For Real.

Sometimes failure isn’t an illusion. 

I have been working with a client this last week who was embroiled in a dire situation. I happened across her by chance, she was in the office to see someone else- but by being in the right place at the right time, I heard her story- and it was compelling.

Without breaking attorney-client privilege, or otherwise getting myself in trouble, it will suffice to say that if we won she had a career, an opportunity, and a chance to live her dream. If we lost she was left with no job, no car, no personal possessions and no place to live. She had given all of those things up because she had been told that if she did so, she would be allowed a chance at her dream. (This is not at all as fishy as it seems while I am rereading the above. This was not a scam.)

I spent five whole days working with this client (that’s a long time, in the Legal Assistance world. Free legal advice does not come with the kind of personal attention paid lawyers do.) I was able to contact parties involved and sweet talk clerks of court on the other side of the country. I pulled strings and poked people in the eye. I drafted, redrafted and submitted motions.  I pissed off essentially all of the big giant heads in the sky. I perhaps put my own career in peril.

It was a slim chance but I thought we could do it. I thought we had a good legal argument and, on the basis of equity, I knew the right thing to do would be to decide in our favor.  My client had done nothing wrong (another rarity in the Legal Assistance realm). and desperately wanted the outcome we were seeking. If this was the movies, the underdog- us- would have come out on top, beaming and high-fiving.

But we didn’t. We lost. The Man won this round. Despite my every effort, my client will now be flown across the country and dropped in a city with no home, no funds and no means of transportation.  I failed her.

Sometimes your best just isn’t good enough.

One of the biggest indicators of mental well-being is  "resilience," or the ability to bounce back from life's setbacks[1]. Today was a for-real, objective failure. But we are so hard on ourselves every day, our little "failures" mount, they stick, they drift  like snow into the pockets of least resistance within our self-image. The base level rises so that when we have the uncommon "real" failure we topple like overfilled soft serve, and life seems like a huge example of how we are incapable of doing anything right.

Tomorrow, I'll be funny. Today, I'm buying a bottle of Pinot Noir and a sippy cup.

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[1] Rutter, M. (2008). Developing concepts in developmental psychopathology. In J.J. Hudziak (ed.), Developmental psychopathology and wellness: Genetic and environmental influences (pp.3-22). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing