Man, I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping any of these the entries. The first is a depressing pity party, the second is legal droning, and the third is unreadable gibberish! I apologize in advance. I'll get my act together soon, I promis.
My diet is not prepared for college. I don't eat carbs after five o'clock, but when I don't sleep, when do I get my first bowl of cereal? If I were getting up early to go somewhere, I would eat it now, I suppose.
I've lost ten pounds on my diet though, so I'm pleased with it overall. And that's even through a day at the fair where I went a little crazy. I was raised on the Iowa State Fair, or course, and I was always told it was the basically the best state fair in the whole wide world. Then it turns out that the Minnesota State Fair is even bigger by attendance! I consumed the following list of items (in order):
Mango milkshake from land o'lakes
Turkey leg from a barbecue tent
Deep fried cheeseburger
Deep fried macaroni and cheese
Stromboli filled with ham, onion, green pepper, and cheese
Deep fried cheese curds
Deep fried snickers
Deep fried Reese's
The winners were the Stromboli for quantity for price, cheese curds for best idea and deliciousness, and deep fried Reese's for novelty that was actually good.
There was an official drinking night on Thursday for my first year law class. They are cleverly called "bar review." Then last night was an official party for my class called 1L dis-orientation. I doubt I'd have fun if I went, but it sucks to see people walk into class laughing together about segmenting, knowing I'm not going to be quick to form bonds like they are.
The vuelta is going on this week in Spain. It's actually really interesting, especially if you're like me and like rooting for ancient Americans! In case you don't know, Chris Horner became the oldest guy to win a stage of grand tour and the oldest guy to lead the overall of a grand tour. Then he broke his own record a few days later with an astonishing performance, climbing away from the climbing specialists and putting a minute into his rivals. Unfortunately, he can't time trial, but he's still in it in fourth place. There are so many subplots in this race though! Tony Martin had what might be the single most impressive solo ride I've heard of during an early stage. In case you don't know, he is pretty unanimously considered the world's best time trials specialist, bit because there is only one time trial in the vuelta this year, he worked on his form by attacking by himself and going solo for the entire stage. The race coverage counted him out with about ten kilometers to go, but he was within a few seconds of taking the stage. They speculated that if Fabian Cancellara hadn't given chase, he might have don it. Cancellara is probably the second-best time trialist, though Bradley Wiggins might have a bit to say in the matter. Then came the time trial, and true to form Tony Martin led by over two minutes when he crossed the line. Cacellara was down over 30 seconds stthe first time check, but a wrinkle was thrown into the proceedings with a hill. Cacellara made up over a minute on Martin on the climb and stole the stage win! Other notable occurrences: Gilbert (reigning world champ) won his first race of the year, barely squeezing it in before the world championships around the corner. Nicholas Roche is having a breakout race, establishing himself as an overall contender. And some F1 race car dude bought a Spanish team.
Girls are weird. I'm sure almost everyone is willing to accept that at face value and move on, but let me elaborate just for fun. My close friend Sarah came back from the air force to visit last week and accompanied me to the fair. (those who know me are probably nodding their heads, saying they knew I wouldn't have gone to the fair entirely of my own volition) Sarah has been my friend since high school, and we have the ability to tell each other anything. After agreeing to that a long time ago in principle, it's gotten to the point where it's actually true in fact. It all started I suppose because of our fascination for each other and our mutual desire to have an outlet when things got rough. It wasn't immediate, but we both kept testing the limits of what stories the other person would find shocking, and we eventually ran out of stories before we ran out of tolerance. And now, because we feel like nothing we say to each other really has the power to shock the other person anymore, it comes a lot easier. Rebecca was always jealous of this connection. When Sarah's dad passed away last year, I made it my job to do anything I could to help her get through it, and seeing me care for someone like that wasn't easy on Rebecca, especially because we weren't sure where we stood after our relationship had taken its most recent hit (another stint with that teammate from before) and left us in limbo for quite a while. That is what it is. I'm not going to dwell on it here, but it was obviously hard for Rebecca to see me showing compassion for someone else at that point in time. That's not that weird. When I told Sarah recently how I was pretty sure my relationship with Rebecca wasn't going well, she mentioned how jealous SHE was of Rebecca and my relationship! She recalled specifically one time we went in to the restaurant she was working at and had a meal, and she thought the way we looked at each other was so profound (or something like that), and heartfelt that she almost couldn't take it (she had recently gotten out of a relationship at the time). So both of the girls were unhappy and jealous of what they thought the other had, and I was sitting there in the middle, almost clueless! Granted, I picked up on subtle things, and wasn't entirely surprised when they told me later, but in thinking back, it just makes so little sense. I was just trying to do what I could for each of them, and in doing so, I drove myself apart (at least somewhat) from them both.
