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Eddie and I broke up.

Please go to my new blog and leave me a loving comment because I feel like death right now.

http://therealrebekah.com

I had a post all written in my head, and half already on the computer.

It was called “Excerpts from a breakup” and began with some pieces out of old blog posts from when we first broke up in June 2008 and then a tiny bit of old posts from when we got back together in October 2008. Then I was going to draw clever parallels to this breakup, using snippets of recent conversations and bits of the letter I wrote him that I intended to drop off with the bag of his stuff.

All I was waiting for was the time to drop off the bag, and collect my things from his house, figuring that would be the end to the relationship and the blog post.

I was set. During the days of not talking to him I had steeled myself for the confrontation and was determined to stand firm in my convictions. I was done with him.

It didn’t quite work out that way. And I won’t be publishing that post.

Instead, I’m publishing this one. Click to read the one I DID write…and what really happened.

I might be scared of my blog.

Although I’ve been telling myself (and some of you)  that my recent absence from blogging has been because I haven’t felt like writing or I haven’t had anything to write about, I think I’m wrong. That might not be the whole truth.

This used to be where I could spill my guts, be open, honest, heart-on-my-sleeve, and really put everything out there. I am a little afraid to do that now.

There are things going on right now that last year I would have written about, things in my relationship and other parts of my life, and for some reason this year I find myself feeling guilty about writing them. Which begs me to consider:

Do I feel guilty for writing things about my personal life and putting them on the Internet, OR…

Do I feel guilty about the way I feel and no longer want to share because I’m ashamed of it?

Maybe I’ve outgrown this blog. I’ve been blogging for almost five years now and kept the same content from URL to URL, although the structure of the blog and the subject matter have changed several times. Five years in, with all the changes, I feel a little lost with my blog, like I no longer know what I can say here that is really of value to me as a writer or to you as a reader.

But I know I’d feel a little lost without it too.

Now what?

I’m finishing up my Media Law class in a few weeks and I have to brag on myself a bit before this post goes any further.

• I got the only 100% in the class on the case report
• Verbatim from the professor: “Impressive writing”
• Another verbatim: “I am more and more impressed by your analytical skills each week. This is one of the best answers to this challenging question that I have ever seen.”

</brag>

I just wanted to put this all in context for you.

I used to really want to go to law school. I blame John Grisham for getting me hooked on all things legal in high school, and even though I didn’t go the pre-law route in college, law school was still looking at me, and I was looking back.

The year I graduated, the joke around the English department was “law school is the new black” since so many people out of my class were going. But by that time I was a full-time employee and only a part-time student, and I knew that I’d have to subsist wholly on student loans for three years if I wanted to go to law school.

That was TERRIFYING.

Living without a steady paycheck didn’t seem as intimidating when I was a young college student – I had limited funds from Mom and Dad and I lived on the cheap. But when I went back to finish my degree after a two-year hiatus, I was used to having my own money, used to being able to eat out and buy cute clothes and take trips. I continued working full-time at The Hospital while I finished up my program in the evenings.

I wondered for a long time if I should have done it anyway.

I love studying law. I’m a research junkie and a stickler for semantics, qualities which meld beautifully for legal interpretation and writing. As confusing and over-complicated as it may be to read the law  sometimes, on some level it really makes sense to me. (Not the content of laws, I mean – I am thoroughly baffled by the impetus behind some of the statutes out there.) My favorite assignment for this class was a 5-page paper on nothing but that the exclusion of the word “jurisdiction” meant in the copyright statutes.

And I know I’m good at it. I have fun doing it.

I’m only 29, but at this point in my life I feel like the time to take that plunge has passed. And so has the time for regretting that I didn’t take it.

My shrink said something to me once about regret, and it stuck with me. I was going over and over a multitude of what I thought were bad choices I made in the past, thinking that if only I’d made those choices differently my life would somehow be better, more fulfilling, happier.

“Why do you think you should have gone to law school?” she asked.

“It’s what I wanted to do. It’s what I enjoyed. And I really wish I had at least tried.”

“Do you think you would be happier today if you had?”

“Probably. At least I wouldn’t regret not trying.”

But you don’t know, she said, and you never can know if you will or will not regret a decision – because every fork in the road goes more than two directions.

• I might have gone to law school and excelled and had a great career.
• I might have gone to law school and encountered a bad person who would kill me.
• I would never have met E – maybe I would have met someone just as great, maybe I wouldn’t, maybe I would have become an angry lesbian who only worked on sexual harassment suits.
• I might have gone to law school and hated it and just dropped out.

I might have regretted the deciding to go in the first place.

Who the hell knows?

Law school doesn’t necessarily lead to a law career. It leads to the next day – and the next, and the next, and every choice presents a series of new choices, and any one of them could be good or bad for me.

You never know what choice is going to make you happy – and you never know if the path you didn’t take would have been any better for you than the path you chose.

So I can enjoy Media Law while it lasts, rock it, and move on. I could do law school later, if I come to a point where I think it’s the right thing. I could just keep buying John Grisham books and re-watching “Legally Blonde” every few months, and follow the path I’m on now – wherever it happens to lead.

You never know.

What’s your what-if? Do you have regrets?