When I went into the field, I remember my dad being worried that the stressful nature of the job would break me down. That I'd take too much of other people's feelings onto myself and let it shake me. I had to learn right away to...for the lack of better words...divorce myself from the emotions that go behind other people's matrimonial actions, family court proceedings, and estate distribution squabbles...in order to get the job done. It's not a paralegal's job to feel the pain and frustration that goes behind those things; nor is it the job of the attorneys or the Court system in general. We simply clean up the mess. Shuffle papers and move on.
I didn't have a problem turning off those feelings and just getting the job done. Somewhere along the line though I realized that we really were dealing with some pretty heavy shit and we had to laugh about a lot of it to get through. This seemed dark to me after a while. Don't get me wrong; I worked for fabulous, ethical, honest people - I can't say enough good about them - it's simply the nature of the work, I think, necessitating those coping mechanisms.
When I realized this, I was able to see a trend in my life. I am cool under personal life pressure; that job really taught me that. In the middle of a crisis, I'm able to see what needs to be done and just do it. I'm not saying I don't cry or have moments of just wondering what the heck else can happen, but life goes on even when we don't want it to. When my husband and I split, I bought a brand new car, found an apartment, signed the lease, moved in literally the next day. I taught some of my best kickboxing classes. I unpacked over the weekend - Christmas was even in there somewhere. That probably looked and felt very abrupt. But...things need to be done and sitting around feeling sorry for myself doesn't do it. While I have an amazing support system of family and friends and know I can always count on them, my life can't just stop. No one's going to live at my house and wait on me hand and foot and tuck me into bed at night. I'm an adult; I got it.
That ability can be misconstrued as being cold and uncaring. I'm really not - but I was conditioned for a very long time to just see the paperwork of life because there are tasks that need to be addressed. Deal with the emotions later on, but take care of the paperwork now. Emotions don't get the job done; buckling down does.
So I think over the next several blogs, I'm going to share some stories about that part of my life. It's stuff I am ready to talk about now, two years after the fact. All of our experiences shape who we are today and these certainly shape me.
Plus, reminiscing is fun :)
