Stress Education

Miami, Florida. Fall 2012.

Awake.

I get perhaps one second before the anxiety sets in, a weight that I can physically feel on my chest and my arms, pushing me into the mattress.

It is also like someone takes a syringe and injects some strange juice into my heart, as I can feel it begin to tickle in an unpleasant way inside my chest. The intensity increases in waves. It makes me wonder if my entire existence is part of some experiment by an alien intelligence.

“He’s awake now. Let’s see how he reacts to this…” the alien says… At this early morning moment, feeling the invisible but very real pressure on my chest and arms, that possibility seems as rational to me as any religious belief.

I lay there in bed for a few moments, then turn my head to the side and look at my alarm clock.

I exhale an expletive.

It is 6:14 am, one minute before my radio alarm goes off. This happens all the time. I rarely get the luxury of waking up, looking at the clock, and realizing that I still have hours to roll over and go back to sleep if I want.

Click 6:15 and Latin music comes on.

“Breathe in, breathe out,” I say to myself.

Somehow, I do not remember exactly when, the alarm clock gets turned off and I come to be standing beside the bed. I try hopping up and down on the cold, hard floor, to shake off the anxiety. It does not work.

I walk to my bathroom and flip on the light.

Now I am in the shower, the hot water pouring down on my face and chest. Still the anxiety is there, making it difficult to move and function.

“This is a war,” I say. “Every morning, now, it is a war to get going.”

I put both my hands high and flat against the shower wall, and I lean down to let the water pound on the back of my head.

“Breathe in, breathe out,” I say. “The first battle is to get through this shower. Then we shave, brush our teeth, and then we get dressed. Don’t look at your emails until you’ve gotten those things accomplished.”

As I shave, I study my face in the mirror. The crows’ feet are more prominent, I suppose, and underneath my eyes the skin is looking less taut and thinner. Also, it seems like I have more fat under my chin- like it has filled out compared to just a short time ago. I wish that I had a stronger jaw line.

Still, I think of myself as being 23 years old. It is depressingly shocking on occasion when I see myself in profile on store surveillance cameras and monitors. “Who is that…man?” I think. “That guy is not 23, no sir! Is that what I look like when I go up to girls at the bar? Jeez!”

I put on some pants and a white t-shirt, and study my torso in the mirror.

Just as disturbing to me as my face is my belly. I have a bit of a gut, now, made quite prominent by the tightness of the shirt. My belly sticks out farther than my chest, despite the fact that I do push-ups and go for three mile runs multiple times each week.

I read somewhere that stress alone can cause fat, and I think this is what has happened.

“I need to make a note of this,” I say out loud. “At the age of 35, my education in how to handle long term stress began.”

I power through the day. I power through the year in Miami.

Mom and Dad are the only people whom I tell about my daily battles with anxiety. I have taken to calling them every day, now, as I need someone to talk to. They tell me to make sure that I eat healthy, go to bed early, and keep exercising. Dad, a psychology major in college, encourages me to go see a doctor as well, to discuss the possibility of anti-anxiety medication. I take a pass on that suggestion, though. As much as it might help, and as much as I understand that many people need those drugs, I do not want to become one of them. To go on anti-anxiety medication would be a depressing admission for me- that my existence is so painful that I need to be drugged up just to get through my day.

“Dad, I really think it is just the job that is causing this,” I tell him. “I don’t remember feeling this way when I was in the courtroom in Kissimmee.”



***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Awake.

I can hear the birds chirping outside my window. I smile.

I roll over and look at my alarm clock. 6:14 it reads.

I exhale an expletive.

One minute before the radio alarm goes off. The mornings are tough. I have never been and will never be a morning person.

But the anxiety is gone, now. It is difficult to get going, but it is not an absolute war like it was this time last year in Miami.

Click 6:15 and talk radio turns on.

I roll out of bed, turn off the radio and check Facebook on my phone to see who has birthdays today.

There is no dread to my upcoming day. I have confidence in what I do, and I do not mind going into work.

