I Just Want To Save You

THOUGHTS OUTSIDE THE OFFICE

This morning, I am getting dressed for court for a murder case, and I am crying. Not the dignified kind of crying where one tear rolls down your cheek and somehow your mascara remains untouched. I mean crying. Wailing, really. The kind where you have to get it all out before you start putting your face on because once the makeup goes on, there is no more time for feelings. There is court. There are clients. There are lawyers with more experience than me, some of whom have tried capital cases. There are people watching. There is a job to do. So I have learned something that I suspect a lot of professional women learn eventually: if you are going to fall apart, do it before the mascara, because once the mascara goes on, the armor goes on with it.

Yesterday, a woman sitting in my office was warning me about someone she believed might be dangerous. She told me that before I let money change hands or had this person come into my office, I might want to have a sheriff’s deputy there to protect me. While she was talking, I remember thinking, Ma’am, I sit alone in rooms with alleged killers every single week. I think I’m probably good. Which is funny, and probably a little ridiculous, but this morning, sitting here crying while getting dressed to walk into a courtroom and defend someone accused of killing another human being, that conversation keeps running through my head. The things that scare me apparently are not always the things other people think should scare me.

I can walk into a jail. I can sit across a table from someone accused of something terrible. I can walk into a courtroom full of people who know more than I do and stand up anyway. I can argue, fight, take the phone call, make the decision and solve the problem. I have spent most of my life being very, very good at being the person who can handle it. And then, for reasons I cannot entirely explain, this morning I started thinking about something that happened almost twenty years ago.

When I was probably nineteen, twenty, maybe twenty-one, I dated a man who had already experienced an extraordinary amount of tragedy for someone so young. His father had been killed in a motorcycle accident. His mother had Lou Gehrig’s disease and later passed away. When he was in high school, he had been driving a car involved in a wreck that killed his best friend. He carried trauma in a way that was obvious even then. I did too, although I would not have called it that at the time. I had just been through a terrible breakup, and ulcerative colitis had made me so sick that I had to leave college for a quarter and move back home because I could not take care of myself.

I remember one day being outside by the pool at my parents’ house when he came up to me and said something I have apparently carried around in the back of my brain for almost two decades: “I just want to save you.” I was furious. Not outwardly, maybe. I do not remember exactly what I said, but I remember precisely what I thought: Motherfucker, the day I need a man to save me is the day you can put me in the ground. I was offended. Deeply offended. Save me? From what? I could take care of myself. I would take care of myself. I did not need a man riding in to rescue me. I did not need anybody believing that I was fragile or helpless or incapable of surviving my own life. I would save my damn self.

And for the most part, I did. For almost twenty years, I have done exactly that. I have built a career. I have walked into courtrooms scared and stood up anyway. I have raised children. I have survived sickness. I have buried people. I have lost people who were still alive. I have built things, rebuilt things and dragged myself through days when I did not have enough left to drag. I have become very skilled at rescuing myself.

And this morning, at thirty-eight years old, sitting here crying before I put on my mascara so I can go defend an alleged killer, I cannot stop thinking about that boy standing beside a swimming pool saying, “I just want to save you.” My God, what I would give for someone to walk through the door and say that to me now. I think I would run straight into his arms. I think I would hold on and refuse to let go. I think if somebody walked through my door right now and said, “You do not have to do all of this by yourself anymore,” there is a very real possibility I would follow that man anywhere.

Maybe that is precisely why I have spent so much of my life determined not to need anybody, because I know myself. Underneath all this independence and stubbornness and competence is a woman who, when she finally lets someone carry something, wants very badly to put the whole damn load down. That scares me more than sitting across from most dangerous people ever could. At twenty, I thought wanting to be saved meant weakness. At thirty-eight, I understand something I could not have understood then.

Sometimes wanting someone to save you has nothing to do with being incapable of saving yourself. Sometimes you are perfectly capable. Sometimes you have proven that fact so many times that nobody in the room would dare question it. Sometimes you can handle the case, the children, the office, the bills, the crisis, the grief, the decisions and whatever fresh disaster crawls through the door before lunch. And sometimes you are just tired. Sometimes “save me” does not mean take over my life. It means please carry something. Please make one decision. Please stand between me and one problem. Please tell me I do not have to be the strongest person in the room for the next ten minutes. Please give me somewhere safe enough to finally stop performing strength.

Maybe twenty-year-old me was not stronger than I am now. Maybe she simply had not carried enough yet. This morning I will finish crying, wash my face, put on the makeup, get dressed and walk into that courtroom. When I do, nobody looking at me will have any idea that a few hours earlier I was sitting at home thinking about a sentence spoken beside a swimming pool almost twenty years ago. The armor will work. It always does.

But for the first time in my life, I think I finally understand what he meant. And for the first time in my life, I wish I had known then that being loved enough for someone to want to save you was not an accusation that you were weak. Maybe sometimes it was simply someone saying, “You have carried enough. Let me carry you for a little while.”

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney-at-Law

Hampton Law Firm

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