Breaking Away

[catelin]

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 friends took over my position, and I was happy to know that my cases were being looked after by someone I trusted to do a good job. Even after I left, I still had people calling me for advice on cases. I still worked on appeals when they needed me. I still talked to everyone and knew what was going on from day to day. I still was connected, even from over a thousand miles away.

I came back and went into private practice out of necessity. I had a house payment to make, children to provide for, and no other real choice for a way to make a living and still have something that looked like my former life. I have done well enough. Still, I have spent the last year or so with one foot in my old world. I suppose that was to be expected. Most of my best friends still work at the D.A.’s office and my own cases take me there at least a few times a week. I walk by my old office and see my things still there—my old Persian rug, my silly Saturday Night Fever light switch on the wall, all the various odds and ends that I left to mark my place in some way. I still go out to lunch with everyone just like when I worked there, I still banter with my old boss, I go to the conferences with all of my old friends. It’s like I never left. Except I am not there.

So I’ve lived and worked every day with this awful yearning to be part of my past. I’ve watched people move up and around, knowing that if I’d stayed I would have likely been at the top of the small county ladder. I have felt stupid for leaving and too proud to ever admit to anyone how much I missed it, how much I missed the work and the rhythm of it all. There are only a couple of people who know how much I’ve wished things could go back to the way they were. There hasn’t been a day when I didn’t think about it. I really was making myself sick about it—resenting each new hire, trying their cases in my head like a sad little armchair quarterback.

But the truth is, you can’t go back…not to any place that you’ve already been. Even if I got a call tomorrow offering me my old job, it wouldn’t be my old job. It would be something entirely different from what it was, something entirely different from what I remember. The reality of it would probably be a bitter disappointment compared to the version of the job that I’ve held in my head all these months.

I realize now that it’s time to let go of my past and move ahead. What I’ve been doing to myself isn’t healthy or fair…it’s been very much like sleeping with an ex-lover just often enough to keep old wounds from healing. It’s time to put my whole heart into what I’m doing now. It’s hard to let go of something that I loved so much, but it’s time. I’m more than a little disappointed with myself that it’s taken me so long to move on from all this. I have been so blind to the benefits of what I have now that I’m ashamed to have not appreciated it more. I don’t have to stop loving what I did, but I have to put it where it belongs—in the past—so I can get on with the present. I’m lucky to have so many beloved old lives to look back on. I’m blessed to have the opportunity for new lives ahead of me that I can’t even yet imagine. I don't have to let go of the people, but I have to let go of that place in my memory where we were all together in a certain way. I have to let all of us find our new ways to be with one another. Spring will be here soon as a physical reminder that things begin again and again. And so will I, begin again, with who I was in better perspective with who it is I am becoming.

Comments

[wretchmuffin.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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

[catelin.livejournal.com]

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

[quuf.livejournal.com]

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.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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

[catelin.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

i am starting to find a way. thank you.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

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.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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!

[catelin.livejournal.com]

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! ; )

[sagewillowcre8.livejournal.com]

I've stumbled across your lj from dlishgrind (I don't know if that's spelled right) and wanted to say "hi".. I saw your "Alamo City Rollergirls".. are you in San Antonio? I am! I didn't know we had a rollergirl team, I thought it was just up in Austin? Oh well..learn something new every day.

Oh, and your post about the "past".. it's so true..we miss what we used to have and if we ever get it back, it's not the same. :o(

Hope you don't mind if I add ya? ;o)

[catelin.livejournal.com]

Yep, we're in San Antonio and starting our season in March! You'll have to come out and see us! : )

[jaarronn.livejournal.com]

exactly so....*HUGS*

[poetdan.livejournal.com]

One door closes....another opens.

Spring will be here soon ...how I envy you. Winter is still just cranking up here. With any luck we'll get Sping by May. (March is our cruelest month.)

[catelin.livejournal.com]

So very true. We've actually hardly even had a winter here...it's been in the 70s for most of December. March brings bluebonnets to the hills here, like a big birthday present for me every year.

[radhika74.livejournal.com]

Lovely post.

thanks

[keatrix.livejournal.com]

Your post has come at a perfect time for me, and it is exactly what I am also going through.

I dropped out of University and went out west to work for a resort. In October the resort season ended and I'm back in the province of my University and I still visit friends there... I see my armchair in the lounge, my painted swirls on the walls and my friends still going through school. I've been struggling through the same things you've described.

But, I've also decided it's time to move on. It's been my proximity that has kept me from starting afresh. In a couple of weeks I'm moving to Ottawa where I hope to make a new life, get a new job, friends, and go to school in the fall. Thank you for your post, it's been perfect to wrap this all up.

Re: thanks

[catelin.livejournal.com]

You are quite welcome. : )

[raindog.livejournal.com]

I second wretchmuffin's sentiment, CC. This post left me with a lovely widening of the distance b/t molecules of my outline. I, of course, move farther each year from exile, maybe because I move closer to the wisdom you oh so eloquently express in this piece.

I send love and a little courage. Of the sort you don't so much need, but more as a reminder not to pass out or retch on the nurse...

[catelin.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yes!!

[harriet-m-welsh.livejournal.com]

My darling best friend woodspryte would be able to relate well to what you write here. She worked right beside me at the bank for the past three months but just this week started a new position at a bank down the street. She's so sad, I don't know what to do. I miss her so.

You would like her. She lives in a log house in a valley beside the river, surrounded by grape and raspberry vines.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

Oh, to be surrounded by vines! I'm planting more grapes here this year. Unfortunately, it's a bit to hot for the rasberries.

[klarenka.livejournal.com]

i have friended you
i hope you don't mind
i found your journal
and love your writing
thank you.