Demean Yourself, Part 5

Veidt: Jon, wait, before you leave... I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.
Dr. Manhattan: “In the end?” Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.
-Alan Moore, Watchmen, Chapter 12

You might ask yourself, what did he mean when he said, “I thought it was all over”? I direct you to Dr. Manhattan’s words: “Nothing ever ends.” As I grow older, it becomes harder and harder to cloak myself in an immature exterior and personality (not that I won’t keep trying). I cannot hide this legal status from people so easily. It all comes out. At work, the day after my admission, I met the newhire working in my office. We exchanged hellos, and the first thing she said thereafter was, “So, I heard you were admitted to the bar yesterday.” Though I have appended “Esq.” to my nameplate as a joke, I am now a lawyer. Living, breathing lawyer. I took that oath. I took that oath seriously. Damn me for taking that oath seriously.

This is my white whale. It will dog me. I can squirrel this information away and move to a faraway land. Nonetheless, people will ferret it out and see me differently for it, because of it, in spite of it. I could shout myself horse belaboring the animal puns, but you get the idea. To those given much, much is expected. And really, I was just trying to pick up my life as if I had never been to law school, never passed the bar, never been admitted to the bar. Trying to live a life that would have followed fairly naturally from my graduation, if I had more free reign over my choices.

It’s not something I can do forever, or even much longer. “Waste,” they cry out in their stolid body language. “Shame,” the undertones of their voices float to me. And to an extent, I agree. All I ever wanted to do was make peoples’ lives a little better. Now, I could do so in a way that most people could only dream about (though their dreams rest on a cracked foundation of misguided information and half-truths). The system is still a barrelling juggernaut, unstoppable due to the momentum it’s gained from its own ponderous weight. People pay lawyers to explain the inexplicable. My “people” are the most mundane heroes on earth. My “people” are the most insidious villains on earth. Our battles play out without bright drawings of spandex, without snappy dialogue, without supplements purchasable for three dollars a pop. Still, the battles rage on, whether I choose to take up arms or not.

Have I ever changed my position, that I do not want to be a lawyer? No, oh no. Do I feel compelled to suck it up and try to do something with the degree and the bar membership? Yes, oh yes. It is only a matter of time now before guilt drives me into doing legal work. And that depresses me, because in addition to doing almost everything I ever wanted, I can do almost everything I never wanted, and it makes me laugh.

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Back to the Sunday only posting next week. Why is fiction so much harder to get right?