Part 13 (wow! this is becoming a whole book)

People have been saying good things about this blog – that is why I keep at it. I do not like thinking of these things or writing about them. However, it really is time to get it all out, and what better way to do that than blogging publicly for admiring readers?

I feel very much like rushing ahead in the story, ahead to the part where all the shit hit the fan (the shit and the fan in my head, anyway). I will try to just keep writing it in relatively chronological order, though…

After I moved back in to my mom’s house (it was now “my mom’s house,” no longer “my parents’ house”), I had a string of short-lived jobs. I don’t know if I was looking for something better each time I quit a job, or just wasn’t able to handle the responsibility of normalcy and reliability, or I had problems with authority, or what. Probably all of that. It seems as though I had good reasons each time I left a job, though.

I left my temp work in Atlanta because I wanted something closer to Peachtree City. I left my job as an assistant pre-school teacher because I needed to be making more money. I left my job as a cashier because the manager wouldn’t let me train in a different department on account of my vagina – or more specifically, my lack of a penis. I quit my job as a bartender because I kept forgetting to go when I was scheduled, and they were going to fire me anyway.

Before I quit the bar tending job, though, a monumental event happened. I got arrested. Technically, it was for not having auto insurance, but in reality, it was because I was a big smart-ass bitch to the cops. I have had a lot of resentment about that over the years, because being a big smart-ass bitch is not illegal. In retrospect, I suppose I could have reserved my right to be a big smart-ass bitch for a time when I was not actually doing something legitimately illegal, like driving without insurance.

Ahhh, the clarity of hindsight…and maturity. I was only 22 years old when that arrest happened. As much as I might have ever thought I would hate saying this, I have really grown up a lot – A LOT – since then, which is a good thing, as it was over ten years ago. Anyway, back to the trials of youth, or some shit like that.

I was outraged at my arrest. I was a lot of other things, too – it changed how I fundamentally looked at the world. I’m not even exaggerating. It shook my sense of security, which was shaky to begin with, to the core. I asked for a jury trial, and being unable to afford (or want) an attorney, became obsessed with criminal law and procedure.

There’s an Ok Go song that has the lyric, “Could’ve been a genius if you had an axe to grind.” The arrest and subsequent legal battle together composed my axe. And I was grinding it hard.

I became ridiculously knowledgeable about laws, which the judge apparently found obnoxious, and was appointed a court-ordered attorney. As a result of all of the law-learning, though, I was offered a job at the law office my attorney worked at. Since I had left the bar tending job, I had not been employed, so I was like, “ok.”

It was AWESOME! I LOVED it! And I was really, really good at it. The attorney I worked for pretty much gave me carte blanche and I researched all of his cases, ranging from petty marijuana cases to death penalty cases. I filed all the papers and worked with the clients and started writing motions on my own, and it wasn’t long before the lawyer was allowing me to write his motions to dismiss illegally obtained evidence, which was my specialty, and he would just read it and sign it.

The stuff I wrote for him was good, and it almost always won, resulting in criminal cases getting dismissed and other things an attorney is happy about adding to his record. I also loved writing appeals, and just generally loved arguing via strongly worded letters (which is basically all legal pleadings are).

Like I said, I was GOOD. I was also OBSESSED. I was working 12-14 hour days, then taking my work home with me. It was absolutely consuming. Keep in mind I was still dating Jonny, and in fact had become engaged during this time. I also still had a son.

That Erin Brockovich movie came out during that time, too, and people kept saying, “oh my god, you have to see that movie, it’s just like you!” This made me uncomfortable, as I had no idea who Erin Brockovich was, and when I finally saw the movie, I was jolted into reality.

I did not want to be Erin Brockovich. I mean, she’s pretty badass and everything, and she’s helped a lot of people, which are at least two things I would like to attribute to myself. However, the OBSESSION with her work to the point of ignoring everything else around her, including her kids, hit me hard – because that really is how I was.

I didn’t have to be concerned about that for too much longer, because soon after that Jonny and I bought a house and got married, and then my kid went to his first day of kindergarten at the same elementary school I had attended. This was way too much reality for me to handle all at once, and I had a pretty hearty little breakdown.

I quit my job with no notice to my boss or to my husband. I began spending all of my time inside the house, still researching criminal law and things of that nature, even though I had nothing to do with the information once I’d obtained it.

The house was filled with tons and tons of piles of paper from my research – I had kept it all from the job, and didn’t want to let it go, and continued accumulating it from home. I was certain I would need it at some point in my life, and I didn’t have access to all of that information without a law office or library or online database.

I had to keep it, I had to have all of this knowledge and information and proof that I was smart and capable and exceptionally good at something that most people could not do at all. It was what distinguished me from all the other trashy rednecks from the south who never finished high school and had gotten into drugs and had babies as teenagers.

That was how I felt at the time anyway. I didn’t realize it then, that what I was doing was trying to prove to myself that I was not trashy and crazy and all of the others labels that come with all of the other things I had done that were not socially exemplary, especially in Peachtree City, Georgia. While I do not have the same views and perceptions at the current date, that was definitely how I felt at that time.

It was a very difficult time for me, but also a beautiful time of being with my new husband and my growing son. I LOVED being married to Jonny – I still do. I LOVED being my kid’s mom – I still do. I had never had so much time to spend with both of them before, and truly enjoyed being with them – I still do.

All around, it was a period of time in my life in which I experienced a lot of intense things in a short amount of time. Not necessarily good things, and not necessarily bad things – just really intense things. It was difficult for me to be forced to sit with it all.

And then I got pregnant. You know what happens when you get pregnant, right? EVERYTHING changes.

To be continued…