was never coming back. I remember sitting in the coat closet with the girls in my 5th grade class, mentioning that my brother and I felt scared of my dad coming home from work. I remember them laughing at me. "Scared?" one girl said. "Of your dad?" They laughed louder. I remember being tucked in by my mom and asking why they couldn't just work it out. I remember telling her that they should just sit in a room and talk about it. She said, I remember, that it was a good idea. That they really should do that. I remember saying to her, "Yeah, and I could help you talk to each other." I really thought I could. I remember she said, "Oh, no, honey." Something about how I couldn't be a part of that conversation. I remember being upset. Why not? They obviously couldn't figure it out without me. It was all so obvious to me. If they could just SEE what I saw, they could get along. It was so stupid, all their anger and tears and sadness. Obviously it was all a big misunderstanding. Logic. That was the key. Sane logic and a 10-year old referee sitting in a chair between them to help them come to an agreement.

Is it any wonder I ended up in law school? Haha. Seriously, I've worked through my stuff for the most part. I love my parents and feel lucky to have had them. Big time. I couldn't feel more loved. Understood, maybe, some of the time. But more loved? Never. However. I certainly had no role model for marriage when I was growing up. What I learned was that family was close, family came first and family felt like living on a fault line: it wasn't quite a disaster zone, but I was never entirely convinced that the earth wasn't about to open up beneath my feet.

So yeah. As I tried to articulate to T why I have felt like an insecure train wreck lately, it occurred to me that maybe I am just working through something. Maybe I am just having trouble believing that I am standing on steady ground, or that this family, this life, is something altogether different from the one I once knew.

Honeymoon's over

Ohhhhh... okay. Now I remember why I'm not supposed to be relieved to be back in law school! Today I started back up at my summer (now fall) internship. I'm going to be working about 12 hours a week. At first I was excited about it. For a few hours, it felt like I was back to being a regular working woman, instead of just some girl who decided she hadn't had enough of school yet. Well, that lasted about until I met T on the sidewalk for the walk home. Since then, I've recalled...

1. When you come home for the day, the day isn't over. By a long shot. You gotta figure out how to feed yourself (and your family, of course!) and make up for the long hours that your dog has been languishing away (if you have a dog, of course!), without losing all momentum to get work done.

2. After taking a break to [a] walk the dog and/or [b] cook dinner and/or [c] eat dinner, you can choose to either sit down to resume reading assignments that automatically get 1000x harder to understand after the sun has set or take a REAL break by watching Hulu and blog-stalking guiltily.

3. Eventually, you will notice that it's nine or ten or eleven o'clock, and you will feel vague, lazy panic. That is when it's time to close the browser and go back to the books. Regardless of whether you WANT to finish the reading tonight or not, you WILL read until you can't keep your eyes open, because even if you don't get called on in class tomorrow, you're going to have another 100 pages to read on top of whatever you don't get done tonight.

4. When the love of your life comes in to ask if you want to watch a movie, you must recall that promise you made about law school not becoming your entire life. You must engage in the kind of ad-hoc balancing test that would make Scalia's toes curl, weighing "good night's sleep and more productive day tomorrow" against "positive deposit in the love bank and higher quality relationship (that will be more likely to last through the end of law school)."

5. You will put the books down eventually. But you won't feel done. No. You won't feel done until the air is freezing cold outside, there is snow on the ground and you are about to spend the last of your student loan money on Christmas gifts that double as "sorry I haven't talked to you in 5 months" friendship bribes.

When I remembered all this, I wrote it down here. Because I will want to come back to this before next semester starts. Before I get too giddy again.

Spring forward, fall back down

I'm catching up. On everything. It feels very productive. It feels great!

I stupidly left my prozac at home when we left for our vacation; and then I couldn't get my new prescription filled in Spain. Here are some side effects of my having fallen off the medication for over a week now:

- While we were at a layover in Madrid on our way home, I was filled with rage over... what? I don't remember. I just remember walking past a vending machine in the airport and thinking, "this is that same rageful feeling I had the last time I was off medication for a while. not good." It might have also had something to do with the not having slept the night before and spending an entire day in airports and on airplanes.

- Last night I had a brief (45 second) temper tantrum over (a) my fingers going numb after I got up from typing at the computer, (b) T noticing a stain on my underwear and (c) having chosen to walk 7 city blocks barefoot and suffering the blistering consequences. I threw myself down on the couch and tried to cry, but couldn't. T simply waited 45 seconds, then we left and had a fun night out with friends.

- I have had a really hard time summoning the motivation to walk the two blocks to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled; summoning the motivation to stay logged in to e-mail to respond to well-wishers; summoning the motivation to brew coffee.

- I'm about to walk out the door to have dinner with T. This thrills me. I am ecstatic. On prozac, I would be merely pleased, content, satisfied. I can't wait to have beans and rice in my belly.

Why do I always write about forgetting to take my medication? It seems that I slip the fact that I'm on prozac into conversation regularly. The reason is that I want to normalize it. For all the talk about how anti-depressants are handed out like candy, there is an awful lot of stigma surrounding medication and mental health. Maybe someone out there is considering medication but still thinks it's "the easy way out" or that they just need to "suck it up." I'm not saying everyone who thinks they could use prozac should get on it; but I want to put my own experiences with it out there. Why not?

Disclaimer: I tend to poke fun at myself on here and be a little self-deprecating because it makes me feel more comfortable writing about this stuff. But I also fear I run the risk of coming across as a real jerk or something. I am not a real jerk or something.

