The Land of In-between

The Land of In Between

It is my understanding that the place where catholics believe a sinner goes to explain their sins and wait for a determination between heaven and hell is called purgatory.  I find it interesting that the dictionary also defines “purgatory” as a place of mental anguish and suffering.  I can say with great certainty that the land of in between is not a comfortable place and definitely understand why mental anguish could be used to describe such a location.  When one is on their way up, there is movement and focus on forward motion.  When one is on their way down, their is focus and effort to stop the slide.  Sitting in between leaves little to productively focus.  It is like driving through a valley for hours on a straight highway, time may be passing but the mind wanders and plays tricks on the thoughts.  It is a chance to survey far off in all directions where you see nothing but you see the wind blow, the dust devils, the heat vapors.

Here I sit.  My “in between” is in all directions of my life.  It would be so simple to think it is just about me, having graduated from law school, taken and failed the bar exam once and now waiting for results from my second and hopefully final go at the exam that is hopefully going to change my life.  Wouldn’t that be enough to cause mental anguish and suffering?  I mean, let me go further with this, I have been working full time and going to law school for four years and then went down to part time in order to appropriately study for the bar exam.  It is not cheap to take the bar and most success comes from taking months off prior to the exam to hyper focus and cram your brain full of crap needed to barf back out during exam days.  I stocked up, begged, borrowed and got through the first exam giving it my all.  I fell short. Honestly, it was by less than 1% but short nonetheless.  

So then I needed to pick my crushed soul back up, dust it off and rally into the next exam by begging and borrowing more from every resource, even my own physical stamina.  You want to see how fast a 48 year old woman can gain weight?  Just make her sit in a chair for 10-12 hours a day staring at a computer and handwriting notes.  And for extra measure, tell her that her whole financial future relies on this success and watch the cortisol pack on the pounds. It is okay, Cortisol and I go way back to when my son was younger and randomly launched into violent self injurious attacks several times a day.  I have felt the warm hug of the pounds of stress and lack of sleep for almost two decades now. I would like to consider the pounds of fat compensation for the lack of functioning adrenal glands since I’m pretty sure they shriveled up and moved out years ago.

Now I wait.  It has been a two and a half month wait since I took he bar exam last.  It is shorter than the other wait from he first time.  The first wait was four months.  It is different this time.  I now know what it is like to think you gave it your all and still fall short.  I know what it is like to get excited and put together a resume in preparation to move forward and then have no use for it…yet.  I know what it is like to see that look on my kids faces when they finally register not only that I failed but that we are going to live in this weird, stressed out desperate place for another six months.  I know what it is like to be working at an internship with a job potential and watch it slip through my finger tips because I fell short.  Did I jinx it by being happy and excited and hopeful?  Was I cocky? 

Wouldn’t it be great if that was my only place of purgatory?  If my part time work was steady and stable and my kids were in a stable place and my home was stable?  Would the bar exam/legal career purgatory be enough mental anguish?  Apparently not.  My place of work is on the verge of shutting down, being sold, self destructing and it is my understanding that with only two weeks notice at any time I may not have a location to work from.  Yes, that is the worst case scenario leaving the best case scenario that someone awesome buys the business that houses my work and they love it, care a whole bunch and grandfather me in at a low sublease and all is hunky dory.  It could happen.  I have absolutely no control over this whole process.  I could bail out and go find somewhere else but have chosen to wait it out.  Reason being that my clients have stuck through my off and on bar exam absences and potential shift at any moment to less hours due to launching legal career that throwing a geographical change on them will likely bring an even deeper shedding of clients.  After 2 bar exams I have lost a significant number of clients as it is and I don’t want to invest in building up my when my true direction is to change careers altogether.  So, I take it one day at a time, one client at a time. 

Then there are my kids.  One is about to turn 18 and reach adulthood.  He is a kid with high functioning disabilities that we have held together with a variety of services and assistance over the years that will all go away on his 18th birthday.  This includes various financial support and resources for therapies.  There is the whole power of attorney vs. partial conservation debate going on trying to determine what is the best way to protect him and be able to advocate for him when needed but only when needed.  When he turns 18 and he can start working, what will happen? How will he do? Will he remain stable? Will it overwhelm him?  Will he rise to the challenge and impress the shit out of me like I know he can?  Again, it could go either way and I have no control over this process. It is his journey that I can only parent.  I equate parenting to that of a pinball machine.  I am the paddles the try to push him up and keep him from falling into the hole and when all forces come together to help him hit some points and ring some bells and flash some lights I cheer loud and proud.   I am very lucky, he has scored all time highs in his life despite the many “tilt” messages he has been dealt.  