Well, it's getting light out. I guess I'll try and take a nap to make my headache go away, and them get on with me day. I have a meeting with an advisor person today at their house (I have no idea why), and I'm still trying to figure out what impression I want to make.
Hopefully the disjointedness wasn't too awful. It's hard to tie things together when operating on half a brain. Thanks for reading!
September 7, 2013
Mundanity from Mondale Hall
I read my profile on here and I was happy I got to change a couple things! The first is that I'm no longer assured of never getting a job. On a career path and everything. My mommy would be so proud (I hope none of my readers mind baby talk). The second is that my location changed. I'm sure you probably know this, but I'm going to law school at the University of Minnesota! I've always considered this a real possibility, but I'm actually here, in an apartment and everything. I'm back to the minimalist student lifestyle I actually enjoy. I guess that's compared to the mostly minimalist part-time lab worker, which may not be much of a distinction, but it's sure different to me. A welcome change, especially after my first week of classes reassuring me I'm in a place I want to be. The only other real thing that changed is I added a "law (I guess?)" to my interests. It probably still falls behind those other things, but it's gaining steam. (Watch out, cooking, it's coming for you...)
So here's a bit about my life:
One of the things I missed about being a student is the sleep schedule. I sleep whenever I'm tired. I woke up this morning at 5:30 having slept a long time the previous afternoon and did my reading for my civil procedure class as the light started coming in my window. My reading for my classes consists almost entirely of interesting cases. In my contracts class we are examining what it takes for a contract to be binding. When examining a case I have already been trained to "brief" it, a process where you boil it down to its core relevant facts. The format I use looks like this:
Title: who is suing who, year case occured, what type of court
Rule: the question the case is trying to answer, the precedent that gets set
Facts: a summary of relevant facts
Verdict/relevant commentary: what the judges say about why they ruled the way they did
Each of these things is surprising in its relevance. For instance: the type of the court makes a huge difference. In one of the early cases we were looking at the court found that the disict court had made a mistake, but there wasn't anything they could do about it because they were only an appellate court, which doesn't have the authority to make rules or law, just to say whether a court should take another look at the case. So they basically said: yup, that was wrong, and the decision stood anyway. The rest is pretty self-explanatory, but the smallest facts wind up having bearing on a case. The only thing that distinguished two cases I read for today was whether or not the defendant had mailed anything BACK to the plaintiff. In the case where they did, the state court was ruled to have jurisdiction because it had a reasonable expectation of being pursued in court. Basically, because they acknowledged the contract went both ways, they gave the court of the state they were mailing into the authority to hear the case. Because the corporation availed themselves of the protection of the state by directing their attention there, they give informal consent to the state's jurisdiction. The second case, where the defendant didn't respond to a client but only mailed them their monthly trust fund, they did nothing to direct their attention there in such a manner, so the court found the state (Florida) had no jurisdiction.
My first decision predicament came up today in a case where four judges thought the verdict should be against the plaintiff for one reason, two judges agreed with the verdict but for a different reason, and three judges thought it should have been a different verdict entirely!
The facts were such:
A foreign company sold a piece of heavy machinery though an American distributor, which was bought by a man in New Jersey. The man sued when he was injured operating said machinery. Naturally, be attempted to sue the company, but the company tried to get the case thrown out on jurisdictional grounds. (we are dealing with jurisdiction in my civil procedure class) The company denied it had the minimum ties required to be held accountable by the court of New Jersey because it had no offices or representatives there. The first four justices agreed with the corporation, saying they had not introduced their product into New Jersey specifically, and so failed the test of availing themselves of the protections provided by that state. The fifth and sixthjustices said that there was no reason to go so far as to provide that reason for denying compensation, but instead just stuck with strict precedent, saying no court had ever found jurisdiction in a case involving a single sale. The sixth, seventh and eight all thought the guy should have been able to continue with the law suit because the foreign company, in marketing to the entire country via a distributor, took upon itself the burden of facing trial in any state. It shouldn't get out of lawsuits just because it took the step of selling through a distributor instead of establishing an office in the united states. If this last option sounds the most reasonable, congratulations! You're on the side of the liberal judges on the court.
The interesting bit of this opinion is actually how we interpret the case as far as precedent goes. First instinct for me was to just say the plurality ruled and go with the decision reached by the four judges. This, however, is not how we do it. When there is no outright majority, the court uses the narrowest construction that agrees with the verdict. So because the two judges assert the least interesting thing, there's is the opinion we use when evaluating whether a future case will have a chance of success! Weird...
In what used to be the case for jurisdictional precedent (a case called Pennoyer V Neff) a man was only able to be tried by a court if he was served with a summons in the state or if he had property in that state. This led to a case where a man was followed onto a plane knowing the plane would be passing over the state in question at a given time, at which point he was served with papers.
