The mask is off (not literally… because… pandemic…).

After an emotionally draining week of having one-on-one conversations with colleagues and co-workers, people that I consider family, I sent the firm-wide email on a Friday, letting the firm know that I loved them, but did not love being a lawyer, and it was time for me to see what was next. It was likely the longest “good-bye” email the firm has ever seen, but/and it was important to me that these people understood I wasn’t leaving because I hated them or because anyone had done anything awful—which can be the case when folks exit a law firm—but that it was because things were so good, that I knew this wasn’t for me.

The following Monday, I was getting ready to go into the office. I was doing all the things I normally do. Drink coffee, read, then shower, and get ready to head in. In many respects, it was just another day. But something stopped me in my tracks, and made me look at myself in my bathroom mirror. Something felt different. Like, really different. I stared into my own eyes, pausing to figure out what it was. Then it hit me.

I was happy. A weight that I didn’t know I had been carrying, was gone.

And in the office? The feeling stayed. I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I felt like I had taken off my mask (other than the KN95 that we are required to wear because… you know…). I didn’t have to pretend that this was the life I wanted. I stopped wondering what about me needed to be fixed because it had to be me that was broken if I couldn’t make this amazing life I had work. Instead, I accepted what my Higher Power, my gut, the Universe has been trying to tell me for a very long time: I don’t want to be a lawyer, and that’s okay.

There is a song by Marshmello and Demi Lavato called “It’s Okay Not to Be Okay.” I play this song a lot. And repeat the refrain to myself a lot: It’s okay not to be okay. And I do believe that’s true. I don’t think we’re meant to be happy all the time. Life is full of ups and downs, and as the pandemic has shown us, we have very little control about what happens in our lives. So it is okay not to be okay.

But I took it too far. I assumed I would always not be okay. What made me not okay was not obvious from the outside. I have an amazing, successful career. A beautiful house in an amazing neighborhood in Portland. I have “all the things” anyone could ever want. So the fact that I was unhappy or the fact that I didn’t actually want what I had, meant there was something wrong with me, and I was just going to be not okay, and I had to be okay with that.

Until I wasn’t. Yes, it’s okay not to be okay. But it is also okay to want to be okay. To want something different than what everyone tells you should. Whether everyone is family, friends, capitalism, commercialism, social media, whatever. And that’s what I learned this week. I learned what it feels like to trust myself, step off the path I was on that, while I am really good at it, is just not for me. And that’s okay. I learned what it feels like to start making a path of my own. And it feels fucking brilliant.