starting over

Here it goes.  The truth.

The funny thing about starting over is that it really shouldn't be that hard since I've already done whatever it is that I need to do again.  If it wasn't for my emotions, the idea of finding a job again wouldn't be so overwhelming.

2011 was looking good for me.  I had a great job, and I had just negotiated my contract rate to $75 an hour.  I was feeling good about where I was headed.  They say the best time to find a job is when you already have one, and I had one.  I was happy in my contract attorney position because I knew the firm valued me and my work, and I also knew that it wasn't where I wanted to be for too much longer.  I was honest with the firm - I was going to look for a permanent associate position elsewhere while continuing to do work full-time there.  The firm understood and we all agreed.

And then shit literally hit the fan.

Let me back up a little bit to explain a little bit about myself.  Anyone who has continuously read this blog since my 1L year back in 2004 knows that extraordinary shit seems to happen to me.  My friends who have known me for a long time will attest to this.  Things simply are harder for me.

When I was four years old, my mom used to make me walk around the back yard so she could correct my pigeon feet.  When I was six, my doctor suggested that I wear a patch to school over my right eye to strengthen my left eye muscle.  Do you know what happens when you send a kid to school with a patch over her eye?!  When I was nine, I fell off my bike, my face landed on the pavement, and I fell unconscious for a while.  I won't explain how many times I've been in an ambulance, or how many times I took the LSAT.  My point is, shit literally seems to happen to me every couple of years.

So, it goes without saying that the universe could not let me be satisfied for too long.  And that's exactly what happened this past May.  My world literally fell apart because my boss tried to have sex with me.

Without getting into the details of these past five months, I will say that in doing the right thing, I came out the biggest loser.  I lost my job, I lost my income, and I lost a little bit of me in the process.   I have certainly lost faith in law firms, and above all, for the time being, I have lost faith in men.

I have bad days and decent days.  I have days where I am so motivated to prove my old firm wrong, that I don't need them and that I can be successful regardless of the incident.  Then, I have days where I wallow and wonder "why me."

And then I have moments like right now...where I wonder how it is that I'm literally at the same place I was 3 years ago.