Anyway, in case my yammering on hasn't given it away, I'm finding my classes engaging and pretty interesting. The professors are all pretty good. It turns out that because they all have probably been lawyers, they both know what they're talking about and want to be there. In case why they want to be there isn't immediately clear, it's because they've already made money! They're done with that bit, so they're not in it to get tenure and live out their lives on a measly salary. They are still practicing if they want money. A number of them still consult on cases, so they're current and invested in the field.
I had seven cases on the jurisdiction of courts that I read for today, and I only thought two were tedious. That is a much better ratio than most other topics I can think of studying. I haven't made up my mind about constitutional law. I really like studying the constitution because I think it's an incredible document to have been written to stand the test of time. The class is off to a pretty slow start though. The professor has a method of teaching where he calls on people for the answers to questions based solely on a roster, which is fine I suppose, except that he sticks with the person he called until they say the thing he was going for when he framed the question whether they know it or not. This process of him leading them by the nose can take a long time depending on how obtuse the person is being, to the extent that he sometimes tells them the specific passage he is thinking of and waits for them to read it through before moving on. Ugh. I've never had patience for this sort of thing, and watching a girl whiff on the judiciary branch as the one with the power to interpret the constitution for five minutes was almost more than I could handle.
The last class I have is called torts. The professor has a good teaching style, and the class seems decent enough, but I haven't quite gotten as into it as my other classes yet. I'm actuall in the middle of answering a question in that class though, since we had to stop due to time while I was talking about the barometric set by a court when it comes to the care a person needs to act with in order to avoid being sued for irresponsible action. In my case a man is beating two dogs (which are fighting, so it's not just plain cruelty; it's maybe almost justified cruelty) in an attempt to separate them. In doing so, the dogs move toward him and he takes a step back and in doing so hits a man behind him in the eye with his stick. The man sues him, and the first court says he should have acted with particular care given the situation. The supreme court disagrees, saying that the standard of care is one "any man would deam reasonable in the situation as long as the action was a necessary one." Under this revised definition the case is sent back for a retrial so the jury can use this new definition in evaluating the case.
That's all the case law you can stand, I'm sure. Unfortunately, I can already go on and on and on about this stuff. And it's only been a week!
Other than classes I have had two required lectures about citation already. Apparently it's a big deal around here, to the extent that if you italicize a comma after a citation they might not let you into law review. If you abbreviate the citation though, you have to italicize the period. Just so you know. Real important.
Another reason I was excited with my change of venue is the new group of people I have to play handball with. I showed up last week Tuesday and spent the day getting used to the courts and making friends. I made sure I didn't win a single game, and just got to know people and who was notable in the group. Most of the games were close (21-19, 21-17 etc), and I didn't feel like anyone was really better than me. The courts are nice. They have eight courts with glass back walls and two of those have glass side walls. They are fantastic in that they have tinting on the inside to make it slightly more opaque, enabling me to see the ball without looking straight through to the things on the other side of the glass. This tinting can't be seen from the outside. Shots felt a bit more dead off the glass than I was expecting, which led to me letting some shots drop behind me I thought I could get and then me looking like an idiot. But whatever, right? The worse I am, the easier I am to talk to, I hope.
Sure enough, I get invited to go out drinking after handball. I decline, and also decline their invitation to the fair Thursday afternoon. In what seems to be a theme for my experience in Minnesota, I pass on easy social experiences because of my personal restrictions. So no handball on Thursday because they are at the fair. Tuesday rolls around and I show up right after my class gets out, meaning I'm an hour early. I warm up and work on my shots for forty-five minutes, and I'm feeling pretty good about things. Sure enough, I beat the best player to show up (a couple didn't come for whatever reason) 21-12, 21-3, 21-6, 21-4. We stuck around after everyone else left because he wanted to play a third match, and then he was unsatisfied with the result and demanded a quick fourth. Neither went his direction. Thursday was a different animal. Four good players showed up in addition to the people from Tuesday. I played three of them, winning two easily and losing to the third 21-20. I have an excuse at the ready though, never you fear. I forgot my eye protection! So I borrowed someone's backup pair of glasses ( I never play in glasses!), which, as they were the backup pair, were scuffed and not quite transparent. And because they were glasses and not strapped on, they had an annoying tendency to slip off my nose and hang on like an annoying mustache during some of my more ambitious shots. This was not helpful.
I played a new style of three-player game, which was kind of cool. It's one on two, game to seven. The single player serves first, and if they win, it becomes a game to fourteen instead. If they win that it goes to twenty-one. If they lose, the next player plays one on two. I liked it. It's a hard challenge as the single player and as the doubles team you are fighting for your chance to play singles, so there's a decent incentive to win quickly.
