Just Not Ready

[The Memorial Day weekend was pretty heavy for me. I made one really hard decision. It seems to be right because I got all the sleep Sunday and Monday that I haven't been getting the last couple of weeks since picking up Chris's BarBri stuff, unearthing all of my old study materials, and really looking at what I'd be facing.]

[I didn't write about all of it then, and I don't intend to now, but I was not in a good place two years ago. I'd just graduated from law school, and jumped right into studying for the Bar. For three years, when someone asked me what I did, I could confidently answer "I'm in law school." It was an easy, highly respectable answer...it made me feel covered somehow in all those situations where the first question you're asked is "what do you do?" (It also assuaged my impulse toward helping my fellow human beings, since I was going to a public-interest law school.) That ended abruptly with graduation, as did the supportive friendships I'd made at New College - you tend to scatter to the four winds once the tassel moves from one side to the other. I wasn't feeling particularly secure in my identity.]

[I'd moved into my first solo living situation on the first of May, but John was still living just one block away, and I was still very caught up in our drama. I was nursing the worst unrequited crush of my life on one of my best friends. I was unemployed. And I was being not particularly good to my body in several ways.]

[It's surprising I didn't cut more than a couple of my Bar review classes that summer. I did as well as I could under these circumstances, but of course I failed the damned thing miserably. Rather than pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again the following February, I decided to get a fun job at sub-subsistence wages, and see if I couldn't become something resembling a functional human being before trying again.]

[Well, here we are two years later, and I haven't got there yet. But (and this is my big But...I could've put that better) things are a lot better than they were two years ago. While my job isn't Fun City like the Friendly Neighborhood Cabaret was, I am paying my rent and bills without too much stress, and I don't dread getting up and going to work every morning. My friendships have been on a more even keel, and I exorcised the crush while keeping the friend. I co-executed a pretty good eight-month relationship that, though it ended, I don't consider a failure. (And Chris, to his eternal credit, helped me see and deal with a lot of John baggage I was still lugging around.)]

[In consequence of all this, I'm no longer thrashing my carcass actively and passively on a frequent basis, though I'm certainly not Temperance. This resume (and that's what typing this out has felt like) outlines baby steps. Even things I had nothing to do with, like my niece being born last October, told me that things were moving, albeit slowly, in the right direction.]

[Then came the idea late last fall that, it having been two years, and since I hadn't found that job that would make me more secure, that it was time to consider taking the Bar exam again in July. As the winter dragged its soggy ass finally into spring, it became inevitable that I was in fact going to be doing this. I told my parents, my boss, my friends...steps that, for me, make any decision more real.]

[But...I kept not actually registering. I'd go the Bar Association's site, fiddle about, and not get around to filling out the form. I noticed that I was starting to feel more and more anxious, and that lots of little things that for me had become symbols of the progress I'd made began to fall away. Stupid decisions in the last month have made money an issue again. I've been drinking a bit more, and fighting with friends. And I haven't slept through the night in weeks. I have been feeling exactly like I felt two summers ago.]

[It seems clear to me that the prospect of taking the Bar exam is still too big an emotional button for me to push, so I'm not going to do it. Am I screwing myself over irretrievably here? As my mother tactlessly said to me Sunday, I'm not getting any younger. ("That's some cold shit." - John Cusack, High Fidelity) Nor is the massive amount of information one needs to have at one's fingertips getting any fresher. But I know that I just don't have what it takes to study effectively enough to pass right now, and so it would simply be a huge waste of time, energy, and money.]

[May whoever needs to forgive me do so. Starting with my own self-doubting, self-hating self.]

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