Feet On the Ground

I’m trying to do torts reading, but we had pages 9-24 and I just can’t seem to make myself concentrate for that long. Ergo, bloggity blog!

I discovered something interesting today in my first day of class.

I’ve been so passionate about the concept of story on here – how we all have one and each day and action is an important part of it. Yet for the past several months I had kind of forgotten about how important my story was. I mean, I hated my job, and then after I quit I just sat around watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don’t see Joss Whedon as a waste of time, like, ever, but I wasn’t really being that useful during that time.

(Incidentally, I’m pretty sure I learned more about the art of telling a story by watching Buffy than any other source. Seriously, it’s fantastic.)

I wasn’t really living my story. Although a few times I had dreams that I was living Buffy’s. It seemed that I couldn’t really find a balance between enjoying the art of other stories (of fictional or real characters) and living out my own. I thought that as soon as law school started, I’d be so busy living my story that I wouldn’t have time to enjoy anyone else’s.

After reading my first few cases, I realized that they’re just stories.

It all relates. We can’t get away from story.

Overall, it just proves to me that God really does know what He is doing.

Tags: law school, learning

First day of orientation was today. Orientations are never usually that exciting, but I was looking forward to actually getting into the environment. Unfortunately, it was a bit ho hum. I mean, they tell you what to expect but you don’t really get it until you can experience it yourself. So it felt like a lot of yakking about stuff I don’t quite understand. I’ve already been assigned a metric crapton of reading, but I can’t really do it yet until after we’re taught how to brief a case tomorrow. So, like any good nerd, I just watched more Buffy tonight.

I’m a little bummed because I didn’t meet anyone in my class that I really clicked with. I talked to a couple nice girls, but it wasn’t like we just totally hit it off. I’m inclined to think that people might have just been a little reserved since it’s the first day. I was so sleepy this morning that I couldn’t really come up with conversation either, so that didn’t help. I totally did the whole dozing-off-until-your-head-bobs-and-you-wake-up thing in one session. I’m off to a great start, eh?

Tomorrow is a new day, though, and I don’t have to be there quite so early. That helps. Plus we only have stuff to do until noon, and then we go to lunch with our groups so that should be fun. Then there’s a party tomorrow night and I’m getting a mani/pedi on Sunday. I seriously cannot believe I just typed mani/pedi.

I want to look for a church, but I’ve heard that it’s pretty near impossible to find a church with decent music here and that’s my favorite part! I’ve been ruined by my church’s band and choir, I think. It’s so weird to be in a group of people knowing that if I talk about my faith most people won’t have the foggiest idea of what it means. What it really means, not just what they think it means. I feel somewhat thrown off my game.

A phone call from my best friend helped though. And my shoes and necklaces and scarves are all arranged in my new closet, my picture is hung above my wall and my couch will be delivered on Tuesday.

It’s coming together. I’m going to survive. I just really want to make some friends and find where I fit in.

I’m totally saving Burn Notice and Royal Pains on my DVR for Sunday afternoon.

Tags: awkward, law school, trying

I’m here. I’m in my new place, in a new town, and I have my new student ID for the University of Kentucky. I’m going to law school orientation tomorrow. It feels surreal. If you’d told me two years ago that this was my path, I’d have been completely stumped.

I’m exhausted from all of the running around I’ve been doing, but I’m satisfied, too. I’m still finding my way around, but it was so fun last night to realize that even though the mall closed in 25 minutes I still had time to go to Macy’s to get a Lush bath bomb and try one for the first time. Best bath ever. It’s great to be the only person needing the bathroom, have it completely quiet when I want and no one telling me that I should be cleaning when I really need a nap.

I met my 2L mentor this morning and we went to get my student ID. She treated me to Starbucks not even knowing that it was the way to my heart. She’s bubbly and gladly answered my questions and gave me tips and I had a great time. Then I met a girl that I’ve been messaging with on Facebook and we went to lunch. She showed me some roads that I didn’t know about and we went driving around for a while. It’s so great to know someone that will be going through exactly what I’ll experience.

I’m surprised by how normal all of the unfamiliarity is. When I was in my undergrad writing classes, it took me a while to create smooth transitions. Professors always said that I jumped too abruptly from one idea to the next and it upset the flow of my work. At first I honestly had no idea what a transition really was.