Here's a picture of some of my notes for today:
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September 6, 2013
Back and badder (worse) than before (skip if you don't like pity-parties)
I told some people this would start up again after I went to law school. Well, it just so happens that is is the first real chunk of free time I've had since that happened. And lo and behold! The improbable occurs. I'd bring you all up to date, but I'm not sure where that would even start, so let's assume that because you're reading this, you probably know me. (This isn't edited and it's typed on a laggy, autocorrect-happy iPad with bad Internet, so either comment or just tell me sometime if it's awful. Grammar-wise, that is. I already know the subject matter is nigh-unreadable...)
That only leaves current events. Surprisingly enough, I've got a bunch of those too! Unfortunately, one of them includes my official newly single status. It sucks having to say I told you so when I know it means I'm going to be in pain, but I have to say I called this shot a month or two ago. I even went so far as to tell her mom not to get her hopes up. (Wow, that sounds really weird and depressing when I think about it. Trust me, there's context: she was saying how she was glad we were working through things and I was in the middle of feeling rejected, so, knowing that Rebecca moving away would be exactly the impetus required for her to end things, I said I wasn't so sure and that I couldn't make Rebecca do anything she didn't want.) Her mom just said she was sure we'd make it.
I'm still in a bit of turmoil over the whole thing, not only because I don't handle rejection well, but because I still don't quite understand all of the issues cited by the other party (I think I used to talk that way before I came to law school? Maybe not? It will all blur together soon enough I'm sure.) I suppose the second thing might easily be subsumed into the latter, so calling it a different problem could be a bit overreaching. Anyway, when one of the two people in a relationship doesn't feel "the spark" anymore, there's really nothing you can do. I feel justified in saying I tried, though there are certainly two sides to every story. From what I gather, from her side I am frequently underhandedly insulting, incredibly obstinate (no contention there), and simply uncomfortable to be around. I'm not sure how much of this is a product of me as a person or simply the way the relationship turned out, but there seems little point distinguishing between the two. Whether it is our history together that makes it uncomfortable to spend time with me or a fact about me as a person makes no difference in this case.
The biggest thing I took away from our most recent discussion is a fundamental difference in how we go about our lives. I (as I'm sure at least a few reading can attest) tend to make a decision after thinking about as many of the facts I can under whatever time I have to consider them and then stick to that decision as hard as possible. If new facts present themselves, I might briefly consider whether they weigh in enough to change course, but having taken a particular path carries its own weight (probably because I hate admitting I did something wrong, more than anything), and I rarely change. One advantage to this is that I almost never regret a decision. Having chosen to do something, when I look back I know I did it for reasons that at the time I felt justified it. The action may, in hindsight, not have been the optimal one, but I almost never feel that there's a good way for me to have known that at the time. The only things that I immediately regret when thinking back are things I was unable to consider rationally when I decided them. One of those things is quitting tennis in high school. The other is yelling at Rebecca that she didn't know what the $&?! she was doing (half the time). I think I said half the time. I don't know for sure.
To be perfectly honest, I feel more comfortable with the second example. Not because she just broke up with me (I hope), but because I had even less time to think before I said it. We were in the middle of an argument, as I hope would be obvious. If I were to go around yelling things like that out of the blue, I could hardly feel justified in my current unhappiness. I was incredibly frustrated because from my perspective I was correcting her out of concern for her safety, and from hers I was overbearing as usual. Obviously, my line of reasoning should have been a bit more refined than the shouting of expletives, but in hindsight, I said what I felt and had reasons in mind for saying it. I later explained these reasons (because that was obviously going to help the situation). That actually didn't help the situation. Odd, I know. She was forgetful about wearing her helmet, she flatted her bike often, had recently ridden recklessly through traffic, and on this particular occasion she was riding rapidly at night right at the back of a person I wasn't sure she had seen as we entered a pedestrian tunnel (which said to dismount if on bicycles). I told her to slow down. She did not enjoy that, as it comformed perfectly to her idea of me as an overbearing individual. From my perspective, I had let the past three things I noticed slide, and just really didn't want something bad to happen here. She said she had seen the guy walking and I didn't need to treat her like she didn't know what she was doing. After a bit of back and forth, kabaam, I blew it.
This isn't actually that big a deal in the whole grand scheme of things, but it is the most-cited example of hers for how she was unhappy, so it is quite prominent in my brain. And I deal with things in my brain by writing them down and hoping that makes them less of a problem. It rarely does.
