“I’m trying to let go of my old self.”

Bowie’s Changes was playing on the radio this morning during the school run. I had left my phone at home and was listening to the classic rock station because I am old as f**k.

The song was a befitting start to my day — a day that began, after coffee/chores/shower, with a therapy session focused largely on the many big changes I’m navigating right now. So Changes feels very close to home at the moment (perhaps one might say, “A little too on the nose?” People like to say that lately, and I’m not a hundred percent certain what it means. But it sounds cool).

One of the biggest changes currently happening is that, due to my struggles with mental illness, I can no longer manage practicing law, which has been my lifelong career. The intense stress, the pressure to be working all the time, including evenings and weekends, the long, slow decline in my ability to practice at the level my own high standards required; it all added up to too much for me.

I was forgetting case facts, and struggling mightily to try to keep my different clients straight. I made mistakes all the time due to memory lapses, usually minor but once major. The bottom line is that I’m no longer able to function in that old, familiar role of attorney. In a way, that’s not a loss at all, since I hated being a lawyer from day one. But in another way, it feels like I’m losing a piece of myself.

As I went about my day, I was grappling with the identity crisis that I identified (haha!) in therapy this morning (genius word play, I know). As I prepared for my interview for a retail job tomorrow, I kept trying to adjust to the picture of myself as just another retail associate, just another low-wage worker, as opposed to myself-the attorney- which is who I’ve been for the better part of 24 years.

This may make me sound like a snob, and that’s not how I mean it, but for me this is a major transition. I’m trying to let go of my old self, who I’ve been all these years. I hated being an attorney; I hated every fucking minute of it. But it’s All. I’ve. Known.

It’s become a part of my identity, more deeply rooted than I had previously suspected. And being a lawyer conferred a certain status, I’ll admit. It made people more apt to perceive me as being very smart, I think, and to see other positive qualities, like being driven, accomplished, disciplined, etc. And for some reason, people are especially impressed to hear about court appearances. They eat that shit right up.

But ah-ha! Did you see what I did there? I was speaking in us-against-them terms, and I identified with the attorneys instead of the lay people. And then I referred to non-attorneys as ‘lay people’! Ugh. That’s not great. Sigh. I need a lot of work. I have a lot of strange changes to turn and face.

Well, Mr. Bowie, see you at Christmas for my annual viewing of your unintentionally hilarious 1970s TV special with Bing Crosby. Maybe by then I’ll actually know who I am.