You feel like home to me

My beautiful and dear friends Tarren and Becca came to visit me last weekend.  I have never cried and laughed so much in such a short period of time.  I haven't missed the beach or the burritos or the happy hour specials nearly as much as I thought I would, but my god do I miss you lovely people who read my blog.  It is easy for me to walk away from places... even though I've been lucky to live in some beautiful ones.  But it has always been people who feel like home to me, and these girls are prime examples.

Laughing and drinking and drinking with the girls, it's easy to pretend that we have been this comfortable and close since the summer we met.  But the truth is, we had to work for these friendships. We took care of each other after heartbreaks, practiced and critiqued oral argument together, held bags for each other to vomit in, didn't kill each other when our cycles were synched, endured each other's misled romantic choices, ran each other's errands, and kept each other's juicy secrets when we were so excited we wanted to burst.  That's how we woke up one day and found that nothing was as satisfying or cathartic as all three crawling into bed together on Sunday morning with cups of coffee and messy hair for storytime. And it's worth all the dues we paid.

I had a hard time when Tarren and Becca left Anchorage, and the friend-shaped hole in my heart still hurts a little for the feel of family and unconditional love.  I do very much feel at peace with being in Alaska, and it's not without its joys.  I've been beyond blessed with the people I've met, and there really isn't much to complain about. I'm learning an overwhelming amount about who I am personally and professionally and hopefully moving more and more toward the person I want to be.  There are strong and weak days, but mostly I'm committed to building my relationships and career here and learning to be a good Alaskan even if I have to buy new outerwear every season, adjust how often I wear stilettos,  and stumble along as I learn new sports as well as social and cultural rules.

Alaska and law school are similar in that if someone had presented me with a complete list up front of every expense involved, I probably never would have followed through.  The same goes for general emotional struggles. Luckily, the purchases and traumas came as surprises one by one until I stayed long enough to realize that I'd spent too much to back out.

I went to the Anchorage museum with new friends today, and I was entranced by the Alaskan history represented by some of the exhibits.  Although I felt humbled by how little I knew, I also felt proud to be a recent addition to the state.  It inspired me to educate myself a bit more about my new home, and it's probably the most interested in Alaska itself I've truly been so far.  This relationship between Alaska and me... honestly, it is still work.  But I hope one day -- after I invest enough -- I feel as comforted, accepted, and whole as I do standing in the cold with Tarren and Becca waiting for the liquor store to open.

Boundaries

I have trouble with boundaries.  I always have.  I care way too much about way too much and consistently overcommit myself.

I try not to blog about work very often because my best stories are either confidential or borderline, but anyone who knows me well knows I love indigent criminal defense.  It was such a dream come true for me to finally get paid to do it.  But doing the work full time hasn't changed the fact that I'm very emotionally involved in the lives of my clients.

During my very first public defender internship, my supervising attorney (Zaki) asked me to leave a client meeting because I started crying.  Afterwards, I asked for the client's address so I could send him cat food (it makes sense in the long version).  Zaki taught me so many things by example during the semester I fell in love with the career that could rip my heart out, but the only direct criticism he ever really gave me was, "At some point, you're going to have to grow some boundaries."

I like to think I've gotten a little better.  I now have access to the mailing address of 124 clients and never send cat food to a single one of them.  No matter how difficult it is.  But I'm still overly invested in their actions, which I have shockingly little influence over.

I love and hate my clients. They write me crazy letters; they send me funny drawings; they yell and ramble and laugh and cry into my voicemail.  They make me yell, ramble, laugh, and cry too.  They also make me feel fulfilled, feel guilty, feel appreciated, and feel that I am depriving people of their Constitutional right to competent counsel.

This is a self-portrait of a client
who asked me to please not
forget that he is incarcerated.

This is from a client who is very
proud to be Native American

My confidence in my competence as an attorney is attached to whether I'm able to make a difference in their lives... which makes me feel constantly guilty and worried that my exhaustion, busy-ness, and professional interpersonal conflicts will affect them negatively.

