Today I'm on the whole, meh.
Day started with me missing a date to file witness statements. Innocent enough, and easily rectified, but led to me questioning my entire existence (again) . My gran would have blamed it on the change in season.
Lots of clients demanding and demanding. Always, it's the ones who have no urgency. The clients who are truly deserving are the ones who 'don't like to bother you'. The ones whose husbands raped them repeatedly over a number of years don't like to ask for anything. The ones who kicked their husbands out and just want them out of their lives for good because they've moved on are the shouty complaining ones (and don't want to know that their letter got bumped for an urgent injunction).
Inherently, I'm not good at my job. Today I'm not anyway. Tomorrow I might have convinced myself I'm adequate. I have difficulty biting my tongue, both with clients and lawyers. Rather unfortunately my face shows my emotions all too clearly, whatever I do to push my expression into one of rapt attention.
This is why I liked criminal law. I liked being able to tell clients to sit the fuck down, stop spitting, listen, and no - you're not getting bail. It was all out there - no pretending, no bullshit, no social work speak. I liked my clients, and they liked me. I struggle with the endless meetings, and reports and multi-agency rapport of family law. It usually achieves little, and frustrates the hell out of clients. And me. If this government really wanted to save money, it needs to start with how appalling are the current state of Child Services in this country. But I will save that for another rant - it deserves concentrated ire.
Most of my morbid introspection is that I quite simply can't cope with other people's emotions. Not entirely. Why can I cope with a 12 year old telling me that he smashes windows and drinks because nobody cares about him? That the staff in the privately run 'care' home he is in report him to the police every time he smashes a mug in sheer frustration? That if he is released from police custody at 3am, he will have to walk 5 miles home by himself because his parents are pissed and don't give a shit?
Maybe it's because I'm seeing the other side now - I'm dealing with the parents of that kid arguing that the kids should stay with their incompetent parent, and the bitchy women who just want the ex out of their lives even if it means their kids never see their dad.
As for Children in Need tonight? I can't watch it - the celebrities touting their new single or TV series to promote child welfare? All the money in the world won't make a kid feel wanted by its parents.
In the end, I'm in the wrong job. If I didn't do this job, nothing would happen. I'm arrogant and naive enough to still want to make a difference.
This blog was meant to be a way of me exorcising my rants so that family and friends weren't constantly subjected to my raging about the state of the world. I am slightly concerned that all it is doing is creating new improved rants. Maybe I need to join with society and not give a shit - put my blinkers firmly on and go partying every weekend. They seem pretty happy. Why aren't I?
Mind, we haven't even started on my personal life, which is both immensely complicated to me and boring to anyone else. I do yearn for some simplicity and control over it. Men appear to dominate it - 2 sons, an irritating ex and my current beau. Well, apart from my matriarchal mother. Maybe I will only get simplicity when the kids have left home, and I can finally live the life of a hermit. Never mind winning the lottery, solitude would do me fine.
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