Unfortunately, my gut is still there when I look at myself in the mirror, as is the fleshy part underneath my chin. My body is no longer responding to exercise the way that it did just two years ago. There is stress to this job, and I know there is no going back to the days when I was a student. Still, I am happy, and I know that I am lucky to be where I am.

Earlier this week, I finally got promoted to felony court. I have been ready for that for some time. I think I was ready before I even took the job in Live Oak, due to my year of experience with jury trials in Kissimmee.

Openings in this office tend to be rare, though. I am now one of only two felony attorneys for all of Suwannee County. My counterpart has been in his position for something like 15 years. The other two felony attorneys in the Live Oak office handle the outer counties of the circuit. They have been with the office for 30 and 20 years, respectively. So yes, I am lucky to become a felony attorney after only seven months in Live Oak. I hope to stay in this slot for a long time and to make a career here.

When I got the word this week that I am headed to felony court, I also received a warning from my colleagues.

The stakes are higher, now, they said. You’re going to be dealing with people who are going to prison for a long time. The level of emotion that they bring in these cases will be ratcheted up as well. Some people will be hysterical, others will be angry, others will be in denial. You know this…

I do know it.

My coworkers told me to make sure to take a day off every now and again. “Mental health days” is how one of my colleagues referred to it.

My life is about to get more stressful. But I take pride in being a felony attorney and getting the very serious cases. Stress has a long way to go before it reaches the level that I was facing in Miami or when I worked for the Post Office in Alexandria. One huge advantage that I did not have in Miami or Alexandria is that I know I am good at what I do. There has never been any indecision about how I should handle a case or a trial- at least not yet. These clients will want Nathan Marshburn on their case, if they are smart.

The door is now open for the pursuit of other things as well, like becoming a board certified criminal trial expert and perhaps serving as second chair on some murder trials where the State is seeking the death penalty.

I look forward to the challenge. I think I will remain happy, and this will be another, less tense chapter in my education on how to handle long term stress.

Pain, Happiness and The Paper Chase

Tallahassee, Florida. The Summer of 2009

“You’ve never seen The Paper Chase?” the attorney asks me.

I shake my head no.

“Oh, it’s great. There’s a scene where one of the guys is trying to give his outline to his friends, and the wind takes it. He freaks out because his whole semester’s work gets scattered everywhere.”

“I’ll have to check that out,” I say.

“Yeah, it’s a great movie about law school.”

***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day

I use the DVR (Digital Video Recording) feature on my satellite TV subscription extensively. Pretty much all I watch now is sports and recorded movies. I enjoy being able to record a film off the Turner Classic Movie Channel at 2am, and then watch it at my leisure later. My DVR memory space is completely filled up with classic movies, so that now when I record one, I have to decide which movie I must delete in order to create enough memory space. It is a difficult decision.

Thanks to the DVR, I recorded and then watched The Paper Chase this week.

The attorney whom I worked for in the summer of 2009 was right, it is pretty spot-on as to what the first year of law school felt like.



Granted, the film is about Harvard Law School, and I went to Florida State University. Also, a big part of the story is a romance. I never enjoyed a romance in law school, not with a girl like Lindsay Wagner, not with anyone. Still, the brightest people whom I have ever met in my life were in Tallahassee during those three years, from 2008 to 2011.

John Houseman’s performance as the Contracts Professor was highly entertaining. My own Contracts professor ran his class much the same way. He was younger and more energetic than Houseman, but after watching the movie, I would bet my professor borrowed a few things from Houseman’s performance.



The movie stirred up some painful memories for me, though. The scenes with the study group and how the students divided up the outlines were particularly intense and accurate. I could actually picture specific students with whom I went to school saying some of the lines of the actors.

In the movie, I would have been one of the guys who got kicked out of the study group for failing to make a useful outline. Outlining was a key to success in law school, yet I never made a single one. I never figured out how to do it, or maybe my brain just did not work that way.

My first year of law school, I joined a study group with what would turn out to be some of the best students in my entire graduating class. I talked a lot that first semester in the study group, perhaps more than anyone in the group.

I remember arriving at the school library one night, to continue my studying. As I walked up the stairs, I saw the students from my study group coming down the stairs, carrying an empty pizza box. It was obvious that they had just finished a study session, and they had not invited me. It stung even more because I had some pretty strong affection for one of the girls in the group. They realized that they were caught, but they did not know what to say, so we kind of awkwardly passed each other. I trudged up to the library.



