A Happy Ending

When I was little girl, I just wanted a place of my own. Somewhere quiet where there was no screaming.  I wanted out of the chaotic house I lived in. I wanted out of Ontario, California, the little pissant town I grew up in. I wanted a fairy tale type of happy ending.

Yet, ironically, I ended up living only about twenty miles from where I grew up.

I never thought I would move back. I moved around, and lived in Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco.  At one point, I almost moved to Arizona and always wanted to live in New York.

But when my Dad died, I stopped my wandering and moved back home to the Inland Empire. I was shattered, barely together, grieving my father's death. I needed to be close to my sisters and my mom.

I was happy to be close to my family. My mom and I became very close. Me and my sisters and my nieces were able to to build close relationships. I reconnected with my best friends from high school Tracy and Melinda. I got married.

The work part was more of a transition. I took a job at another large firm and that was the nail in the coffin for my corporate litigation career. I was done. Burnt toast. I decided to try something different and applied to all of the public defender agencies in Southern California.

Riverside chose me and I was overjoyed (aside from the paltry paycheck which does get better with time). When I came to the public defender's office that first day, I knew it was the right decision. I knew I was in the right place. A good place. With good people.

Now, I love my job, my colleagues and the clients. Some might say that it is hard to represent criminal defendants, but I think it is easier than corporate and governmental entity clients because my clients are real people. They are people who made a mistake (or sometimes people who are just accused and who are innocent).

Most importantly, my clients are the most special because in my competency speciality, they are severely mentally ill or disabled cognitively and sometimes both. They are the most helpless.

Think of this: How would you feel if your parent with dementia was accused of hitting someone when he was in the throes of his disability and he was stuck in the jail to rot? To die. It's a horrible situation and one I faced recently. I had to think out of the box, and with a team approach with the family, a concerned Court and jailhouse staff, a good Prosecutor and myself, I was able to get my client into a long term dementia/Alzheimer's care facility.

Recently, I was wondering how I got here. I face chaos every day, why do I love this job? What I realized is that I always try and make it better for the clients and their families. And, I love to help my colleagues with problematic issues and clients. I find it rewarding.

And maybe that's what I always wanted. To make an ugly world a more beautiful place. And I am.

It's not perfect, of course. My job is stressful, and life can be difficult. But I am home, where I belong, close to my mom and sisters. And, aside from my crazy shih tzus barking all of the time,  I did get the pretty and quiet house I always wanted with a gorgeous husband.

I guess I got my happy ending.