LOVE ME LIKE ART

2

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Zachary A. Choi

I'VE ONLY EVER wanted to be one thing.

A lawyer.

To be part of those illustrious stories I heard, from my dad Atiko growing up, on what it was like live and breathe in that chaos where two days were never the same.

He propagated that it was a job of discipline and if I had any ill discipline, I should try my hand at something else. It would be a job that would bleed and rival my own affairs, no matter how studious or intentional I am about creating some sort of balance.

I understood all the reasons why he felt he had to dissuade me and instead encourage that I take up a career in one of the Big 4's financial firms.

At 17, I was nonchalant, the way most teenagers transitioning in young adulthood often are.

But my mind always returned to this flag post.

It felt like an impossible dream of mine that would torture me like a black shadow. It felt like a tempting wedge of meat dangled in front of me, silently taunting me with all the ways I would never be able to have it.

I had waited weeks for my admission letter in the post to the University of Manchester, my dad's alumna. It was a university that could boast that its lawyers were all the very best—a growing legion of reputable district judges, criminal and civil barristers and solicitors that were transforming the landscape of the legal profession.

That letter, offering me their congratulations, didn't come. Instead, what came was a letter offering their immense regret that I was unsuccessful in my admission.

That was the day that my dreams felt implausible.

But, as I sit in this glass corner office that offers me sweeping views of the city's bustle, I realise that those dreams have bloomed into bountiful fruit. I am all the things that I told myself I would be.

A lawyer.

I envelope the handle of my mug of black coffee. It is a nutty-brown elixir, no sugar, no milk. It wafts up towards my nose and brews hot lines of steam.

I am poring through this divorce brief with passages and passages of legal text that require my input. My client is hoping to come to some sort of financial settlement against the Respondent who is her absent, pending ex-husband. He's offering her alimony to recompense her for her role as home-maker, as she gave up hers to facilitate his.

I make the assessment, on first glance, that it will put her and her children in good, financial stead. I want to make sure, though, that there are no clauses that might cause a war to spill later on.

Because these women that I represent are often forgotten, not by me. But, by the person who once upon a time promised that they would love them from infinity to infinity.

They are blighted by that same love.

They stay when the writing is on the walls, dressed in the biggest of letters. I have seen in both correspondence and in teary confessions how these women have abandoned everything to advance the careers of these unfaithful men.

I am nothing but a facilitator, helping to kickstart lives that have been buried underneath the rubble.

My mum always used to worry that because of where I'm placed, I'd form a derisory view on marriage.

Sometimes, I do but I know too many people living off its fruits for that to be a thought that stays with me.

I experienced it, once.