Such an ironic parallel for my life. I spent so much time jumping from one emotion to another when I hit some sort of obstacle or major change. I couldn’t function if hit with a surprise and any sort of shift made me panic.

I learned how to write a transition. I even learned how to connect several ideas into one theme in larger works. It was my own literary triumph. This transition from living at home to moving somewhere unfamiliar is a transition of personal triumph. I’m so relieved that I’ve survived to this point and I’m building up courage for the rest of it. I’ve had so many overwhelming feelings of rightness about all of this. It feels like a normal part of life.

I’ll try to hold onto this feeling as I start my classes

Tags: change, law school, peace, risk

Whenever I get close to a big event, even something I had been excitedly anticipating, I try to backpedal. Even as a child, the night before one of our epic family vacations to Hilton Head, I’d grow anxious and try to think of a way to stay home without causing a fuss. Of course, I always went and had a blast. But it never fails that I have some sort of mental freak out before I go somewhere.

Moving away to go to law school is the biggest thing I’ve ever done.

I know it’s right. I know God has totally paved the way and I am super blessed and receiving favor with every step.

But, of course, I’m totally freaking out and mourning all of the dreams that didn’t come to pass before this one. I mean, why does THIS dream have to happen? The lonely one with lots of work and no one to spoon with at night?

God, are You trying to torture me here?!

I want kids. Most of my friends don’t want kids ever and if they do, they want them way down the line. I have always wanted to have a family while I’m young. I want to have my kids while there’s still a chance of losing the baby weight and I have enough energy to chase them around. I want a couple of years to enjoy with my husband before I have kids and then I wanted to start popping them out or at least conceiving around 25.

Instead of a family, I’ll get the bar exam.

Sometimes it all just feels like a cruel joke. I know feminists would totally be kicking me right now and I know that most of my friends would think this sounds absolutely ridiculous. Yet all I can see is 3 years of hard work and little reward followed by studying for a test that I may or may not pass followed by years of grunt work in a demanding and competitive profession while being $90,000 in debt.

Brb *falls on sword*

I know that there’s a reason I’m not able to have my family now. I know God is not trying to torture me by having me as a bridesmaid in 2 weddings in less than 6 months while it feels like my own serious relationship leading to marriage is going to be here right around the time my spaceship lands in the yard. I know it’s stupid to be whining about this while I’m 22 and anything could happen and law school is a great opportunity. I am. I know. It is.

The fact remains: I want a family. I want to have kids. And I don’t want to have to wait a decade for them.

Tags: fear, law school

I like being funny. I like making people laugh. When I write wrote on my novel months ago before I started working at Amazon and my creativity was completely sucked away by pain and misery, I made myself laugh as my hapless character walked the fine line between tragedy and comedy. You wouldn’t know it to read my blog, would you? For some reason, whenever I start writing here, it’s just too blasted honest to be funny.

I’m sorry about that. I really, really wish I could just make you laugh.

The truth is,  I’m moving into my new apartment a week from today and I start law school in less than a month. I’m slightly more than terrified. You know how your mouth kind of waters before you throw up? Yeah. It’s been doing that since I got up today, and it’s just because I started poking around the school’s website and staring at my schedule. Nerves of jelly.

To top it off, my car has been breaking down. We paid $237 for a new alternator and then my car was still dead when I tried to leave my best friend’s house last night. Now it’s apparently the fuse box. Hello? I needed that money for furniture! How am I supposed to eat without a kitchen table OR a coffee table? Eep. I’m stressed and I can’t even drive to Starbucks!

Headdesk.

All I wanted was to write and make people laugh.

Tags: law school

I’m listening to Joyce Meyer talking about making peace with yourself. My eternal struggle. I think I do well on it and then I realize that I’ve been in a pattern of self doubt for weeks…or longer. To God’s credit, I’m no longer wallowing in self-loathing. But, oh my gosh, do I doubt myself. All the time.