Tennis, though! I have profound regrets to this day. I almost never think about what might have been. I love that about my system. But I had committed to tennis. I was getting good, it had only been a few years, and then I came to the "realization" I probably wasn't going to go to school on a tennis scholarship. This deflated my enthusiasm. Then my coach told me something I didn't want to hear, and rather than doing ANY OTHER THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD, I chose to say I quit. And because I had been thinking about quitting before the altercation, I let myself think I had made an informed decision (albeit impulsively), when in reality I just wanted to let everyone know I had other options and that they were lucky to have me playing their game. I ran varsity track instead of playing tennis. I was fine. I ran a 4:42 mile, cracked 4:40 once I think, and still felt like that justified quitting the sport I enjoyed far more. I sure showed them!
This is not unlike my decision to quit frisbee my senior year of college. Again, I wanted to show them a lesson. I wanted them to come and ask me to play, to offer to change something so I'd come back. Instead, they went on with their lives. I would have felt almost as bad about this as tennis except for the fact that Rebecca cheated on me over winter break with one of my teammates, and after that I wouldn't have been able to show up without doing something very irresponsible and likely would have quit anyway. So that mitigated some of the guilt for opportunity lost.
Perhaps this is why I can't handle rejection. It wasn't my decision. I don't carefully consider the factors and decide this relationship was over. I saw that it was over, acknowledged tht Rebecca wasn't going to be happy with what I had to offer but that doesn't make it hurt less, because it wasn't up to me. I just agreed to abandon the sinking ship, as any logical person would. Or in a more fitting analogy, I scrambled up the perpendicular deck of the sinking ship, perched myself on the bow, and kept waving and shooting flares until my toes, then ankles, then knees got wet, and finally found a life raft. Of course, I haven't quite gotten to the "finding a life raft" bit, but hey, I can tread water for a while.
All of this and I still haven't explained how my decision making is different than Rebecca's (again with the caveat that I operate with imperfect knowledge). She is much less confident about her decisions. And did you know the best way of remedying that ISN'T to tell someone to just do what you do and stop feeling anxious? Well now you (and I) do. Most recently this manifested itself when she said she felt like I was preventing her from being the person she wanted to be. I, of course, told her to be whoever she wanted and I would embrace it. She responded with the fact that she didn't want to do things she thought I would disapprove of because it meant I would think less of her. She knows I don't drink, for example, and being the frisbee player that she is, she attends a lot of parties where that is the norm. She has recently decided she likes alcohol. I have not reached the same conclusion because no new facts have been brought to my attention since I made my informed and logical decision years ago. Does this mean we could no longer be happy? I, of course, can say no, since I no longer have to abide by that assertion. I know plenty of people who drink copious amounts of alcohol, and I don't let that diminish my opinion of them. Of course I factor it into my opinion of them, but only to the extent that I know it's something they do that I don't relate to. What I did have a problem with was when Rebecca would lie to me about whether or not she had been drinking while away at tournaments or at other parties. Obviously she was trying to spare my feelings, but that only works when you can be sure I won't find about it.
The other thing she mentioned that she liked and I didn't was being part of a large group of people. I balked a bit at that, I admit. Strangers hold very little appeal for me. I was about to write that she could have just invited me along and I would have gone as long as she promised not to forget about me (true). But you know what? Perhaps she's right. Maybe I don't want to attend parties where I don't know people and everyone is drunk. If that's really the kind of person she wants to be, or is seriously considering that concept and not just looking for things that she thinks she wants to do just because she knows I don't want to do them and she feels I've been holding her back, I probably wouldn't be as happy as I would otherwise. I think in the back of my mind I wasn't quite giving her enough credit. I just assumed she wasn't going to be that person, that it was just an experiment she wanted to try before being the person I know her to be. But I obviously can't say that, especially after today. I have to accept I don't know her after all, and that it will just plain hurt for a while.
It's not often you get to see a person pass through the stages of their emotions on the written page, but I think it just happened in that last paragraph there. Now I'm just bitter. I'm bitter because I still don't know what I did wrong. I'm bitter because I'm smart, clever, ambitious, athletic, determined, responsible, logical, and hopefully one or two other things I can't think of at the moment, and I don't know what she's looking for if it isn't me. I'm the one who got her started biking, then playing frisbee. I had her read my books. I put myself into the relationship, like I do with everything I decide to try at, and I failed. And I hate failing.
So there's the bitterness. I'm bitter because I did try. It may not have looked like it. In fact recently she said she didn't like the fact that I wasn't nice to her dad when he didn't understand frisbee. The funny thing is, I was about to cite that as an example of when I was nice! See, he had no idea what he was saying, but he yammered on anyway. He said things like, "they can't let that guy throw, he keeps turning it over!" when the turnovers were caused by other factors (handlers not making good cuts, receivers dropping the disc, unexpected miscommunications, etc. Or "come on, don't let him throw that!" to throws on the force side when it was a breakdown downfield. The examples were endless, trust me. And I didn't chime in (as I am so wont to do) with a snide actually... You're an idiot, and here's why. I just grimaced to myself (I even made sure he couldn't see it! (though apparently Rebecca could)) and watched the game. The point is, my efforts at nicety were probably not obvious.