After the first semester, I really did not participate in study groups. I succeeded in large part by finding the student who booked the class (made the highest grade) the semester or the year before, getting his or her outline, and taking notes on top of it. Though using others' outlines is perfectly acceptable and widespread in law school, some of these students from whom I got the outline resented me a little, I think.

Most of whatever success I had at grades, though, came from hard work. I out-studied a lot of students who were smarter than me. In the end, I managed to graduate with honors, inside the top 25% of my class. I also booked three classes during law school. The number of students in those three classes were significantly smaller than our first year classes or the required course after the first year, Constitutional Law II, but I was proud of the fact that I did not use anyone else's notes but my own to achieve the highest grade those three times.

Overall, law school was a fantastic experience. I am glad that I went to Florida State University. The fact that I could not prepare a good outline, though, and the fact that I am not a great legal writer and thus failed to make the law review, foreshadowed that I would not be successful in a large swath of what constitutes law practice. As the dean of my law school said on occasion, the practice of law is a literary endeavor. Most lawyers spend their lives performing research, drafting and editing documents, and writing memos. What is more, they do this in measured, six minute increments called the billable hour system.

My brain cannot function in such a system. I tried it, and I was miserable living my life that way.

The highest point, and the most important single victory that I scored in law school, was the night that I made the Mock Trial Team. I have written about that experience before. It opened up an avenue of employment for me- that of a trial lawyer- and barring any unforeseen incidents, criminal trial law is what I will do for my career. The research in criminal law, at least at the trial level, is typically low hanging fruit. It comes easier to me than research in civil litigation. More often than not, too, the case is not won on legal research, but rather arguing the facts in front of a jury. There is more room in my mind to be creative in that kind of game.

Just as important, one can practice criminal law without use of the billable hour system, in either private practice or as a Public Defender or State Attorney. This was not depicted in The Paper Chase, though.

Unfortunately, The Paper Chase brought back the memory of the single lowest point in my law school years…

I worked as a mentor in a summer program for the law school, to help incoming 1Ls (first year students) adjust to what they would be facing. My fellow three mentors were some of the best and brightest at the school, members of the law review.

As part of the program, the mentors were to grade a mock law school exam taken by the incoming students. To make sure that we as mentors were on point with our grading, we took the exam first and had it graded by one of the top faculty members at the school.

I cannot remember all of the details, as I have actively tried to forget the incident in the years since it happened. But the next day after the professor graded the four exams, we came in and my three colleagues had theirs handed back to them by a staff assistant, along with their scores.

The staff assistant told me that the professor who graded the exams wanted to see me in private, though. So I left the room, with my friends looking on at me curiously.

Again, I cannot remember the exact dialogue, but I do remember the professor calling me on the carpet to basically question my intellectual abilities. He gave me a look like he was wondering how I ever got admitted to his school, and he told me to go off and review the copies of the other three mentors’ exams so that I might learn what an answer should look like.

It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life, and I am sure my face was bright red when I walked back into the room with the other mentors and we had to discuss our scores.

My dad later asked me over the phone how I did on that practice exam, and I snapped at him some angry response. Dad left it alone after my answer.

I suppose that anecdote could be humorous if told the right way.

All in all, though, I am happy with my life and career and what law school has done for me. I wish working as a government trial lawyer paid more money, but it is nice to wake up each morning and feel confidence in what I do.

Unlike the top students in my law school who enjoyed success at any number of activities, time and experience have taught me that there are precious few things in this world that I am good at. But trial law is one of them.

Though I suspect I will always battle butterflies and nerves bubbling up in court, I have no fear of going to trial. I have no fear of losing trials, though of course it is disappointing when it happens. I have no fear of who the other attorneys might be, I do not care who the other attorneys are, or if there is one attorney or twenty lined up against me. I feel like, given and equal set of facts, with the law and judge being neutral, I can beat anyone in the world in front of a jury. I do not care if that sounds arrogant. In front of a jury, I can beat the professor who thought I did not belong in law school. The courtroom is my room.