I’m a nerd. Geek. Whatever. But not in a way that I can actually use. I can’t create something super cool, like a web page or video or some sort of graphic that I could like, prove to someone that I can make decent use of my time. I just love knowledge. I love to Google things out of nowhere just to learn about them. I talk on here about loving story. I get caught up in stories of real life people or characters on TV or in books and I love when they’re in situations completely unfamiliar to me. I love to imagine what I would be like in those situations. I’ve been watching the first season of Dexter…and last night I dreamed about solving an extremely complicated crime. Have I ever really done anything useful with my nerd stuff? Nope. I’ve written a couple things that are sitting in Scrivener and have about 20,000 words so far. Each. For me, that’s HUGE. But not nearly enough to be published, and considering that they’re my first real efforts it’s unlikely that they would be published at all even if they were completed.

So I spend time in my on-screen or on-page worlds, treating these characters as people. Thinking about what makes them tick. Thinking about the people in my real life and what makes them the way that they are. Thinking about my story, my setting, and how I could change things but also thinking about how no one would ever listen to me. When I think about my church, I think about how I could change EVERYTHING there and make it so much better. When I worked for Amazon, I saw how everything was so blasted inefficient and it drove me bonkers. When I look at the city of Huntington, I see how stunted it is and how we NEED something better- but no one is doing anything about it. Yet no one listens to me and I barely to go church anymore because I can’t stand it, I quit my job and I’m moving away.

I wish I didn’t run away. I wish I didn’t live in denial. I met a new boy recently, and I warned him- I’m a nerd. He’s super country. We’re like, total opposites. But I said that I’d try to take it easy on him. I hid it away and tried to find common interests for us to discuss. I didn’t want to scare him away. And then, oh gosh. One day, it happened. We were looking stuff up online and I stumbled over some nerdy things and totally. freaking. fangirled. It was one of the most embarrassing displays of excitement I’ve ever exhibited. After a few minutes, I looked up to see him smirking at me. I stopped mid sentence and played it off with a joke. He wasn’t phased. I was.

Thinking about it takes me back to high school, when I was treated with derision because of things like that. When I tried to hang out with the “cool” people at church and told that fiction was stupid and that watching TV meant that I was not a good steward of my time.

I’m so tired of being made to feel like a loser over what makes me unique.

Hearing Joyce talk about this gives me hope, though. She said that she was always embarrassed by her voice. It’s rough, deep, and loud. She’s not one of those sweet, mousy, quiet women that the church likes so much. She is brash. Has presence. In my opinion, she’s a great speaker and I love her manner. But she used to hate her voice, and felt that it was what would stop her from becoming a success.

Look at her now. She has preached the gospel to millions and is doing absolutely amazing missions work all over the world. God has used her tremendously, especially in my life, and I believe that He caused me to find her podcast at the right time to keep me from committing suicide.

To this day, when she talks to people on the phone they think she’s a man.

I hope, so much, that one day my obsession with story will help people and be used for good. But in the meantime, my biggest obstacle is being okay with being me.

Tags: discomfort, peace, trying

I try to have faith, to be strong, to believe it will okay, and to keep pressing on even though I’m miserable and terrified.

Sometimes I can’t.

Sometimes I just cry and cry and cry and cry because I have no hope that things will get easier.

Tags: fear, nightmare, pain, uncertainty

I have a really bad singing voice. It’s nasally and I can’t carry a tune very well, so I don’t sing…unless I’m playing Glee songs in the car. I have to turn the volume up so that the cast drowns me out.

I get really nervous talking in front of people. I get shaky. My pupils constrict, I turn pale and my voice wobbles like I’m getting ready to cry. My throat tightens. My mouth dries. I see people staring at me with blank expressions and I have to fight the urge to run out the door – and I fight it only because I know my legs wouldn’t carry me that far.

So the only voice I have is through writing.

Problem is, I have a need to be brutally honest when I write. I can’t make it nice and fluffy and lovey unless I’m really feeling that way. I’m sarcastic. My verbal filter is riddled with holes. I say things that most Christians are afraid to even think. I write what I feel, which is usually full of pain and confusion.

And then I read the blogs of some AMAZING women. Lindsey Nobles. Bianca Juarez. Anne Jackson. Sarah Markley. Kristin Billerbeck. Fabulous women. Strong women. My role models from afar. I’ve never met them, but I have talked to them all on Twitter, e-mail, or Facebook chat. They all have many reasons to be bitter and question everything they believe, but they get out of bed and fight. Maybe not everyday. But most days. They write about everything, including their struggles, but usually end with a note of hope.