Wait.
Hold it.
That's it!
I think that's what she's looking for. After two years with me, I can't even blame her. She's looking for a nice guy. Not a guy who will do things for her because he wants to make an effort and likes to see her smile (how I flatteringly characterize myself for this self-pitying diatribe), but a guy to whom that stuff comes naturally. I honestly can say I can't give her that. Being nice isn't easy for me. I'm probably just too arrogant or something. What else, then, can I honestly not do? I can't overlook mistakes. I've never been able to do that. I can forgive them, but by golly do I point them out. I do this for two obvious reasons. The first is that I don't like inefficiency. If there's a way to do something better, I want you to know about it. The second is that I want to let you know what to change if you don't want to unwittingly repeat whatever mistake it may have been. A corollary to both of those things is that I know if I don't say something, it will only lead to more frustration in the future, because although I can bottle things up pretty well, I am pretty darn good at dwelling on them. Source: the part where I exploded about her bike stuff. Another source! This whole post! (Citing sources is very important in the legal profession. More on this later.)
So, and I've jabbed at her regarding this very thing, she just needs a nice guy who either overlooks her mistakes or doesn't realize she's making them. I'll do myself the nicety of imagining her with an unintelligent hillbilly for the time being. (This will naturally make it hurt all the worse when I see her playing frisbee with the best, most beautiful boyfriend the world has ever known, but I can only hope it helps enough in the short term to compensate.)
My sister just called and derailed my train of thought. Luckily, we didn't talk much about the current state of depressing affairs. We almost went down that road, and I actually felt myself choking up a bit, but she did me the good service of asking about school, which I was able to answer with only a minor hitch. (Sarah, thanks for calling. I know you mean well. Sorry I wasn't up for a heart to heart. I don't know if you could tell how close I was to crying, but that wasn't what I wanted to do, especially not on the phone with my little sister (big sister if you insist), so thank you.) It seems I can't quite muster up the bitterness required to maintain the velocity of this tangent. So without further adieu, or segue for that matter, here's everything about law school:
Just kidding! I didn't really realize how long this already was. So that stuff is in a new post. So you didn't even have to read this if you wanted to avoid depressing things and only here about my new life at school. Haha. Fooled you, sucker.
But really, thanks for reading. It means a lot. Hopefully I'll gradually move back into some creative writing in addition to autobiographical angst, but this is what I needed at the moment.
That only leaves current events. Surprisingly enough, I've got a bunch of those too! Unfortunately, one of them includes my official newly single status. It sucks having to say I told you so when I know it means I'm going to be in pain, but I have to say I called this shot a month or two ago. I even went so far as to tell her mom not to get her hopes up. (Wow, that sounds really weird and depressing when I think about it. Trust me, there's context: she was saying how she was glad we were working through things and I was in the middle of feeling rejected, so, knowing that Rebecca moving away would be exactly the impetus required for her to end things, I said I wasn't so sure and that I couldn't make Rebecca do anything she didn't want.) Her mom just said she was sure we'd make it.
I'm still in a bit of turmoil over the whole thing, not only because I don't handle rejection well, but because I still don't quite understand all of the issues cited by the other party (I think I used to talk that way before I came to law school? Maybe not? It will all blur together soon enough I'm sure.) I suppose the second thing might easily be subsumed into the latter, so calling it a different problem could be a bit overreaching. Anyway, when one of the two people in a relationship doesn't feel "the spark" anymore, there's really nothing you can do. I feel justified in saying I tried, though there are certainly two sides to every story. From what I gather, from her side I am frequently underhandedly insulting, incredibly obstinate (no contention there), and simply uncomfortable to be around. I'm not sure how much of this is a product of me as a person or simply the way the relationship turned out, but there seems little point distinguishing between the two. Whether it is our history together that makes it uncomfortable to spend time with me or a fact about me as a person makes no difference in this case.
The biggest thing I took away from our most recent discussion is a fundamental difference in how we go about our lives. I (as I'm sure at least a few reading can attest) tend to make a decision after thinking about as many of the facts I can under whatever time I have to consider them and then stick to that decision as hard as possible. If new facts present themselves, I might briefly consider whether they weigh in enough to change course, but having taken a particular path carries its own weight (probably because I hate admitting I did something wrong, more than anything), and I rarely change. One advantage to this is that I almost never regret a decision. Having chosen to do something, when I look back I know I did it for reasons that at the time I felt justified it. The action may, in hindsight, not have been the optimal one, but I almost never feel that there's a good way for me to have known that at the time. The only things that I immediately regret when thinking back are things I was unable to consider rationally when I decided them. One of those things is quitting tennis in high school. The other is yelling at Rebecca that she didn't know what the $&?! she was doing (half the time). I think I said half the time. I don't know for sure.
