Why I Actualy Went To Law School
Why I decided to go to law school keeps fucking coming up. My application essay was all about wanting to make a fresh start after my husband died while sneaking in mentions about my professional and academic accomplishments. I’ve largely stuck to that story with my professors because what the fuck else am I going to say, but the meat of the matter is that I didn’t want to make a fresh start. I had been perfectly fine with the original fucking start. I wanted my original start back.
That not being possible, a nice, three-year vacation from real life sounded swell. That I could use it as an excuse to look after my mom after my dad died and help her get her shit in order without her knowing that it was a blatant excuse to look after her and help her get her shit in order was somewhat of a bonus. The Brothers and I were agreed on this.
Miami was kind of a bonus, too. I spent my last fall in DC - the same time of year The Husband got sick - hating the changing leaves, hating driving home in the dark, hating the fucking cold so fucking much why the fuck do I live here when it’s so fucking cold? My mantra as I walked to my car every night was, “I hate it this shit. I hate it here.” Miami has been good to me in that sense. (Though holy Jesus all I have done since I got here is look and smell like Nick Nolte’s mugshot.)
At the heart of the matter was probably the desire to go back to the beginning again - in grad school, where I met The Husband - and somehow have the story turn out differently. This was not me giving life an ultimatum or anything - the Grandmothers taught me better than that, long before I ever needed the knowledge. Men die. Children die. You can cry about it if you want, but it won’t make any difference. You just have to get on with things. Shrug, go back to washing dishes.
But I was lucky; lovely social progress gave me options they didn’t have. If my current life was unbearable, I had the means to change it. Life in the old DC stomping grounds without The Husband had become unbearable, the economy was shit, and it was either go to law school or quit my job, sell all my shit and move to Fiji. Inbred pragmatism wouldn’t let me pursue the option that would result in a gap in my resume I’d forever have to explain once I realized I was just as miserable and lonely in Fiji as I would have been in fucking law school and crept back home with my tail between my legs.
And yes, law school is still a vacation from a real, actual job, even horrible first-year with all the pressure and the hype. I spend eighteen hours a week in class. You know what I do outside of that? Whatever the fuck I want. And I actually get shitloads done, because I don’t have to deal with endless teleconferences and bullshit day-long meetings, or being at my desk in my office just to be there for The Bigwigs even though I’m much more productive at home because people aren’t fucking interrupting me every five minutes. I have no employees in law school, and no boss. It is a fucking dream.
Somewhere in there was also a vaguely pornographic fantasy of sexually mentoring nubile twenty-somethings. I did not include this on my essay. One of the things they don’t warn you about coming into young widowhood is how insatiably fucking horny you will be. No matter how many times you slogged in late after a bad day and were like, “I cannot even conceive of the idea of sex right now,” even if you didn’t have children, even if your husband got pissy about it and you fought about it…you were still having a whole fuckload more sex than you are right now.
And the worst thing is that you’d gotten really good at it. Outside of those “Yes, whatever, if it’ll shut you up,” one-sided fucks, you don’t spend a decade in a sexually monogamous relationship with a person without becoming intimately knowledgeable of his or her foibles, dead zones, hot zones, etc. More than that, you learn how to read another person. You built up instincts. And if you were together for that long, you’ve gotten deeply into accommodating each other’s kinks, exploring new ones, just randomly throwing stuff at the wall to see if you like it, and being completely uninhibited with one another.
When your spouse dies and everything else falls to shit, at least in this way, you know yourself backwards and forwards. And you know you can know another person that way, too. It’s a huge hole that needs filling. And unlike a husband you’ve known and loved for ten years, it seems like a much easier hole to fill than love, or any such shit. Most young widows and widowers remarry within a few years of their spouse’s death. I largely discounted this statistic because nobody can ever replace The Husband, and I mostly wanted sex. Hence the fantasy.
Which like all fantasies did not live up to reality. By the end of orientation, I knew that my imaginary twenty-something male harem was never to be. Not because there weren’t worthy candidates - this is Miami; there were numerous candidates - but because I just couldn’t pull it off. I met them. I talked to them. And that just fucking ruined everything.
Because grad school is a meat market. That much hasn’t changed. I’m surrounded by reflections of The Husband and me and all of our friends ten years ago who ended up in lifelong relationships with one another. I’m not a Goonie anymore; when they say “It’s our time down here” in One-Eyed-Willie’s cave, I’m not part of that. I had my time. This time is belongs to them. I’m the parents on the beach, waiting for them, hoping they make it through without getting hurt.
