In the weeds

Up. Five a.m. My first thought is that it is cold. Last night, the temperature drooped to a chilly forty degrees. The lack of warmth outside matches my insides.

Yesterday was a very hard day.  The modifier very doesn't even cut it. Most people have no idea what my job as a deputy public defender is like, but yesterday was toxic. The kind of day that made me wonder how or why I do the job I do. Am I a masochist immersed in other's misery? What hole is this filling in me? Does the chaos I have to deal with on a daily basis mirror something that might be familiar to me from childhood?

Or maybe I am overthinking it. Maybe a shit day is just that. They say it's how you react that matters. And I reacted badly. Screamed at husband over lunch about something petty. The negative energy had to go somewhere.

When I used to waitress, I had many bad days. I waitressed for almost ten years. I remember the days in the weeds where you were the only server on shift and the hostess sat eight tables at once. I would run around trying to keep up. I would not let the tables drown me. Rush, rush and more rush. It was fun in a weird, miserable way. Fellow waitresses would run in, often late for their shift. How can I help, they would ask? "Can you get that table drinks and get those people's orders," I would ask in a brusque tone. My fellow waitresses never took offense. They knew my "I am busy" voice. "Thank you," I would later say with a smile after I was caught up.

In the legal world, however, everything moves at a different pace and the decorum is much different. People often take my brusqueness for rudeness. They don't understand that I only know one speed. That I am often impatient, but that I am just trying to not let it all bring me down. And down.