Breaking Away

[tinywarrior]

I’ve been making my peace lately with something so profoundly difficult and painful that it’s taken over a year to even be able to talk about it. I finally have had to let go of the idea that I will be going back to my old job. When I left Texas, I left behind a career as a senior felony prosecutor at an office that I loved. One of my best

Comments

[wretchmuffin]

Sometimes when I read what you post, I sit here in my office a couple thousand miles northeast of you with my mouth hanging open like I've just watched someone perform impossible magic. Which, of course, is exactly what's happened.

[wretchmuffin]

Or maybe northwest--my grasp of geography, yours and in general, is weak.

[tinywarrior]

Regardless of the direction the compliment comes from, its value to me is immeasurable. Thank you for this. : )

[quuf]

If you hadn't left, we would have been deprived of treasures like this, which I still revisit now and again. I don't even mind if that makes me sound selfish.

[tinywarrior]

I always remind myself of what you wrote to me once about never being able to go back to the pasts we remember--"same location, different place." That has helped me more than I can tell you.

[hakkenkrak]

thank you for sharing. i have been this way, only with a person, for far too long.

[tinywarrior]

It's even more difficult when its a person, I think. I hope you find your way to the place you need to be as well. : )

[hakkenkrak]

i am starting to find a way. thank you.

[baldanders]

I'm really awful at letting go of good jobs that I wish I still had. I don't know whether it's lucky or not that the two jobs I loved -- really loved -- were taken from me because of inept financial decisions by upper management (not just me, but my whole departments), so while I don't beat myself up over them, I have a hard time not continuing to resent it, and thinking back on them is an ache.

[tinywarrior]

Yes. I realize that a lot of my desire to return to what I had before is probably very wrapped up in my own guilt at making what turned out to be not the best decision in a lot of ways. I've had to let myself off the hook for that and make peace with consequences that are of my own making. I don't regret anything--not really. What I learned over the experience certainly outweighs even the deepest nostalgia I have for the way things were.

[hakkenkrak]

a lot of my desire to return to what I had before is probably very wrapped up in my own guilt at making what turned out to be not the best decision

exactly. how very well put.

[lacyunderall]

when i come visit and get your office set up, you're going to be so organized you're going to throw up. seriously. but in a waste basket. this ain't no pigsty!

[tinywarrior]

I can't even tell you how much of a help that would be, D. And I promise to vomit in only the tidiest of ways! ; )