That makes me happy.

A History of Dog Bites

Lumberton, North Carolina. Fall 1998.

I drive my Nissan truck up the driveway of a home in the countryside of Robeson County. I know the house belongs to my old school principal. He is probably at work, now.

A white German Shepherd sits on the front porch of the house, quietly watching me, its ears perked up and alert.

I have no fear of dogs. I like dogs better than I like people, for the most part, and I certainly understand dogs better than I understand people. So I get out of my truck with no hesitation, I can see that the German Shepherd does not know what to make of me, its “fight or flight” instincts teetering back and forth.

“It’s all right, buddy,” I say.

The principal’s wife opens the door and steps out of the house as I get out of the truck. I hold up my identification card.

“Hello ma’am,” I say. “I’m working for the Census Bureau. I just need to verify the address of the house here.”

She comes down off the steps, and the dog follows her. He sits by her side looking up at me. I make a clicking noise at him, and his ears flatten for a moment in response. I assume he is satisfied that I am not a threat, now, because he casually walks off behind me.

The principal’s wife tells me the address to the home. I ask her a few more questions off my clipboard.

Suddenly, I feel a pinch on my Achilles tendon.

I turn and look down. The white German Shepherd has sneaked up behind me, very low to the ground.

“You bit me!” I say to the dog in disbelief.

The dog slinks away.



I look at the woman, and I am sure that the expression on my face shows her that I want an explanation. She looks back at me, her own expression a combination of shock at what her dog has done and concern over what I am going to do.

I decide not to make a big deal of it. Later that day, I look at my heel. There is redness and a small bruise, but it does not appear that he broke the skin.

***

Rochester, New York. June 2004.

The company that I work for is behind on its security clearance investigations in Rochester. As I am one of the few investigators who is single and without kids, I volunteer for these month long “details” in other parts of the country.

Part of my job as investigator is to go out to the places where the subject lives or has lived and find neighbors who will talk to me about them.

I knock on the screen door of a middle class home in a neat little Rochester community. A cute girl walks up from inside the house. I show her my badge and explain who I am.

She smiles at me and pushes open the door, holding it open with her hand.

I hear a dog barking inside the house. Suddenly, it comes flying out from inside, launching into the air, and biting me square on the left quad muscle above the knee. He bounces of and lands on his feet on the concrete.

“Oh my gosh!” the girl exclaims.

I am too surprised to react much. The dog and I exchange looks with each other, me looking down at him, him looking up at me. Then the dog simply turns and casually walks off, as if to say, “That’s right, I did it.” He disappears back into the house.

I am more amused by the whole situation than anything else, and I have to crack a smile. The young girl is too cute and friendly for me to get irritated.

Still, when I get back to the Strathallen Hotel, I look at my leg and see a neat circle of teeth marks. He broke the skin in a couple of places. I call my boss about a worker’s comp claim.

“I doubt anything will happen,” I say, “but I want to put you on notice, just in case I start foaming at the mouth.”

***

Western Carolina University. Spring 2008.

“Your legs are so skinny. Is that why you never where shorts?” asks a girl whom I’ve taken out on a date a few times.

She has a talent for making these off-hand comments that cut me down. It is strange for her to say this in front of everyone. She has seen my legs before.

“Well, you should know that my legs are not my best feature,” I answer.

She blushes.

It is a beautiful day, sunny and warm. It is also one of the last events of the school year for the Graduate Student Association. I have made a number friends and had some of the best times of my life with the people in this group.

We have a cookout going in the picnic area at the lower end of campus.

I toss a Frisbee with my insult prone girl friend and a couple of other guys.

One of her tosses goes wide, up under the picnic pavilion. I sprint to catch it and stop short on the concrete.
A young dog, not much more than a puppy, is tied up on a leash to one of the picnic tables. I can tell immediately that I have frightened it, and I can see the fight instinct welling up in its face.

This dog is going to attack me, I think to myself. But I cannot back up fast enough out of the range of the leash length.

A split second later, it snarls and lunges at me. Just like the dog in Rochester, it bites me on the quad above my left knee. I step off the pavilion.

