MidReal Story
Echoes of Home: A Legal Journey
Scenario: Jingle Jones is a young and promising lawyer who has spent her entire career working for big law firms in the city. Despite her great success in her field, she has always felt a sense of detachment and solitude in her personal life. One day, she accepts a difficult case that leads her to revisit a small town she had forgotten for years, forcing her to confront her past and ultimately finding purpose and fulfillment in her profession.
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The first time I set foot in a law firm, I knew I was going to make partner.
I’d been a legal intern for less than two weeks and had yet to pass the bar exam, but I already felt at home in the stone and glass building that was the tallest on the skyline.
It was my personal Everest, and I was eager to scale it, plant my flag, and claim the world as my own.
Or, at the very least, the legal world.
I’ve been climbing ever since, working late into the night and on weekends, billing more hours than my colleagues and spending more time in the office than even the most devoted partners.
I don’t mind the sacrifice; it’s made me a star performer.
The partners like me; they like my work better.
They like that they can call me at 1:30 a.
on a Sunday and have a memo about some obscure statue on their desk before they’re up to their elbows in coffee grounds.
I’m not one of the pretty people, and I don’t have their connections.
But I have an ironclad work ethic that’s gotten me farther than my grades or alma mater ever could.
The first time I stepped into a law firm, I knew I’d make partner, and not one of those token women in name only roles.
I’d be a real partner, with a share of the profits and my name next to all the others on the door.
Ten years later, it’s still the only thing I’ve ever been certain of.
My career isn’t the only thing that’s gone well for me; I had the highest marks in the state bar exam, and if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with getting a job at a good law firm, I could have had any job I wanted in the legal world.
I’m not sure about anything else, but I am sure of that.
None of it feels real though, not really; as if all of it happened to someone else.
I know it’s really happened to me because my bank account says so, but it feels as though someone else’s life is being lived by me.
It’s been like that for as long as I can remember, even when things mattered more to me than they do now.
I was 17 when I graduated from high school, a year earlier than most of my classmates, and three years ahead of when my parents thought it would be.
There wasn’t a lot of fanfare about it; we went out for pizza at my favorite place, and after we’d eaten, my parents went home and I went out with friends, which is what we’d have done if it hadn’t been graduation night.
It was a small but significant milestone; at 16, I’d moved out of the house and into an apartment with a friend’s older brother, and while my parents didn’t agree with the decision, they supported it, as long as I stayed in school and worked hard, which I did.
I worked really hard; not only did I graduate a year early, but also with a full scholarship to college, and as an RA, I made enough money to live on and even save a little bit.
I was 17 when I graduated from high school, but no one cared about that.
I was in college when I learned how not to care about being lonely.
When you’re lonely enough, you’ll do things that aren’t good for you in an effort not to feel lonely anymore; at least for a little while.
That’s what happened to me, and by now it’s become a habit that’s hard to break.
I have a roster of men who are always willing to keep me company when I want it; it’s not hard to find someone willing to spend time with a pretty girl who doesn’t ask questions or make any demands.
There are plenty of other girls who can give them what they need in those ways if they need more than just a pretty face and some pleasant conversation, but so far none of them have had any interest in me after the superficial stuff has been covered.
It’s convenient for everyone involved—except that it makes me feel even more alone.
It’s easy for me not to care about that part anymore, about being alone—most days—because there are so many ways for me not to be alone, if that’s what I really wanted.
I keep my distance, not too close and never too far away, and nothing ever comes of it; not one of the men who’s been in my bed has ever wanted to get closer to me than that, and they all know better than to ask for more than that from me, because that’s not what they’re paying for, and that’s not the kind of girl I am anyway.
I have a million ways to distract myself from the emptiness; my job is just the most convenient one because it’s the only one that’s always there and it fills up all the hours in the day if I let it.
And I do let it—I’ve worked hard for everything I have, and the fact that I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted isn’t anyone’s fault but mine, so if this is how it has to be, then this is how it has to be.
I’m not afraid of hard work, or anything else for that matter, and I haven’t been since I was a little girl—just a little bit afraid of things like the dark or spiders, but everyone is a little bit afraid of things like that when they’re little—but I’m not anymore, and I don’t think I’ve been for a long time.I wasn’t afraid of working hard to get out of this town and make something of myself, and so I did, and now look at me.
I don’t remember exactly how long it took for me to get here, but it wasn’t as long as most people thought it would be—not as long as most people thought it should be—and it wasn’t as easy as most people thought it would be, but I didn’t really expect it to be.
If you work hard enough at anything, you’ll get what you want out of it eventually, and that’s something most people will never understand about me—that no matter how many hours a day my job takes up or how many days a week or months out of the year, if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes, and nothing else matters but getting the job done.
For most people, getting a job done is just about getting the job done; for me, it’s about everything else there is left to do when the job is done.
The only thing most people care about is getting paid at the end of the week, but money has never been enough for me; money is just money, after all, and there are so many other things worth having in this world besides that.
I don’t have time to stop and think about what most of those things are most of the time; my job doesn’t give me much of what you’d call free time—that’s free time that doesn’t come with strings attached, at least—but it gives me plenty of time to get done what needs getting done.
I’m not one of those people who spends half her day in bed because she can afford to do it or because she doesn’t have anything better to do; when I’m asleep in my bed, it’s because that’s the only place in the world where it’s safe for me to be.
When my alarm goes off in the morning—no later than five o’clock any day of the week—I get up and go running before it’s even light outside.
When I come back home, I take a shower and change into a suit and high heels before making myself breakfast with all the usual things you’d expect: two eggs over easy and three strips of bacon and two pieces of whole wheat toast and a glass of orange juice.
