random musings on my best friend

So I calmly sit while my best friend runs around in his usual packing frenzy. It is his ritual - and I am calm. For some reason, I always find his ritual calming. We all have them - you know you do - the rituals we have to deal with packing for any trip. I think the ritual grows exponentially in terms of time, complexity, and degree of frenzy based on how far and how long you travel. Bearing that in mine, tonight is topping out - exponentially speaking.

I am sad he is leaving, although I know he will be back. We have not seen much of one another since I returned. He has been drowning in reading and writing assignments for graduate degree program. (I would almost swear he is doing more work than I did in law school - almost.) He sat by while I took three years to make one of my life's dreams come true. He was always full of encouragement and always full of pride. I've never known someone to believe in me so fully, so completely, and without any expectations of anything in return. I never even knew a man could be that way. I've never known any other to be that way.



So, I sit here. Writing about him. Proud of him and his accomplishments, sitting on the side and cheering him on, and without any expectations of anything in return.

It's a great thing to get to that point in a friendship. We've known one another for 16 years now - and that is a long time. We have both changed a lot. For better and for worse, no doubt. Inhibitions have gone and sometimes, just sometimes, I think we are too comfortable in front of one another. At least we can be amused by that… and we always are. Isn't that how it should be with your best friend after all?

Back in the game.

So, here I am… Back on my blog. And a hell of a lot has happened.

First, and foremost, a hole was blown into my world about three months ago when my job offer was effectively and unofficially rescinded. The future that I had seen in my head for, well, a few years at least, was wiped clean. I had been planning on some sense of financial security, a nice place to live (worthy of my years of work and my age), and the ability to help the people in my life. I had seen time spent with the people that have come to be my family in Michigan - and the challenge of finding new friends to add to that family. I had felt some sense of security. And, that is gone.

I do not know that I can effectively describe how I felt after that phone call. A punch to the gut. A headache. A large sense of rage. Rage that will take a long time to fade I now know. So, I decided to go back to DC. Instinctively. Where else where I go? The people I'd known the longest, other than my family, reside in DC, and I have missed them for three long years. Yet, at the same time, I feel acute pain for leaving behind my new family.

So, here I am. In DC. For about 6 or 7 weeks now. And I am just starting to snap out of it. I had some idea of how hard it is to return home when I spent a summer at my father's house at the age of 31. I left home for college at 18 (my mother's home) and never went back. Been effectively on my own since then. Still, I wasn't prepared, and I wish I'd realized how hard this would be.

I'm here and I'm lost. I admit it. I am normally in my head a lot out of the gate. That is just how I am wired I suppose. Sure, I can make a decent joke every now and again, I am fairly intelligent, I am not too awful to look at when I'm not carrying excess baggage on my frame, and I am a pretty decent person. But, I'm lost.

I have always had a very good sense of self. Now, though, I am left wondering: who am I? I am not the woman who left DC three and a half years ago. I cannot step back into her life. And I can certainly not pick up where I left off with my friends. We have all had distinct experience in those three years. I am now a lawyer. But, I am lawyer who expected, who planned on being in Michigan in a different life than I am now living. So, now I have to merge them or be them both and I am trying to figure out how, while letting go of a future that is no longer there: bustyredhead and lawyer. In a new old city. Missing some people and trying to catch up with others. How do I merge the ambitious, DC me, the one who wants to succeed, the one who wants to make a difference and be financially secure with the other me? The lawyer? And what about the other me? The me who found time to relax and enjoy life in Michigan? The one who laughed more than she had in years, who went out and enjoyed laser tag and video games and just being? Does that fit in DC?

Yes, I can hear two people in my head - stop being so dramatic. And, I appreciate that. I am overly dramatic? Absolutely. All the time? No. I think a lot, yes. But, I am also the type of person who has to have meaning in her work. Who has to enjoy it. I had a friend once tell me that she did not like her job, but did it because that job supported what she loved to do outside of work. It was disconcerting to me. I cannot imagine, over the long-term, spending the majority of the week engaged in work that does not hold meaning. First, life is just too damned short to spend 40+ hours a week, each week, doing something you hate. Second, how does one not go stir crazy in that environment? Finally, why can't one have both? Why shouldn't one engage in work she loves that supports the other activities she loves? So, I am not wrong to think about these issues. To decide what my path is. To proceed cautiously. I won't settle for less.

I also cannot, and will not, remove all drama from my life. I remember those moments, with drama, most vividly in my life. Those are the moments that change you, that alter you, that make you learn and grow. To not live through the drama , to not feel it, is to be stagnant I think. I have learned from the failed loves of my life. I have learned from the other failures - be they professional or personal. They were dramatic. I felt them acutely. I lived, I learned. Life, for me, is about living and loving and learning. Learning from the mistakes you made - which more often than not, do involve drama - and doing better. Learning what you do want and what you don't want. Loving those around you - and I do, with ferocity. Admittedly, I do need less drama. I need to worry less. (Still waiting on those classes someone once mentioned.) I am working on that. But, drama is the stuff of life.

So, where does all this leave me? Back in the game. I can feel the ambition pulsing through my veins. I can feel the need to keep the balance. I will make those things that are important to me happen, just on a different path: a job, financial security, a place to live for me, the ability to help my family, and love. The need to move forward and find what the road holds for me, while building myself anew to some degree. Look out... Back. In. The. Game.

By way of disclosure, I'm not editing this. Not even rereading. Just posting as it. If it offends you or there is an error, that's your issue. Not mine. Don't need that drama.