The end of 2006 was brutal. Baba died in November. Finals broke me down. I spent a few days crying on the verge of a meltdown. Christmas was a whirlwind. Break was nice. I got to read a lot and go to Chicago, spend a lot of time with family and friends.
The new year started off alright. School was undeniably less stressful but I still felt like I wasn't living up to my potential. I finalized my summer plans to go do volunteer work in Cambodia which I figured would make me feel better. I worked hard in school. I went on a week long retreat over Spring Break to get my head in the right place. I sat by the water in Florida looking at dolphins and talking to God, trying to figure out stuff.
The rest of winter semester, to be honest, is kind of a blur. It was the usual "work pretty much all day every day on studying, chill around 9-10, talk to Ashley, read books/magazines, and then see Ashley on Friday" type schedule.
Winter finals weren't nearly as bad. But as April ended and my impending two month trip to a third-world country grew closer by the day, I grew more and more apprehensive. I found out about two weeks before I left that my $2500 scholarship was really only a $250 scholarship due to some shoddy bookkeeping. Thus, there went all my money. I counted the days until I left Cambodia, not in a good way, with each one signifying unavoidability. It's not that I didn't want to go; in fact, I knew in my heart I had to go. It's that it quite honestly just scared the shit out of me.
My birthday and my five year anniversary with Ashley was weird (I say "was" and not "were" because they're the same day). Maybe I had a premonition of sorts, but I don't think so. I just think it was because I was tired and scared about leaving two days later.
Waking up the day of leaving sucked. Ashley had spent the night at my parent's the night before and when she walked out of my house I broke down for the first time, although I'd see her later in the day. Driving with my dad to the airport was sort of surreal. Saying goodbye to Ashley in the lobby of the McNamara Terminal (and, essentially, saying goodbye to our relationship although I didn't know it then) was hard. I remember standing in security and realizing I wouldn't see anyone I loved for two months, and that I was going to a place where life would be hard as shit and entirely different than anything I had experienced before. It's always great to give up your life and time and money and whatever for others and a cause you believe in, but that doesn't mean it feels nice. I don't think it's supposed to. That would be a vacation.
I walked on a plane to Tokyo and audibly said "What the fuck am I doing?" About 20 hours later I was laying awake in a closet-sized hotel room 40 floors above Hong Kong watching House and sobbing because I couldn't sleep and I was scared to death and I'm a pussy and I missed my girlfriend. Somewhat understandable right? The next night I landed in Phnom Penh and shat my pants on the car ride to my hostel. The place was as bad as I could have imagined it being. Google image search "Phnom Penh." It was sort of like a nightmare. I'll never forget that car ride into the city, with four 20-something year old Cambodians who couldn't speak English.
I adjusted somewhat quickly. That is until about a week or two later when a bomb just went off in my personal life. I sat in a 100 degree internet cafe with a taped-up "phone" to my ear, tracing the pattern of the tile on the walls to dumb down my brain so I didn't have to take in what I was hearing. Inevitably, inside, I knew that five years of an excellent friendship were ending. I knew it then. I fought it for three months. But it was already over.
I saw temples and shit, I helped spread democracy, I wrote reports on universal jurisdiction and legal standards that could be use in international criminal tribunals. I backpacked for a week throughout SE Asia by myself. It's weird not talking to anyone for a week. It helps you a lot. You journal. You compartmentalize your thoughts. You try to pray. I saw some great sights but the more important thing during that week was that I changed shit inside. I dealt with it. I grew the fuck up. I separated what I needed from what I didn't need.
A week later I was walking through the international arrivals cattle call at McNamara. Full circle. First thing I remember hearing was Ashley's laugh and the first thing I remember seeing was Ashley. In my mind, this was all fixed. As I did when I came from China in 2001, I went to Pizza Hut and gorged myself on the buffet. Disgusting.
Lindsey got married two days later and it was a great weekend, aside from my jet lag and the fact that I almost passed out at the ceremony. What a wonderful weekend for my family. I've never seen my parents more proud, and our family more close.
August was insane. I worked at small law firm in St. Clair Shores for a little while, went to MN and TX, and did 27 interviews within 4 days for law firms in Chicago and D.C. Of these 27 interviews, 9 called me back to their offices in those cities for second interviews; thus I was to spend all of fall not only a) in law school; b) editing the international law journal; c) chairing the international law society; but also flying every weekend. And on top of this I was somehow supposed to still have a personal life.
In early September it all ended. What had started in June was now completely done. I had no option. I sometimes look back and wonder if things could have been different, but I know there is no way. I don't point fingers or whatever, or I try not to. It was surreal. It was a bad dream that I just slowly got used to over the next few weeks. It is better to have love and lost, but it's better to have loved and not lost. The losing is awful. Losing makes you pull over into a McDonald's parking lot on Grand River and sob and shake for an hour. Losing makes you have nightmares and miss class. Losing makes you question who you are and what you're doing.
I headed out to Chicago two days after Ashley and I broke up for the first of however many interviews I was supposed to have for jobs I was pursuing, at least partly in my mind, to set up the future I was going to have with the girl I was planning on proposing two within the next year. It was just fucked.
But I'm strong. I fight through shit. It felt great to be wanted. It felt great to be flown out to Chicago and put up in a nice hotel and fed and not having to pay for anything. I kicked the living shit out of my interviews. I deserved those jobs. I've worked my ass off. God has been good.
So I got a job in Chicago with the firm I wanted, the biggest global law firm in the world. Awesome.
One door closes, another opens.
I spent a few weeks drinking a bit and flirting with anything that walked because I was just sort of devastated inside. I didn't really know who I was and I'm not proud of all this but it's the truth.
I changed a lot. Some for the better. Undoubtedly some for the worse.
The last two months have been equally weird. I feel like I have obtained closure with everything that happened with Ashley. Or at least I think I have.
But now there's new stuff. Stuff I don't know how to handle. The sheer terror of new stuff. The sheer terror of conversations that are unpredictable because the person on the other side of the table doesn't know everything about you; what you mean when you say this, what is important to you, what you believe. It's hard to start over.
It's hard to know if you're starting over. It's hard to know if you're just thinking too much. I'm a few days away from glory or failure or neither and I've just not had to take a risk in a long time and it's all weird to me.
I didn't remember what fear was.
It's just so fucked up.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm just moving too fast. If I just want too much from life. If I am just too ambitious. Ambition is wonderful, especially when you're doing it solely to better yourself and not to exorcise some eternal demon (I don't really have those). But maybe it's left a path of destruction in its wake. Maybe I think I'm doing the right thing and I'm really not.
I don't know.
It's been a weird year.