I have a therapist-friend who enjoys biking and giving unsolicited advice (in his defense, I use him as my personal counselor more often than I should, so he probably gets confused about when advice is being solicited). He says that if I don't learn to control how much of myself is invested in my clients' behaviors, I won't be able to stay in a job like this long term.

I am not sure how I feel about that.  I know that I am sometimes emotionally exhausted by being disappointed or frustrated or even heartbroken about the actions of people  I can't control.  Biking Therapist calls it codependent and has a book about it.

I've had jobs I didn't care about... jobs where every Friday morning was take-your-burrito-to-work day because every Thursday night was dance-and-drink-tequila-until-2am day.  Those jobs served their purpose of financing my burrito and tequila habit but didn't give me much else.

So here's the thing... hopefully, we are choosing jobs because we care about them, right?  How do you separate caring about your job from caring so much about your job that it eats you alive?  How do you care about what happens to people (clients, friends, or acquaintances) without making their successes and failures and joys and heartaches your own?

Speak up kids.  Give my pro-bono therapist a break and tell me how come all of you aren't crazypants at work.

Green Light

Last night, I was approaching a downtown intersection, and the light turned green.  And so did the next one.  And so did the next one.  You know when you hit that string of green lights, and you can look down the street and watch the domino effect as if it's two bathroom mirrors facing each other?

I'm starting to see green lights all over my life.  I'm developing real friendships; I'm in love with my job; I'm learning to enjoy (and not endure) the weather.  It wasn't too long ago that Alaska and I were ending our honeymoon, but I think we are starting to accept each other for who we are now. Even the moose have stopped hiding from me and instead guard my car in the morning to ensure I don't get to work on time.

I know I should feel grateful, but good fortunate tends to make me feel anxious. I'm always afraid my luck is about to run out... like I've had too many blessings for someone of my average goodness, and pretty soon a higher being is bound to realize that I've eaten more than my share of karmic cookies and cut me off for life.

I've never been one to believe that things "happen for a reason," but one thing that has always challenged my skepticism is the friends I meet.  Since coming to Alaska, I feel ridiculously fortunate to have found every single person I've met outside of the Public Defender Agency.  Each friendship has been one I've stumbled upon by accident, and each one has added depth and comfort to my Alaskan life.

A year ago, when I imagined the life I wanted, it certainly wasn't this one.  I remember last March pretty clearly ... believing the innumerable hours of volunteer work I'd invested in the San Diego Public Defender over the last three years would pay off soon, believing I would stay in my Hillcrest apartment with my dear roommate and a million bottles of wine, believing that fighting hard enough and applying to enough jobs would keep me by a sunny SoCal beach forever, and trying frantically to believe that love would eventually conquer all.

I never wanted to cut my losses in the professional network I'd sacrificed so much of my free time in law school creating.  I never wanted to leave the women who became my family through the nightmare we called law school. I never wanted to live alone or buy a puffy down coat or extricate myself from my love for Daniel.

But now that I've done those things, this amazing life I never knew to wish for has found me.  I love my job and my apartment and the snow and the independence more than I ever knew I could.  I fell down the snowy rabbit hole into this wonderland I never knew to search for.

I hope I am not jinxing myself when I entertain the idea that I might not ever run out of good luck.  Maybe I do deserve the amazingly beautiful people who come into my life. Maybe doom is not impending.  Maybe even more happy things are on their way and I just need to hold still and let them catch me.

For once, I am just going to enjoy the green lights.

More Stuff

I finally bought furniture and unpacked most of my boxes. Thankfully, my friend Cass went with me for the shopping endeavors.  I got my table from Wal-Mart, because I am super classy.  The Wal-Mart guys helped us get the giant heavy box into the back of the Subaru and off we went to celebrate with beer and enchiladas.

When I got home, I suddenly became very unaware of the absence of the Wal-Mart guys.  I desperately wanted furniture in my apartment to reward me for finally going shopping.  I tried to carry the box in myself, but I couldn't even lift it enough to try to open it. So I went inside, got a kitchen knife and came back outside.  I butchered the cardboard box and made six trips inside with armfuls of wood. Voila.  Furniture.

