30 Days of Truth, Day 22 ~ Something You Wish You Hadn't Done in Your Life

There aren't too many things that I hold real regret for doing. I tend to over analyze every single choice I make as it is, and by the time I get done with that, I almost always just let it go. I chalk the mistakes up to learning experiences and move on.

Usually.

The last time I wrote on this prompt, I talked about how much I regretted moving away from home, leaving the state. The regret for that was multifaceted, and still exists to some degree. I basically left everything else in my life there to move here. For a long time, I beat myself up over that one.

Sometimes I still do.


Day 22 ~ Something you wish you hadn't done in your life

Gah.

This truth telling stuff is hard.

This answer, just as real and just as life-altering as the one to move away.

I wish I hadn't stayed in law school. I wish I had dropped out, cut my losses and found a job. I was almost halfway through my second year in school when my husband was diagnosed with cancer, and I wish that I would have realized just how much that was going to change everything for us. I wish I had the foresight to know that my priorities weren't ever going to be the same again. I wish I knew that the series of events would unfold the way they did.

I wish I had known that after the cancer there would be a pregnancy and a miscarriage and infertility and a miracle baby. I wish I had known.

I wish I had just quit.

Odds are that I will never really practice, not in the sense that most people think lawyers practice in, anyway. My family will be my first priority forever. My husband's job is the one that will always pay the bills, and he needs to be able to focus on work whenever he needs to, which means I have to be here to fill in the gaps whenever they happen.

I would love to work part time as an attorney, but to do that, I would still have to take the bar exam - requiring a fairly huge outlay of money and a ton of time. I've been out of the field for so long, and there have always been more young lawyers out there than jobs anyway. I can't compete with someone who is 24 and has no other obligations in life, someone willing to work 80 hour weeks, someone willing to let their job be everything. I can't.

I don't know that I will ever use this degree the way it was intended, the way I planned. I have never even taken my diploma out of the envelope it came in. By the time I got the certificate, my son was here and I was completely distracted.

It seems like such a waste.

It is a waste.

And, just because of that piece of paper in an envelope somewhere in my basement, I owe more money than people could ever fathom owing. I will be probably be paying it back for the rest of my life.

This thing that I have that I will never use will follow me around like a giant black rain cloud, the constant reminder of the price I must pay for who I could have been, for who I never was.

Cancer changes everything.

All of it.