To be perfectly honest, I feel more comfortable with the second example. Not because she just broke up with me (I hope), but because I had even less time to think before I said it. We were in the middle of an argument, as I hope would be obvious. If I were to go around yelling things like that out of the blue, I could hardly feel justified in my current unhappiness. I was incredibly frustrated because from my perspective I was correcting her out of concern for her safety, and from hers I was overbearing as usual. Obviously, my line of reasoning should have been a bit more refined than the shouting of expletives, but in hindsight, I said what I felt and had reasons in mind for saying it. I later explained these reasons (because that was obviously going to help the situation). That actually didn't help the situation. Odd, I know. She was forgetful about wearing her helmet, she flatted her bike often, had recently ridden recklessly through traffic, and on this particular occasion she was riding rapidly at night right at the back of a person I wasn't sure she had seen as we entered a pedestrian tunnel (which said to dismount if on bicycles). I told her to slow down. She did not enjoy that, as it comformed perfectly to her idea of me as an overbearing individual. From my perspective, I had let the past three things I noticed slide, and just really didn't want something bad to happen here. She said she had seen the guy walking and I didn't need to treat her like she didn't know what she was doing. After a bit of back and forth, kabaam, I blew it.
This isn't actually that big a deal in the whole grand scheme of things, but it is the most-cited example of hers for how she was unhappy, so it is quite prominent in my brain. And I deal with things in my brain by writing them down and hoping that makes them less of a problem. It rarely does.
Tennis, though! I have profound regrets to this day. I almost never think about what might have been. I love that about my system. But I had committed to tennis. I was getting good, it had only been a few years, and then I came to the "realization" I probably wasn't going to go to school on a tennis scholarship. This deflated my enthusiasm. Then my coach told me something I didn't want to hear, and rather than doing ANY OTHER THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD, I chose to say I quit. And because I had been thinking about quitting before the altercation, I let myself think I had made an informed decision (albeit impulsively), when in reality I just wanted to let everyone know I had other options and that they were lucky to have me playing their game. I ran varsity track instead of playing tennis. I was fine. I ran a 4:42 mile, cracked 4:40 once I think, and still felt like that justified quitting the sport I enjoyed far more. I sure showed them!
This is not unlike my decision to quit frisbee my senior year of college. Again, I wanted to show them a lesson. I wanted them to come and ask me to play, to offer to change something so I'd come back. Instead, they went on with their lives. I would have felt almost as bad about this as tennis except for the fact that Rebecca cheated on me over winter break with one of my teammates, and after that I wouldn't have been able to show up without doing something very irresponsible and likely would have quit anyway. So that mitigated some of the guilt for opportunity lost.
Perhaps this is why I can't handle rejection. It wasn't my decision. I don't carefully consider the factors and decide this relationship was over. I saw that it was over, acknowledged tht Rebecca wasn't going to be happy with what I had to offer but that doesn't make it hurt less, because it wasn't up to me. I just agreed to abandon the sinking ship, as any logical person would. Or in a more fitting analogy, I scrambled up the perpendicular deck of the sinking ship, perched myself on the bow, and kept waving and shooting flares until my toes, then ankles, then knees got wet, and finally found a life raft. Of course, I haven't quite gotten to the "finding a life raft" bit, but hey, I can tread water for a while.
All of this and I still haven't explained how my decision making is different than Rebecca's (again with the caveat that I operate with imperfect knowledge). She is much less confident about her decisions. And did you know the best way of remedying that ISN'T to tell someone to just do what you do and stop feeling anxious? Well now you (and I) do. Most recently this manifested itself when she said she felt like I was preventing her from being the person she wanted to be. I, of course, told her to be whoever she wanted and I would embrace it. She responded with the fact that she didn't want to do things she thought I would disapprove of because it meant I would think less of her. She knows I don't drink, for example, and being the frisbee player that she is, she attends a lot of parties where that is the norm. She has recently decided she likes alcohol. I have not reached the same conclusion because no new facts have been brought to my attention since I made my informed and logical decision years ago. Does this mean we could no longer be happy? I, of course, can say no, since I no longer have to abide by that assertion. I know plenty of people who drink copious amounts of alcohol, and I don't let that diminish my opinion of them. Of course I factor it into my opinion of them, but only to the extent that I know it's something they do that I don't relate to. What I did have a problem with was when Rebecca would lie to me about whether or not she had been drinking while away at tournaments or at other parties. Obviously she was trying to spare my feelings, but that only works when you can be sure I won't find about it.