So…yeah. Any thoughts I had about screwing my way through my section are long gone. They’re just so fucking earnest, it hurts. I feel a flush of joy when they get an answer right in class. I try to talk my sweet, guileless seat buddy in Civil Procedure out of specializing in Sports Management, because he has a lovely soul, and should keep it. I’m also a terrible law student because I literally do not give a fuck.
That not being possible, a nice, three-year vacation from real life sounded swell. That I could use it as an excuse to look after my mom after my dad died and help her get her shit in order without her knowing that it was a blatant excuse to look after her and help her get her shit in order was somewhat of a bonus. The Brothers and I were agreed on this.
Miami was kind of a bonus, too. I spent my last fall in DC - the same time of year The Husband got sick - hating the changing leaves, hating driving home in the dark, hating the fucking cold so fucking much why the fuck do I live here when it’s so fucking cold? My mantra as I walked to my car every night was, “I hate it this shit. I hate it here.” Miami has been good to me in that sense. (Though holy Jesus all I have done since I got here is look and smell like Nick Nolte’s mugshot.)
At the heart of the matter was probably the desire to go back to the beginning again - in grad school, where I met The Husband - and somehow have the story turn out differently. This was not me giving life an ultimatum or anything - the Grandmothers taught me better than that, long before I ever needed the knowledge. Men die. Children die. You can cry about it if you want, but it won’t make any difference. You just have to get on with things. Shrug, go back to washing dishes.
But I was lucky; lovely social progress gave me options they didn’t have. If my current life was unbearable, I had the means to change it. Life in the old DC stomping grounds without The Husband had become unbearable, the economy was shit, and it was either go to law school or quit my job, sell all my shit and move to Fiji. Inbred pragmatism wouldn’t let me pursue the option that would result in a gap in my resume I’d forever have to explain once I realized I was just as miserable and lonely in Fiji as I would have been in fucking law school and crept back home with my tail between my legs.
And yes, law school is still a vacation from a real, actual job, even horrible first-year with all the pressure and the hype. I spend eighteen hours a week in class. You know what I do outside of that? Whatever the fuck I want. And I actually get shitloads done, because I don’t have to deal with endless teleconferences and bullshit day-long meetings, or being at my desk in my office just to be there for The Bigwigs even though I’m much more productive at home because people aren’t fucking interrupting me every five minutes. I have no employees in law school, and no boss. It is a fucking dream.
Somewhere in there was also a vaguely pornographic fantasy of sexually mentoring nubile twenty-somethings. I did not include this on my essay. One of the things they don’t warn you about coming into young widowhood is how insatiably fucking horny you will be. No matter how many times you slogged in late after a bad day and were like, “I cannot even conceive of the idea of sex right now,” even if you didn’t have children, even if your husband got pissy about it and you fought about it…you were still having a whole fuckload more sex than you are right now.
And the worst thing is that you’d gotten really good at it. Outside of those “Yes, whatever, if it’ll shut you up,” one-sided fucks, you don’t spend a decade in a sexually monogamous relationship with a person without becoming intimately knowledgeable of his or her foibles, dead zones, hot zones, etc. More than that, you learn how to read another person. You built up instincts. And if you were together for that long, you’ve gotten deeply into accommodating each other’s kinks, exploring new ones, just randomly throwing stuff at the wall to see if you like it, and being completely uninhibited with one another.
When your spouse dies and everything else falls to shit, at least in this way, you know yourself backwards and forwards. And you know you can know another person that way, too. It’s a huge hole that needs filling. And unlike a husband you’ve known and loved for ten years, it seems like a much easier hole to fill than love, or any such shit. Most young widows and widowers remarry within a few years of their spouse’s death. I largely discounted this statistic because nobody can ever replace The Husband, and I mostly wanted sex. Hence the fantasy.
Which like all fantasies did not live up to reality. By the end of orientation, I knew that my imaginary twenty-something male harem was never to be. Not because there weren’t worthy candidates - this is Miami; there were numerous candidates - but because I just couldn’t pull it off. I met them. I talked to them. And that just fucking ruined everything.
Because grad school is a meat market. That much hasn’t changed. I’m surrounded by reflections of The Husband and me and all of our friends ten years ago who ended up in lifelong relationships with one another. I’m not a Goonie anymore; when they say “It’s our time down here” in One-Eyed-Willie’s cave, I’m not part of that. I had my time. This time is belongs to them. I’m the parents on the beach, waiting for them, hoping they make it through without getting hurt.
So…yeah. Any thoughts I had about screwing my way through my section are long gone. They’re just so fucking earnest, it hurts. I feel a flush of joy when they get an answer right in class. I try to talk my sweet, guileless seat buddy in Civil Procedure out of specializing in Sports Management, because he has a lovely soul, and should keep it. I’m also a terrible law student because I literally do not give a fuck.