Hitting Walls and Learning how to bounce back in a constructive way.

I have a million skills.  I think they are very apparent.  I don't seem to be able to convince anyone they have monetary value.  I don't know what they see when they see me, it might be too much lawyer stuff.  Maybe having been a lawyer is sort of like being a convicted sex criminal. No way to not have people view you as your former self.  Everyone thinks I want to be a lawyer.  I don't know how to convince them otherwise. 

People keep saying.... Just go back. Just return to private practice. You are good at it.  And Damn it all to hell.. I am or was. I have a great mind, a great sense of right and wrong.  I can conceive many to do many things they don't want to do.  Yes, you have to give up half or more of your life. Yes, your children will become hostile and difficult (they would have anyway but this will seem like it is all your spouse's fault and you can blame them).

They cannot see  that the lawyer part of me. The part that made me good at my job. The part that was able to make people feel better about what was happening to them is broken. It is gone. It is never coming back. Sort of like the glaciers.  There has been a fundamental profound, forever, global warming kind of death of a part of me.  If it ever came back it would not be the same.  The scars are too pervasive and deep. If I were a seasoned football player with a blown knee, no one would think twice about my walking away.  My lawyer bone is broke, smashed, demolished, vaporized, crushed, broken to pieces, busted up, fragmented, shattered, annihilated, decimated,

rubbed out, nuked, extinguished, run over by a herd of African Elephants, bowled over by 10,001 brides at a Vera Wang dress sell.  I am done. Are we clear?   

So, the journey continues.  Look here, talk to this person, meet with that person. Consider this option, revise the resume, again. Re-draft the cover letter, again. 

Some would suggest I am getting my comeuppance.  I should have stayed in teaching or let Mary-E be alone during those weeks and weeks in the hospital.  She is old enough, I spoiled her.   It could have happened that way.  I just listen and suggest they don't know what it is like to have the phone call, or in our case the calls. Only 13,500 of us in the USA every year receive such a call about our Children. .00004369% to guess.    It makes me crazy when I hear and sense those sentiments.

I have to walk away from the thoughts and the negativity.  I have found myself in this spot today.  I have to make a life from this point today.  I have to somehow show the people with positions I would like to have that I am no longer a lawyer with 25 years of litigation experience instead of a person with value that could add value to their organization, even though I am a lawyer.