“Does calling it karma make it easier to bear?”
‘It’ being my self, I think.

I’m taking paralegal classes lately, for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because it feels like the right thing at this time, a next logical step. I feel at home, and enjoy playing with various legal scenarios, like taking a vacation into a life that might have been. Considering many sides of a thing has rarely been to my practical advantage, since people seem to value decisiveness and strong opinions most of all, but here that’s the field one plays on, along with learning all the mechanical workings, various parts and pieces.

But, one thing is hard. Legal thinking has unearthed a rather striking casualty of growing up the way I did, with very few sturdy connections: I find it very hard to ‘believe’ in justice.

Maybe in a cosmic sense I can find the inkling of belief, if I back up far enough, and travel the arc long enough to take inventory of all the ‘good people’ I’ve witnessed come into their own happiness, be rewarded for their steadfastness , resistance to cynicism. Or cruel people I’ve witnessed taken down. Although I must say, it isn’t pleasure I feel at the latter, just relief. Maybe someone’s life will be a little more okay out of the harms way.

But in my own little sphere I usually avoid conflict, at pretty high cost. I often feel as though I’m lagging behind, carry a continual impression I have ‘given away the store’. And maybe it is this – that I don’t really believe in justice, or closure, or resolution… don’t really expect that the people who should apologize will do so, or can do so. And I don’t want to be so blind to my own faults that I miss a thousand things to apologize for myself. Or at least that I haven’t apologized for–in some cases won’t apologize for.

By the time you get to my age (which I will not tell you for now), the statute of limitations has run out on what you can blame your parents for. You’ve had at least as much to do with yourself as they did. It is still hard, even knowing that and accepting that, to reckon with such shaky foundations.