New Normal

As I sat reading my homework outside the other night, I was nearly run over by two squirrels squabbling across the deck.  When they realized I was there, one turned tail and fled. The other faced me, fluffed its fur, and stared as if to say, “What are you doing on my deck?” It seemed to be contemplating whether I could be frightened off like its fleeing cohort. I stared back, halfway between amusement at being stared down by a squirrel and relief it hadn't clawed up my leg.

Welcome to my new normal.

I feel like I've been in a fog for a few weeks. I hadn't realized this until one day when I was looking through my fridge and pantry and saw I had nothing much beyond survival food (Fruit by the Foot, granola bars, string cheese…). I wondered how I could have gone to the grocery store without getting something along the line of actual meals. Then as I thought over the last month, it seemed there had been a cloud around me, obscuring everything but the bare necessities. No wonder all I had were jelly beans, apples, and saltine crackers.

But now I feel I’m finally settling into a routine. In evidence of my return to normalcy, I drove to school without having to worry about when to make the next turn, I’m able to have conversations without an undercurrent train of thought reminding me that I’m in Virginia, and I got through my homework without feeling like I’d forgotten to read something. Maybe having a routine gives me time to feel normal.

Of course, by normal I don’t mean I’m used to everything. I was still surprised to see geese around the lake (and hesitant to run through the flock; I've had a mild fear of geese since a goose bit my sister when we were little); I still find the bugs & spiders/people  ratio in Virginia unnecessarily high; and the law school learning curve still feels like a 10% grade. But it doesn't feel like a different world anymore.

It’s nice to be able to wrap my head around the various subjects and feel like I have a general (if unfocused) view of how everything fits together, in school and in life. I was listening to the class this week when a part of me stepped back and delighted in how the sentence my professor had just spoken would have been almost incomprehensible to me two weeks previously.

I’m still occasionally surprised to find myself in law school, but it’s starting to feel like home.