me me me

Since we're debating my flaws, I'll take this opportunity to talk more
about myself. Whoot.

Despite any contrary indications on my blog, I have lots of love to share.
I love, lots and lots and lots. I love everyone. I force other people
to be loved by me. (Ask my law school friends. I forced them all to be
my friends). I love to see other people happy, and I love it when other
people share their experiences with me. I love getting people together
for a wonderfully rewarding social interaction and catch heat sometimes
because I always go home early. But hey, as long as everyone is having a
good time, then my work is done. I almost never say things about people
that I wouldn't be prepared to discuss with them directly. I remove
myself from conversations in which other people (people I know, anyway)
are being disparaged because it makes me physically uncomfortable. (I'm
ok with talking shit about public figures). I love. I love to love. I
want everyone to be happy and be loved and to love others. As trite as
all this sounds, this is how I go about my day.

I love people so much that I fear that people do not love me nearly as
much as I love them. Which is kind of a harsh way to go about my day,
really. I'm worried that all this luvvvvvv is what will drive me out of
indigent defense work. I'm worried that I'll love some clients too much
(not in that way) and they won't give two shits about what I do or think;
I'm worried that I'll care too much and just see defeat, time and time
again; I'm worried that there will be clients that I won't like very much
at all, and that I'll feel guilty about it. I'm worried that I'll care so
much about the people and problems in the world, that I'll feel too
helpless to do anything, and one day I'll just stop caring all together.

My luvvvvv doesn't generally extend to kissing strangers. As a matter of
fact, I have (romantically) kissed one person since the start of the New
Year. In the past 12 months, I've only actually dated one person. Kind
of shitty, isn't it? To have so few meaningful and worthwhile
interactions? To live a life devoid of such basic human affection? I say
it's because of law school, and I'm too busy, blah blah blah, and that's
true. But there's a large part of me always thinking, Something is
critically wrong with this.

As for strangers - well, I do love meeting new people. There are few
things in life that get me as excited as getting to know new people does.
I thrive on it! You might think that I'd do well in large group social
situations, but actually I don't. I'm terrible at it and generally don't
like it. I'm not sure why this is. I think a large part of it is that I
assume that no one there is particularly interested in what I have to say.
Frankly, I don't have very interesting things to say. And I fear that
people always tend to mold into cliques in which I'm not welcome. But I
love figuring out what makes other people genuinely excited and happy, and
I think I'm good at it. I've had tremendous luck so far identifying
genuinely interesting individuals. I'm particularly going to miss this
law school crew. It's a group of characters like you've never seen
before, but I am bursting with love for all of them. Our separation is
going to be quite wounding to me.

So that's what I have to say about that.