I was so devastated by my breakup. I spent a lot of time wondering how things might have been different if I’d behaved differently. Then, alternately, I was angry and felt that I was the only one who’d put anything into the relationship. I was determined to lose more weight and do the triathlon I’d signed up for, but then again, I had no desire to do anything other than mope around and stare at the wall. After six months I joined a dating web site and started talking to a man. We got right up to the point of meeting and suddenly I was petrified about meeting him. I wrote to him and told him that I’d thought I was ready but my visceral physical reaction to meeting him meant to me that I was not ready after all. He never responded. I assumed he’d decided I’d been stringing him along, although nothing could be further from the truth. I’d really thought I was ready…or maybe it was wishful thinking. After that experience I shut down any dating websites I had up and gave up on meeting anyone.
Any time I went north of Seattle I found myself looking for my ex’s truck in the traffic around me, even long after I knew he’d left and headed back toward Kansas. He’d told me he wanted to stay in touch because he couldn’t imagine never speaking to me again, but I never heard from him. I stopped really caring about anything and the weight came right back on. Things were getting better at work because as soon as President Obama came into office he instructed the FAA to go back to the table and bargain with us as they were supposed to do originally. But I was completely disenchanted with the FAA by this point. I had always loved my job, but I felt as if I’d continued to do what I was paid to do, and management had attacked us anyway.
I’d intended to work until they kicked me out at age 56, but suddenly I started thinking about what I would do after I had to retire. I realized that, although I’d always worked in public service, I’d never really done anything to change the status quo. I realized that I wanted more than that. I wanted to change the way things were done. I’d worked in my union, and I’d seen what could happen to people who were supposedly protected by the government. I wondered how bad it had to be for people who had no protection at all. I hadn’t quite decided what do do about it when my friend called me and told me she’d taken the “buy out” at her job. I was shocked. She’d been an editor for the Seattle Times for a long time. I asked what she was going to do. She told me that she was going to law school. She had an appointment to take the LSAT in December. Suddenly I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to take the LSAT as well, go to law school, and work to protect workers who had no protection.
I’d taken the LSAT when I first got out of college, but I’d only applied to my alma mater, UConn, and I hadn’t gotten in. I’d worked in my union for years and I loved working to protect people. What better way to protect people than to get a law degree and bring lawsuits and complaints on their behalf when they’d been wronged? I applied to take the LSAT on the same day as my friend and bought the book to start studying. A couple weeks into studying I got an email from the LSAT people who told me that they were booked up for the test in December and I’d have to take in in February. I discovered that February would often be too late to apply to law school and I would only get the scores rather than a list of questions I’d gotten wrong that I would have gotten in the December test. So, I stopped studying, figuring I wasn’t going to go to law school after all. Then, about two weeks before the December test I got an email saying they’d added another testing site and I would be able to take that test after all. Crap! I started studying like crazy.
When I finished the test I was sure I’d never get a good enough score to get into law school. So, I went on with my life. We weren’t supposed to get the results until about 8 weeks later, but suddenly, 3-4 weeks later my friend called me and said the results were out. I was terrified to look. I sat at the computer for several minutes trying to work up the courage to open the email. Finally I looked and discovered I’d scored in the 81st percentile…it wasn’t incredible, but it wasn’t bad either. I’d applied to University of Washington and, at my friend’s insistence, I’d also applied to Seattle University. I had no idea at that point that I couldn’t go to school full time and work full time by the Bar Association rules. I kept checking the website to see if I was accepted and finding the word “pending.” Finally, about two weeks before the summer term was to start I checked the website and found the word, “accepted.” I was shocked and had no idea what to do.
I went into work and told my coworkers that I’d been accepted to law school and I had no idea what I was going to do. I had lunch with my older brother and asked him what I should do. He told me I already owed money and I shouldn’t make a decision based on that. I made an appointment with the dean of admissions to figure out what to do. She told me that I could only go part time if I worked full time. I was sure that I couldn’t do it. I figured there was no way I could go to work in the evenings because of my schedule. In my meeting she told me that evening classes were Monday-Thursday 6-9. Suddenly it seemed as if law school was not so far out of reach. I just had to get someone to swap with me on Thursdays. I walked out of our meeting and suddenly I was going to law school in a couple weeks. It was bizarre.
I started law school a couple of weeks later. I was petrified the whole time. I wasn’t thinking about my weight. I wasn’t thinking about anything but the fact that I was sure I was going to flunk out. What the Hell was I thinking?