Day 138 - Want to Give Up

Date: May 24th, 2010

This entry is a bit more serious and its one of the reasons that I'm a little behind.  I sort of dreaded writing this one because I feel like I'm admitting more about myself than I usually choose to outside of my immediate family.

Twenty years ago, I was five.  (Check out those math skills).  And at five, I thought about many fanciful things.  I wanted to be an astronaut, I hated playing house and I was really good at arguing with people.  One of those three things has stayed a fundamental part of who I am.  Guess which one, says the law student.  The fact of the matter is, I've never met an argument I didn't want to be a part of.  That got me in a lot of trouble in grade school, college, law school, relationships, run ins with law enforcement, neighbors, friends, coworkers, bosses, customers at jobs, strangers at the gas station.  You get the point.

The fact is, even when I wanted to be an astronaut, I knew I'd be a lawyer.  I just figured I could do both part time.  It made perfect sense to me.  See, I'd just go into space in the morning, hang out with space chimps, maybe make some coffee.  I'd, like, cruise to the moon and chat it up with peoples.  Then, I'd head back to earth for lunch and some good ole fashioned courtroom shenanigans.

Everything about this makes sense to me.

When I hit my "wow, school is actually challenging" wall in 8th grade, I got through it by reminding myself that lawyers needed to finish school.  When I let a bad relationship distract me in 11th grade, I picked myself back up by remembering that I still had a ways to go.  When my freshman roommate turned out to be three sheets to the wind (all the time), I kept my head on school because I had to finish college with good grades.  And when 1L did everything in its power to crush my soul, I fought through because law school is hazing and becoming a lawyer was worth getting hazed for me.

No trial, no tribulation, no challenge was too much in the pursuit of being a lawyer.  It has not just been my dream and my passion, it has been my reason for being on this earth.  I am here for that reason.  That is how strongly I feel about it and it is why nothing has been able to shake the foundation of my conviction that I am meant for this work.  Until Monday, the 24th of May.

Since starting at Legal Services, I've been on the intake hotline quite a few times and it is always hard to hear what people are dealing with.  We get calls from parents who haven't seen their children in months because of custody disputes, people in fear of losing their homes, victims of slumlords, you name it.  It is hard to meet someone on one of the worst days of their life, but that's what hotline is like every morning.  Even so, as draining as it is, it feels good to provide even a little bit of help to someone calling in.

At lunch on Monday I was talking to one of my coworkers about a particularly difficult eviction case.  Over the course of  the phone call, I started to feel bad for the woman calling because of all the things she'd had to deal with.  I found myself wondering aloud about how I would handle it the first time a victim of domestic violence called in and I answered.  I found out just how difficult it would be later that afternoon.  I was tasked with calling back someone who had called into hotline to follow up on her situation.

When I asked about domestic violence, what seemed like decades of pent up emotion came flooding out.  I sat on the phone, listening and taking as many notes as I could.  It feels selfish even to think about why that phone call was hard **for me** when it was so clearly a horrific experience for the woman I was talking to.  At various points, I wanted to stop her from talking out of an inappropriate need for pause on my end of the line.  Instead, I bit my tongue and kept writing as she told me about incident after incident after incident.

It was bearable, but difficult until she got to one story in particular.  Because of confidentiality rules, I cannot go into detail about the story itself, but what I will say is that it struck a nerve.  I felt my blood boiling and in the same instant I knew I was powerless to do anything but listen.  After an hour almost entirely devoted to taking notes on the incidents of domestic violence she had suffered, the phone call came to a close.

I finished typing my notes, put my pen and paper off to the side of the desk in the cubicle I had commandeered for the call, grabbed my purse and silently, slowly walked to the bathroom.  After checking both of the stall doors, I sat down on the floor and cried.  I had to have been in there for fifteen minutes trying to calm myself back down.  And the whole time, all I could think was "I can't do this".

After two decades of knowing what I wanted for myself and feeling a sense of purpose grow from that in my soul, I had reached a point that I thought I couldn't bear.  I spent the rest of the afternoon wrapping up projects I'd been assigned, determined not to let any of my coworkers know what I was thinking.  On the inside, I was wondering what else I could do with my life.  I'm not a big fan of melodrama, which is why describing how I felt that afternoon is so difficult for me.  I felt wrenched away from my calling in life.  You see, having felt called to do this work, the idea that there would be some part of it that I couldn't handle was something I hadn't contemplated.  It wasn't a real thought.  It was lunchtime banter with my coworkers.

In the wake of that phone call and the mix of despair at the woman's situation, shock at my own reaction and embarrassment over my emotions; I was forced to deal with the possibility that I wasn't meant to be on this path.  With a heavy heart, I took the information over to my boss and walked her through what I'd learned in the phone call.  The woman had called about one legal issue, but over the course of the call she had mentioned another in passing.  Without really thinking too much of it, I walked her through the basic informational questions about the other issue she mentioned and noted that it was brought up.

What I didn't realize until later was that no one else had caught the second issue.  My boss looked over the paperwork and immediately sent me back to get as much information as I could on the second issue and to get as much paperwork as the woman could put together on it.  It turned out that we had about a week to (hopefully) help her.  

I prayed a lot about that day after I got off work and talked to my mom and my friend Justin about it as well.  While they tried to reassure me that I could handle it, I still wasn't entirely sure.  Not until today (June 1st).  I rarely like asking God for signs.  The way I figure it, God's pretty busy with bigger fish to fry than showing me what my career path should look like.  That being said, I broke my own rule and asked for some guidance.  I wished to myself and prayed to God that there would be some way for me to know that I was cut out for this.  That despite my fifteen minute bathroom break to collect myself, I could handle the day to day of dealing with clients in such terrible situations.

I feel I got that sign today.  I spoke to my boss about the second issue - the one I noted in passing on the phone.  Our actions worked.  Because the issue was brought to our attention at the beginning of last week, we were able to keep her from facing a serious problem.  The inevitable outcome that she was set on a path toward was avoided because we took action on her behalf.  I thought about what I did on that phone call that made it so hard and realized it was the same thing that brought out the second issue.

I listened.  I just let her talk.  I asked the questions I needed to ask, but I let her tell me her story.  So today, over a week after the first time in my life that I questioned whether I was on the right path, I know that I am.  I realized that every horrible story she told me that brought me closer to my breaking point was a story that needed to come out before she could talk about the second issue.  Knowing there was a purpose to the conversation, one that made her life just a little better for the time being, makes all the questions disappear.  It isn't about whether or not I can handle it anymore.  I must handle it.  This is what I'm meant to do.