Bottle of Dreams

I am lost. I keep praying for some type of sign- some larger than life direction for where I should go and what I should do. People don't understand when I tell them that I feel like this epic failure. They look at my life and wonder how I could feel that way. I have a wonderful husband, a home that I cherish, family who loves me and I just graduated from law school. But days like today I feel as though the word "FAIL" is stamped in red lettering across my forehead. I feel like a lost child wandering around knocking on doors trying to find comfort. I just want answers but most days all I have are questions. To understand why I feel this way I suppose it is necessary to understand why I am where I am.

I grew up poor. I don't mean middle class run-of-the-mill poor, I mean broke. Dead broke. Had nothing poor. From this poverty I developed the need to constantly prove myself and my worth to others. I used to try and think of seemingly impossible dreams and I made those my goals. I cradled those future endeavors and from them garnered enough strength to make it through the day. I used to think of how great my life would be one day and it made the sting of my reality less paralyzing. I put all my faith and heart into these pursuits because they were all I had. I somehow felt that if I could achieve my dreams, if I could make myself into "something," then maybe I'd be good enough...for what? I'm still not sure. I just know that my entire life has been spent overcoming a battle that was long ago over. I still find myself reverting back to the poor girl with ugly clothes. Those memories, the doubt, insecurity and self-consciousness are always with me. No matter where I am, where I live, what I have, or how educated I become, in my heart I'm still just a girl that no one ever really saw.

One of the far fetched dreams that I had was to become an attorney. As far back as fourth grade when people asked me what I wanted to do- I said that I wanted to go to law school. Most often this response was met with the same demeaning sigh. I remember every aspect of the sound. I memorized each inflection and the accompanying facial expression. Those sighs were a "kind" way of telling me that I couldn't be a lawyer, that no one from my family would ever be anything. Over the years, I bottled all those sighs up and later on when I wanted to quit or was tired of pushing myself- I would listen to just one of those sighs and it would give me the motivation to keep going, to keep knocking down walls on my road of becoming someone. I was the first to graduate college in my family- but that achievement did not take away the feeling of inadequacy so I explained away this disappointment by saying that once I graduated from law school I would find the sense of peace I wanted. Here I am- three years later, J.D. in hand and I still feel like the same awkward girl.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be satisfied, if I'll ever feel that I have done a good job, that my family is proud, that I have accomplished what I set out to all those years ago. I have my doubts. Today, as I study for my bar exam and I am literally one step away from closing the chapter on this dream and starting to reap its rewards, I feel overwhelmingly lost. Lost because I feel like I still don't know what to do or who to be. Lost because for the first time in my life I have nothing that I am striving for. It's so disconcerting to be without the security blanket of my aspirations. I know that in time new dreams will come and that eventually I will find my place in this big ole world, but for right now- I'm struggling.