So, anyway... I want to write all about the wedding and the honeymoon and all that. But last night, I sat down at a bar with my friend Best Woman, and let loose with a nice long vent about all the things that stressed me out during the reception, and I felt a lot better afterward, and right now I just don't feel like writing about it. I will, eventually. It'll probably come out in little snippets, etc. But anone who reads this probably doesn't want a long re-cap anyway. So suffice it to say, it was beautiful, I had a TON of fun despite whatever gripes came out of my mouth last night, and I can not WAIT to get the pictures back!

School starts on Monday. I went to campus yesterday because I'm involved with the National Immigration Project of our NLG chapter and I got to do a little representing to the 1Ls. It was pretty fun to see all the now-old/familiar faces running around, all of us acting all big and tough and comfortable in the law building, despite the fact every single one of us fears those first day reading assignments taunting us from our Word document syllabi. I'm one of the "lucky" ones who is not on a journal and not doing OCI -- does that make me dumb? I'm not sure yet. But the flipside of the exciting commencement of a new year and getting to see school friends again is that every single conversation, without fail, involves at least one moment of "WTF -- am I supposed to be doing that?!?!" Seriously. This is what people mean when they say law school is stressful. At least to me. The stress is in the constant feeling like you're not measuring up, like you're not running fast enough, and you're constantly two steps behind. I'm going to do my best to push past that little voice in my head this semester, and just do it my way, and trust myself to get to where I want to be.

Now, I must go because somewhere a few blocks away there is a bean and cheese burrito with my name on it. I wouldn't want to let it down.

What I am going to do with my life

Well, I've been trying to come up with ideas of things I want to do before turning 30 and finding the task to be harder than I expected. Isn't that weird? I expected it to be pretty easy, but I find myself challenging every idea that pops into my head.

Example #1:
Young JE - "I like to travel. What about doing a cross country road trip?"
Grownup JE - "Yeah, but are you really going to have time to go on a road trip this summer or next summer? You have law school and summer internships. Plus, where is the money going to come from? And that's to say nothing of the cost of gas..."
Young JE - "I guess you're right. Besides, there's plenty of time in my life to go on road trips. I don't really want to go on a road trip right now."

Example #2:
Grownup JE - "How about buying a house. That's something you want to do pretty soon, right?"
Young JE - "I think so. But c'mon. Isn't that going to happen anyway? I mean, do I really need a list to encourage me to buy a house? This is supposed to be about me and what I like to do. You know, for fun."
Grownup JE - "Fine. But good luck coming up with those ideas."

Am I a nutjob or what? Anyway, I AM coming up with some good ideas but I'm giving myself until my actual birthday to complete the list. I have to admit, the grownup side of me is having second thoughts, and I'm wondering if I'm pressuring myself to do something I don't really want to do anymore. But the young side of me is egging me on, daring me to just do it.

So, for personal inspiration, shits and giggles, I'm digging out my high school list of 100 things I want(ed) to do before I die. I'm putting that as a separate post.

Bronchitis

Warning! This is post is just a rant, ending in a hissy fit, that reflects my lack of sleep and overdose of self-pity, no more, no less. Read at your own risk.

So: I've been sick for the last seven days. It started on the train ride down to Georgia. I took a nap about two hours in, and woke up with a sore throat and swollen glands. It all went downhill from there. By the middle of the night, when I was supposed to be well into my write-on note, I was curled up under my blanket, shivering and sucking on ice cubes, trying to get comfortable in a packed Amtrak coach car. My mom picked me up when I got down to GA, at quarter to seven in the morning, and when we got to my sister's I went straight to the bedroom to crawl under covers. Needless to say, the trip was not what I had hoped for. And? I didn't finish write-on. Ugh. I'm not sure if I really care at this point. I'd settle for a good night's sleep.

Yesterday, I caved in and decided to go to an urgent care clinic instead of waiting til my school clinic (aka FREE clinic) opened after the holiday weekend. It was actually a not unpleasant experience. We had to drive across the bridge to the urban wasteland across the river, but T was kind enough to treat it like an adventure, when I was feeling guilty for making him spend his last day of the long weekend carting my miserable self into an unpleasant suburban ghost town. "Hey, look," he said, optimistically gesturing at the skyline as we drove over the bridge. "See? It's already exciting."

And I have to say, it was pretty exciting that we got into and out of the clinic in only 25 minutes. Plus, I was the only patient they had there. And since they'd only opened two weeks ago, it was incredibly clean. But the best part was that I came away with drugs. Precious, precious drugs. Antibiotics and cough medicine laced with codeine that I was warned would make me very "woozy". Considering I've been up all night coughing for the last seven days, that sounded fan'effing'tastic.

I wonder what it says about me that the codeine didn't knock me out?

Anyway. Today I was determined to *not* lay on the couch all day working on my night cheese and farting into my slanket. So I dragged myself over to campus for my monthly visit with the school psychiatrist to re-up my Prozac. In the course of our meeting, I explained to him that I wanted to "bump" my dose up to pre-law school levels. (What the hell was I thinking, by the way, dropping my dose when I started law school?) We had talked about that last month, but at the time I wanted to give it another month to be sure.

So I'm running through the litany of complaints I have, which I always feel self-conscious about doing, because as anyone who has struggled with low-level chronic mental health issues can tell you, it starts to be unclear whether these things are symptoms or just, well, life. And the doctor says to me, "So you feel bad about yourself?" And I'm like, "well, yeah. Well, sometimes. It gets worse at certain times." And then he delivers the kicker: "Because I've never seen you feeling happy in here." Or something like that. Thus making me want to jump up in his face and insist that I AM a happy person, that I DO like myself, that I'm NOT always bummed out, that I haven't slept for more than 2 consecutive hours in ONE WEEK, etc. etc. And of course, if I were to do all that, it would only make me look more crazy/angry/unhappy or whatever.

I got my higher dose. But he wants me to consider going back to therapy if it doesn't do the trick. For some reason, this pisses me off. But then again, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Apparently it's in my nature.