It’s then, that I hate my writing voice more than my singing voice. For a writer, your voice is your self. They can’t be separated. I realize how bitter, how confused, how hopeless I am. How afraid, how insecure. Faithless. Weak. Incapable.

I also realize why THEY are living a much better story than I am. Stories of redemption and passion and overcoming and perseverance and faith. I have no idea how to get my hands on this kind of life.

Yet somehow, their hope is contagious. I want the type of life they lead. I want strength to choke bitterness, courage to overwhelm fear, and love to blast hatred into oblivion. I honestly don’t know if I can ever change. I want to. I hope I can. And for now, I can muster up the willpower to keep trying.

Tags: change, determination, learning, trying, uncertainty

There are a few things that, as a rule, I can’t stand. Church people and girls are at the top of the list. So girls from church are my personal hell on earth.

I realize that I’m generalizing and stereotyping. But in my experience, most of the girls I’ve had the displeasure of associating with in churchlike settings are vapid, shallow, concerned with appearances and unable to stand on their own. They’re daddies girls who are constantly seeking approval from everyone around them and their main goal is to marry someone who is important or the son of someone important in the church.

I used to want to be one of them. Oh, so badly.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make myself fit in. So I eventually quit. For a while, I quit everything related to church and even stopped playing in the band. When I returned, I didn’t hang out with anyone. I literally had NO friends close by. I went to school, work, and came home. My grades were great and I watched a lot of TV. It was a very quiet time in my life, and my only face-to-face conversations of any importance were with my mom. I spend a lot of time texting and calling my far away friends. And although I’d still see on Facebook all of the comments and pictures of church people hanging out, I had absolutely no desire to join in. I no longer cared.

I worked through a lot of hurt in that time, and after a while got to the point where I could see people that had ostracized me without feeling that old stab of pain. I even struck up conversations with people now and then, but this time I had no expectations.

Then I shocked myself by meeting someone I really liked. She started dating one of my friends and was the sister of someone I had gone to school with for years. We hit it off from our first conversation. She was hard to get ahold of when we weren’t at church, but every time I saw her we chattered away and had a blast. We hung out a few times with our friends and I looked forward to seeing her. I felt as if I didn’t have to be strategic around her- I could just show her who I was. We giggled, a lot, and whispered about things that would earn us shocked faces and frowns from most people around us. I liked her because she had a pretty real view of things that most people in church try to pretend don’t exist.

She was one of those people that, if you could PICK someone to be friends with, it would be her. We both got new jobs around the same time, and then the holidays were crazy, and so many times we said, “When things calm down, we’re going to hang out. Just us.”

Finally, I decided to try to make it happen. But she wasn’t responding to texts or facebook messages for days, or the next time I’d see her she’d apologize. Finally, I got fed up with it and asked her boyfriend if he could see if she was getting my texts. I’d heard stuff about her phone not getting messages before, and was still trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. She texted me later that day and started going on about how she was a loner and didn’t have much time to hang out and well, basically told me to quit trying.

Salt, meet wound.

I was hurt and extremely angry. I ranted and stewed and seasoned my bitterness like a witch’s brew. I wrote her off in my head and made every effort to avoid her. Fortunately, I didn’t see her at church for like, a month. Then, I saw her unexpectedly. She tried talking to me as I was walking outside to get my jacket from my car. I smiled stiffly and responded with as few words as possible and kept going. When I came back inside, I went into the bathroom. She was there. She tried to strike up a conversation. I kept trying to brush her off, but she persisted. Finally, I said, “I’ll come out and sit with you in a minute.” She grinned and said okay and walked out the door.

So, as I’m peeing as angrily as possible and berating myself for telling her I’d come sit with her, because there was no way out now- I heard God speak to my spirit.

“Forgive her.”

Of course, I wasn’t giving in that easily. A dialogue ensued.

“No.”
“Yes.”
“She hurt me!”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to!”
“I don’t care.”

I’m certain that I had a big scowl on my face. I’m also certain that God was lounging on His throne with his arms folded and staring at me with a calm, yet pointed expression. I was having a standoff with someone who knew He was going to win. Soooooooo infuriating.

