Catharsis

Catharsis


1. Medicine Purgation, especially for the digestive system.

2. A purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, especially pity and fear, described by Aristotle as an effect of tragic drama on its audience.

3. A release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit.

4. Psychology

a. A technique used to relieve tension and anxiety by bringing repressed feelings and fears to consciousness.

b. The therapeutic result of this process; abreaction.



I was glancing at some of the many “Bar Exam Blogs” a moment ago, mostly out of habit that any other reason. It feels so irresponsible to not be studying for the bar exam still. My bookshelves sit empty of the dozens and dozens of volumes of bar review material, and I wonder what I can put there in their place.



My existence also has empty space, left vacant by the news on November 20, 2009, that I have indeed passed the California Bar Exam. I also ponder what I might fill that space with, now that its no longer full of emotional tension and overwhelming experience.



So I’m looking at these videos of people checking their bar exam results and the first thing that stands out to me is that there are no videos of people finding out they did not pass. I suppose no one wants to post that kind of thing online? I know I deleted my first video of checking results (and not passing).



Anyway, I had to stop looking at the videos because I was getting all cathartic again. It seems that moment gets burned into your emotional core forever. Or at least for a few months.



It is true that I have experienced a purifying cleansing of emotions, particularly fear. Certainly there has been a release of emotional tension following a clear overwhelming experience – taking the California Bar Exam three times.



The attorney in my firm has now called me “an attorney in the firm” three or four times. A very restorative and refreshing moment to say the least.



Therapeutically speaking, my tension and anxiety is banished with no lingering repressed feelings or fears.



Overall, learning that I passed the bar has been rather uneventful on the surface. My job is the same as it was before. My life is really not that much different – other than the 12 hour study days are now over. I’m not very different than I was before. On the surface anyway.



I discovered that taking the bar exam is an experience that cannot be adequately described to someone who has not themselves also taken a bar exam. Its simply not possible to put it into language. As much as I would love to yell “Taste It Bitches!!!” you just can’t.



So too is passing the bar exam. As I have been sharing the news that I passed, I am discovering that I cannot express the experience of passing the bar exam to those who have not also passed a bar exam. Its simply too big for words. In fact I could not even speak in the moments following that click of a button that brought the news to me that my name was found on the pass list.



I think its safe to say that it hasn’t fully sunk in for me yet. I still look at the pass list once or twice a week just to see my name there, but I don’t get emotional over that anymore.



But watching the video of someone getting their bar exam results puts me right back in that moment on Friday, November 20, 2009, a little after 7:00 p.m.



Time stopped. Literally, because I pulled out the crown of my “bar exam watch” that I had been using to keep track of time during the exams. That watch will never again be used for anything other than as a memento of catharsis.



I have a new watch now.



I have a new life now, and a future that I have not been able to see because of the limitations of law school and the bar exam.



I am writing in the pages of my life in ink, not pencil. And dammit I’m using a MontBlanc pen instead of some crappy Pilot gel.