Then my other kiddo is one who is still in struggle and shift mode.  Her health issues went in to full bloom this last year and caused her whole life to come crashing down painfully around her.  It took us so long to find her help but even the help is not returning her to full capacity and the pain and struggle wears on her and by proxy, me.  Nobody knows if she will get back to full physical strength or if her health issues will continue to flare up on her an knock her down.   She begs for me to help her but I am again with little power to help or comfort her. I love her full strength but can not make her well.  How much does a parent push or hang back and let her figure out her direction in all that has shifted?  How much of this is her personal journey that I need to simply parent and not intervene? How much do I have to watch her suffer in pain while I pray and hope she can find joy and happiness despite it all.  

Then there is prayer. I have always been a relatively spiritual person with full understanding and without doubt of God, the Higher Power.  I have studied various forms of acknowledging that power and have always believed in prayer and moving energy.  I am not sure if I believe any of it anymore. For simplicity sake I say it is the helplessness I felt watching my daughter suffer that has made me question it all but that is just a drop in the bucket.  Dare I say it was the straw that broke the camels back.  It was all of it.  It is all of it.  The crap ass life I had, better than some, worse than others.  The abuse and attacks I overcame.  The survivor label and so on I have done therapy to help me assimilate.  The bad marriage.  The abuse.  The autism. The kid with such severe mental illness breaks that the psychiatrist told me to consider the child I once knew as dead and learn to embrace the new child.  I rallied and prayed and meditated and had faith and hope and believed in better each and every day.  Then the girl got so sick and felt so much pain and nobody could help her, seemingly not even God.  Similar to the bar exam experience as an encapsulated piece of that give it your all mentality and still falling short.  So what do I believe in now?  I have no idea.  I can’t reconcile any of it.  I keep waiting for inspiration or the ability to pray again without feeling so much anger and sadness and betrayal.  

My home has been beaten, abused, torn up and punched through and is in great need of repair, freshening, deep cleaning and more but there are no resources left.  I await the gate to open to achieve and acquire more resources and it is here that we loop right back to the beginning.  I drive through this valley letting time pass as I watch the dust devils of memories, hope, emotions and anxiety swirl about.  I day dream of what it will be like if this happens or that happens and I have moments of absolute paralysis in fear of what if this happened or that happened.  Like the stuffing that fall out of the holes in my couch, I pick myself up, stuff myself back in and put a blanket over it knowing that one day I hope to do better.  Until then, I drive in the land of in between.  Purgatory 

So what do I do in purgatory?  How does one handle the land of in between? I will tell you that my grace, along with my faith, have fallen away.  I whine and complain and vomit a lot.  When I felt hopeless I could always turn to prayer but what do you do when you think prayer is futile. I mean, really, what can I do. I just keep going.  Yes, we can quote Dory.  I keep on interning and trying to learn new skills for an impending legal career.  The more I can do now and learn the more employable I will be one day which can only counter act any challenges to employment that my degenerative vision might bring.  I look for new agencies and resources to help my soon to be adult child.  I research power of attorney options.  Best possible purgatory antidote was getting a puppy which will one day be trained to be my low vision dog.  Puppy therapy is always good and my puppy is particularly amazing. I avoid people who don’t know my status of fragile sanity.  I keep taking girl to doctors. I keep taking care of the clients that remained faithful.  I contemplate the benefits and detriments to taking up drinking as a serious habit.  I cave in to junk food more than I should in an effort to numb some of the mental anguish. Sometimes I fantasize about driving away, just keep driving, like Thelma and Louise, “drive”.  Mostly, I just get up and take each day as it comes and try not to vomit each meal.  I take a lot of antacids.   

While I am not catholic and have only known very little about the catholic religion, I use their language for my in between status. I am here, confessing my sins of the soul as I wait for the determination of heaven or hell.  I drive the long valley highway hallucinating on my memories and emotions trying to pass the time.  I am not lost and I am not moving up or down and it takes all focus just to keep up with the movement of time.  I love my puppy and get drunk on puppy breath.  I hold on to my tiny mustard seed of hope and wait.