“Wow!” one of the guys exclaims. “Did he bite you?”

“Yeah, he sure did,” I respond.

A different girl, the one who owns the dog, comes running up, a shocked expression on her face from what her pet just did.

This bite has broken the skin as well, and I have to wash it out in the picnic area restrooms.

It does not ruin the day or my mood, however.

The day is one of the best of my life, actually, and I am aware of that fact at that time.

***

Miami, Florida. Early 2013.

I walk between the buildings of my apartment complex, on my way to the Dadeland Mall next door and the food court to buy some dinner.

A young woman has a miniature Doberman Pinscher out for a walk. It must be a female dog, as it is in a cute little pink harness. They both have their back to me, and it is getting dark quickly in these winter shortened days.

“Don’t let me scare you,” I say as I get close.

The girl turns and smiles at me.

The little dog, though, snaps around and snarls. It runs at me, pulling hard at the harness and the leash.

“Trixie!” the girl scolds.

Then the dog manages to wiggle and slip free of the harness.

Uh-oh.

“Trixie!” the girl gasps.

I could punt Trixie over a nearby fence if I wanted, but I decide not to. Instead, I attempt to hop over the dog as she rushes up to me, but it is no good.

Determined to get me, the dog keeps jumping until she bites me hard on the left thigh right below my buttocks. Then she runs over into the grass a few yards away and hunkers down.



“Trixie! Bad dog!” the girl says as she goes over to the MinPin.

Trixie cowers in front of her as she pops the dog on the behind. Then she picks up the dog. I see one of its eyes is blue with no pupil.

“Ah, it’s blind in one eye,” I say.

“Yeah…I am so sorry,” the girl says.

I reach out my hand part way as I consider trying to pet the dog, but then I think better of it.

The girl wants to get away, and I let her. She goes back to her ground level apartment, quickly shutting the door behind her.

I continue on to the mall and get a to-go plate. Once I get back to my apartment, I examine the injury. Yep, this one broke the skin in several places through my blue jeans. Over the next few days, a nasty bruise develops as well.

I tell my parents the story, and they keep telling me to go see a doctor. I never do, though, and it eventually heals up with no problems.

***

Live Oak, Florida. December 2013.

One of the best places to eat in town is the Brown Lantern Restaurant.

My coworkers and I arrive there for lunch, not long before the Christmas holiday. Lots of trucks are parked outside, far more trucks than cars.

In the back of a white truck is a black Labrador Retriever. I can tell when the five of us get out of the car that this is not a friendly dog. It wants to be left alone. This is rare. The breed is normally very friendly.

Nevertheless, one of my coworkers, an avid hunter, goes up to the animal.

“Hey, what nice looking dog you are,” he says.

He too, can sense the dog. “You’re not very sociable, are you?” he asks it.

He reaches out and lightly touches the dog on the back of the head. When that is okay, he begins petting the dog on the ears.
The Lab enjoys this immensely, closing it eyes and leaning into the man’s hand.

After a few moments, my coworker lets go and everyone continues walking toward the restaurant entrance.

Well, I want to pet the dog, too.

“Hey, buddy,” I say to it.

I stick my left hand into the bed of the truck for the dog to smell my scent. It does not sniff it, but stands with its head askance, which should have been another warning.

Keeping my hand low, I move to pet him in his side. Suddenly the dog snaps at my hand, putting a puncture wound in the top and an even larger puncture wound into my palm.

Two of my coworkers see this happen. One grimaces, the other bursts out laughing.

I have to laugh, too, at my own stupidity.

My hand is bleeding pretty well. The dog just stares at me, now, a determined “Take that” look on its face.



What else is there to do? We go inside and I wash my hand in the restroom sink. I can tell this is the worst dog bite that I have had. It is hard to get it to stop bleeding, and it hurts to move my fingers.

I go out and ask one of the waitresses if they have a bandage. She believes that they do.

I go and sit down with my coworkers, holding my hand in some napkins, trying not to ruin their appetite. My own appetite is gone.

One of the waitresses comes to our table with some band aids.

“I was told there is a guy in a suit who is bleeding,” she says.