And, well, let’s just be real. There, in the church’s bathroom, I said, “Damnit!”

At that moment, I TOTALLY felt God smirking at me. My candor and whining didn’t bother Him. My stubbornness amused Him. I felt no censure, and I think it’s because He knew that I was deeply hurt, that I had deeply cared about her, and that I truly wanted to do the right thing.

I washed my hands and stomped over to the door. I took a deep breath and sighed it out forcefully and then, with a small bit of resignation mixed into a whole lot of determination, I said, “Okay.”

I went out there. Forgave. Talked. Hugged. Expressed my hurt. Cleared the air. Made a few jokes. Giggled. Hugged again.

That was a few weeks ago. And since then, I’ve only seen her once and said hi in passing. We haven’t had any other contact.

It still kind of hurts.

I still love her.

And I think God is proud of me.

Tags: awkward, grace, learning, pain, peace, risk

Just gave up on sleep. The lack of shut eye will make me super grouchy tomorrow when I’m working, but I hate my job so much that it won’t really make a difference. I’ll just grouch in a gravelly, tired voice.

I envision some scenes of my life as how they’d appear on film. I’d love for my life to be a dramedy full of excitement and witty banter, like Psych, but the truth is that my life is mostly full of sitcom moments with dashes of horror thrown in (horror being something  involving the upstairs neighbors who play Wii at all hours of the night and a sawed off shotgun- eh, that’s just a fantasy). The sad part is…I don’t even like sitcoms! WAIL. Okay, so Modern Family is HILAR – but that’s just cause, well, it just is.

Anyway.

Like, recently, I met a friend at Starbucks and had an extremely awkward moment before I even got through the door. My car is a tiny two seater, low to the ground and compact in every way – which, incidentally, is useful in preventing your stepdad from driving it. I took my laptop housed in a BookBook, which can be a bit cumbersome but is probably one of the coolest things I own. As I was getting out of my car, I stuck my arm through my purse straps and grabbed the BookBook, which became wedged between my stomach and the steering wheel. I couldn’t lean back, nor could I reach the lever to scoot the seat back. I finally dislodged it and thought I was in the clear. No one saw that awkward moment. Success.

Except that I was wearing jean shorts that are probably a ~smidge~ too small as they’re from, like, high school, but I’ve since been too broke around summer to buy new shorts. I was excited about the warm temperatures and the fact that I COULD wear shorts, so I went with it. When I extracted myself from the car, the shorts rode up and while I didn’t want to be adjusting them on the street, I also didn’t want to be accused of trying to start a new trend while simultaneously giving a new meaning to the term “booty shorts.” So I decided I was going to smoothly pull them down as I turned to shut the car door. Yeah, I’m completely sure I didn’t pull that off…

…because then I noticed the high school aged boys staring at me from beside the bus stop across the street.

Great.

I’m a college graduate preparing to go to law school getting creeped on by kids who can’t grow facial hair. (Which is no better than getting creeped on by men who have lost all of their hair. It all gives me the willies.)

So, I’m trying to look both ways and cross the street without getting smushed by a pickup truck while simultaneously unwinding my purse straps from around the dang BookBook. I already look awkward enough, and I was hanging onto both of them for dear life in a sort of hug. I thought I could let go of one of the purse straps because I had ahold of it with the other hand, but I couldn’t really see what was going on and I also have a bad habit of NOT zipping my purse…so I didn’t want to accidentally turn it upside down and dump everything into the street.

As I’m stumbling and fumbling, one of the aforementioned boys said something like, “Hey hot stuff” (really?) as another random dude driving by on my left slowed down, honked, and whistled through his open passenger window while perfecting his leering, creepy grin.

I wish I could have given them an icy glare or pulled out a tranq gun or thrown down some witty insults. Instead, I gulped, walked faster, and tried to hide behind my hair. My bravado failed me and my snark disappeared.

I want to be refined and clever. I want to demand respect. I want to be the type of person that walks with enough confidence that people know not to mess with her. In real life, I stumble, fumble, run away, and hide.

But once in a while, the script in my head insists that I’m the star of the show- and that I’m totally fabulous.

I really wish I had the power to make that script a reality.

Tags: awkward, discomfort