Kelly & Julia

I've written about my love/hate relationship with the show Parenthood before.  I love it because it's so real, and I hate it for the same reason.  I love it because it's one of the few well written dramas left on television, and I hate it because it makes me cry every week.

Some of the story lines hit close to home, and some of them hit way too close to home.  I can relate to just about all of them, save a few.

Though this season has been focused primarily on Christina's cancer diagnosis (which gets under my skin for the obvious reason that cancer is an asshole and has messed with my life more than once), the story that has torn at my heart the most isn't about her at all.

It's the one about Julia.

The mom who can do everything.  Who can parent her perfect daughter, who can kick ass and take names as a high powered attorney, who can prepare organic home cooked meals every day, who makes time for her adoring husband, who can do it all.

Her.

This season, she and her husband adopted an older child.  The dynamics of the family have been rocked, and she quickly found herself unable to balance it all.  The episode where she ended up on the floor in the kitchen crying hysterically hit home.  Oh, did it hit home.

For as long as this show has existed, I've compared myself to Julia.  I was supposed to be her.  I was supposed to be the high powered attorney with everything balanced perfectly.

She's the smart one.  She's the strong one.  She's the stoic one.  She's the responsible one.  She's the one other people turn to.

Just like me.

Life had other plans for me, but I never let go of that idealized image of what was supposed to be.  I constantly compared myself to her.  She could do it, why couldn't I?  Why wasn't I able?  Why wasn't I capable?

Then she ended up in a heap on the floor this season, and I knew.


That was why.

She couldn't do it.  I couldn't do it.  No one can.

People ask me all the time when I'll go back to law, as though I was ever really there in the first place.  Those same people, not understanding how the field really works, couldn't possibly fathom the amount of time that I'd have to devote to it, even assuming I could find someone to hire me when I have not practiced in 12 years.  Good luck with that, by the way.  People don't understand that I don't have the passion for it anymore.  Maybe I never did, if I'm being truly honest with myself.

We can't do it all, and we need to stop expecting that we can.  We need to stop letting society tell us we are failures if we can't.  We need to stop telling ourselves the same thing.

I'm not really Wonder Woman, even if I look like her when I put the costume on.

Maybe I'm more like Julia than I thought.