The other thing she mentioned that she liked and I didn't was being part of a large group of people. I balked a bit at that, I admit. Strangers hold very little appeal for me. I was about to write that she could have just invited me along and I would have gone as long as she promised not to forget about me (true). But you know what? Perhaps she's right. Maybe I don't want to attend parties where I don't know people and everyone is drunk. If that's really the kind of person she wants to be, or is seriously considering that concept and not just looking for things that she thinks she wants to do just because she knows I don't want to do them and she feels I've been holding her back, I probably wouldn't be as happy as I would otherwise. I think in the back of my mind I wasn't quite giving her enough credit. I just assumed she wasn't going to be that person, that it was just an experiment she wanted to try before being the person I know her to be. But I obviously can't say that, especially after today. I have to accept I don't know her after all, and that it will just plain hurt for a while.
It's not often you get to see a person pass through the stages of their emotions on the written page, but I think it just happened in that last paragraph there. Now I'm just bitter. I'm bitter because I still don't know what I did wrong. I'm bitter because I'm smart, clever, ambitious, athletic, determined, responsible, logical, and hopefully one or two other things I can't think of at the moment, and I don't know what she's looking for if it isn't me. I'm the one who got her started biking, then playing frisbee. I had her read my books. I put myself into the relationship, like I do with everything I decide to try at, and I failed. And I hate failing.
So there's the bitterness. I'm bitter because I did try. It may not have looked like it. In fact recently she said she didn't like the fact that I wasn't nice to her dad when he didn't understand frisbee. The funny thing is, I was about to cite that as an example of when I was nice! See, he had no idea what he was saying, but he yammered on anyway. He said things like, "they can't let that guy throw, he keeps turning it over!" when the turnovers were caused by other factors (handlers not making good cuts, receivers dropping the disc, unexpected miscommunications, etc. Or "come on, don't let him throw that!" to throws on the force side when it was a breakdown downfield. The examples were endless, trust me. And I didn't chime in (as I am so wont to do) with a snide actually... You're an idiot, and here's why. I just grimaced to myself (I even made sure he couldn't see it! (though apparently Rebecca could)) and watched the game. The point is, my efforts at nicety were probably not obvious.
Wait.
Hold it.
That's it!
I think that's what she's looking for. After two years with me, I can't even blame her. She's looking for a nice guy. Not a guy who will do things for her because he wants to make an effort and likes to see her smile (how I flatteringly characterize myself for this self-pitying diatribe), but a guy to whom that stuff comes naturally. I honestly can say I can't give her that. Being nice isn't easy for me. I'm probably just too arrogant or something. What else, then, can I honestly not do? I can't overlook mistakes. I've never been able to do that. I can forgive them, but by golly do I point them out. I do this for two obvious reasons. The first is that I don't like inefficiency. If there's a way to do something better, I want you to know about it. The second is that I want to let you know what to change if you don't want to unwittingly repeat whatever mistake it may have been. A corollary to both of those things is that I know if I don't say something, it will only lead to more frustration in the future, because although I can bottle things up pretty well, I am pretty darn good at dwelling on them. Source: the part where I exploded about her bike stuff. Another source! This whole post! (Citing sources is very important in the legal profession. More on this later.)
So, and I've jabbed at her regarding this very thing, she just needs a nice guy who either overlooks her mistakes or doesn't realize she's making them. I'll do myself the nicety of imagining her with an unintelligent hillbilly for the time being. (This will naturally make it hurt all the worse when I see her playing frisbee with the best, most beautiful boyfriend the world has ever known, but I can only hope it helps enough in the short term to compensate.)
My sister just called and derailed my train of thought. Luckily, we didn't talk much about the current state of depressing affairs. We almost went down that road, and I actually felt myself choking up a bit, but she did me the good service of asking about school, which I was able to answer with only a minor hitch. (Sarah, thanks for calling. I know you mean well. Sorry I wasn't up for a heart to heart. I don't know if you could tell how close I was to crying, but that wasn't what I wanted to do, especially not on the phone with my little sister (big sister if you insist), so thank you.) It seems I can't quite muster up the bitterness required to maintain the velocity of this tangent. So without further adieu, or segue for that matter, here's everything about law school:
Just kidding! I didn't really realize how long this already was. So that stuff is in a new post. So you didn't even have to read this if you wanted to avoid depressing things and only here about my new life at school. Haha. Fooled you, sucker.
But really, thanks for reading. It means a lot. Hopefully I'll gradually move back into some creative writing in addition to autobiographical angst, but this is what I needed at the moment.
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