“That’s me,” I say.

She gives me the band aids.

The Brown Lantern is my usual Friday night hangout, and I have settled into the bar numerous times since moving to Live Oak in June.

After the waitress leaves, I remark, “As many times as I’ve been here and as many conversations as I’ve had with these waitresses, I’m still just ‘a guy in a suit.’”

This draws a laugh from my coworkers.

“You know, dogs are supposed to be pretty good judges of character,” one of them says.

Back at the office after lunch, the secretaries hook me up with hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin.

The wounds heal with no problems and I can move my digits like normal, though the scars are still present as I type this blog entry.

Live Oak Bike Rides

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Several things have given me real pleasure since moving to Live Oak last summer. One of them is my mountain bike.

As small as Live Oak is, Wal-Mart is the only place that I know of to purchase a nice, new bike. Though I would have preferred to go to some locally owned bike shop in Tallahassee or Lake City, I drive a car with a rear spoiler, which is not conducive to a bike rack on the trunk.

The easiest thing for me to do was to jog the three miles down to Wal-Mart, wallet in hand, buy the bike, and then ride it back.

This is what I did. Only, I was riding through the streets of Live Oak on the way back to my house, I noticed that the seat felt like it was closer to the handle bars than what I was used to. My stomach, hips and knees were all more compressed. Also, the handle bars themselves seemed shorter, and I found myself wanting to grip the very outer parts of the rubber handles.

When I got home, upon reading the manual, I discovered that I had purchased a woman’s bike.

So I rode it back and exchanged it for the largest mountain bike on the rack, the Genesis TwoNiner. It has 29 inch wheels, larger than any bike I ever rode as I kid. When I stand up on the pedals, I am significantly taller than on the bikes with 26 inch wheels.



Though the Genesis TwoNiner does not coast as well as I would like, it has opened up a new world for me. That first Saturday with it, I rode for six hours straight, out of the city south toward Branford and the Suwannee River boundary for the county.

This place truly is rural. I can go in any direction from my house, and within short order be riding my bike down dirt roads, past cotton fields and horse or cow pastures. Not many cars pass me on these county roads.



The size of some of the farms that I ride past is very impressive, with big plantation style homes and fields that stretch almost to the horizon. Lots of people in Live Oak drive the huge trucks, Chevy Silverados, Ford F150s or F250s. Out here, the farmers put those vehicles to work.



I have been chased by a couple of big dogs during my rides through the countryside, of course. One dog was not that serious and let me outrun him.

The other, though, obviously just had puppies, which were running around in the yard. The fur and skin on top of the mother’s snout wrinkled up in a snarl and she locked eyes with me. I had to dismount and use my bike as a shield in a standoff until the owner came running out and retrieved the bitch.



After that incident, I purchased a small canister of pepper spray to carry in my pocket, though I would prefer not to mace a nursing mother.

Each time I ride past a cow pasture, all the cows in the field stop eating the grass and stare at me. A couple of young calves came to the electric wire fence to check me out as I rode by one afternoon. When I got close, I had to laugh as they took off running away from me.

One of the most beautiful sunsets that I have ever seen was from my bike as I rode here in Suwannee County, looking out over a pasture with cows and a stand of oak trees.

The days are much shorter now than when I first purchased the bike in the fall. So I bought some lights for my bike, a white head light for the handle bars and a red light for over the rear reflector, and now I am the Knight Rider. I got to see most of the Christmas light decorations in Live Oak in December, exploring the small neighborhoods after dark on my bike.

It occurs to me that many of my hobbies are solitary pursuits: Bike riding, star gazing with my telescope, jogging, writing blog entries and a novel. I usually go to the local bars alone as well.

Though I hope to be able to play softball again in the summer, which will of course be a team activity, I am used to being by myself. I do not get bored. I have said in the past that it would be nice to have a female for company every so often. But this is a pretty happy time in my life, and things are cruising along. My parents are in fairly good health, and I try to enjoy their company for as long as that can last.

As the sun begins to set later each day again, I will look forward to more bike rides through town and through the countryside of Suwannee County, watching more sunsets over fields, pastures and oak trees.