I got my couches delivered on Saturday too.  The company gave me a window of 11:00 - 3:00, but luckily the delivery came at 11:45 -- early enough for me to go snowboarding with my caesar salad friends!

I think I have everything I need now.  Couch, table, chairs, appliances, and boxes of everything I own.  I also have friends I'm getting closer to, a job I love, and a basic knowledge of how to snowboard.  2012.  It's not so bad.

Fur Rondy

These Reindeer

are chasing these people

and I have no idea why.

Stuff

I'm not good at watching movies, so people like to explain storylines to me.  This is fine and saves me a substantial amount of time.  In a conversation about whether or not possessions matter, my friend Pete told me about some plot in some movie where the guy gets super attached to his volleyball and names him. (You don't all have to comment to tell me which movie.  I don't care.)  It sounds stupid.

I like to think I care about stuff less than most people. I move too much and have been too poor for too long to have nice things.  Every few years I whittle down to my favorite/most useful things so I can move.  Also, I lose/break things on a regular basis. But when the Public Defender offered to pay to move all of my stuff to Alaska, I took them up on it.  Sounded fun.

I want to insert a warning here to anyone who might hire a California-based moving company: DON'T GO WITH "NOW THAT'S A GOOD MOVE."  It isn't.  I won't rant here about every single thing they did wrong... just don't do it.

Anyway, I thought I'd get my stuff after two weeks (because they lied), but it took six weeks. So there I was, after six weeks,  sitting on my living room floor surrounded by files and trying to work because moving company could only come during office hours. A big truck pulled up and a little man came out.  Just one little man.  I wondered how he was planning to carry all of my stuff by himself, so I asked him. As it turns out, he was only authorized to leave my stuff in my snowy driveway.  Because I am even less capable of bringing all of my stuff inside alone than that little man, I refused to sign and made him leave. He was pissed.

The thing about being new is that even though you're forming new friendships, you don't have people you feel comfortable asking to drop their lives to do an annoying favor (like help you carry stuff inside out of the snow because you didn't have the foresight to ask ahead of time whether this was covered in your moving expenses).  I really don't have any favors to call in here. So I called a temp agency, priced the job, then called the moving company to reschedule the shipment.

The moving company told me that there were two men at my apartment to help me move.  There weren't.  They insisted.  I went outside to look for them.  I couldn't find them.  I came back inside and tried to figure out what to do. Then two large scary-looking guys knocked on my door.  They were there to help me move.  The moving company had apparently contracted a shipping company and a temp agency without telling any of the three parties. (me.  I'm the third one.)

I invited the guys in out of the snow and called the moving company, who confirmed that that's who the guys were (not just random large people lost in the snow). The guy with the truck couldn't come back for another hour.  So, I made the guys some coffee and toast and we all sat on the living room floor and told stories.  As it turns out, they were convicted felons so we had a lot to talk about!  I really wanted to take pictures of them for the pending blog, but couldn't figure out how to do it without being offensive. Their largeness really emphasized the smallness of my living room. Eventually, the truck came back, the men unloaded it, and we all lived happily ever after.

Anyway, even though I had a lovely morning with these guys, I was thinking by the end of the ordeal that I wish I hadn't shipped anything at all.  It was all such a hassle, and my stuff really isn't worth anything.  But then, I saw him: my pet dragon.  I have a giant pet dragon that the best person I know once won for me at a fair (after $65 and a relentless ball-throwing match with a fair worker).  When I carried that dragon around the fair, little kids kept approaching me to pet him.  He's that huge and exciting.

Then, I saw the sparkly sombrero that was given to me to remind me that I'll always be the honorary Mexican of my urban tribe back in California. My dragon loves that sombrero.  So I took my sombrero and put him back on my dragon's head, where he belongs. When my giant Mexi-dragon smiled up at me in appreciation of being hatted, I felt like I was reunited with an old friend.  I couldn't believe how happy I was to see him.

I might as well have named him Wilson.