If you obey all the rules, you miss half the fun. – Katharine Hepburn
Starting in a new office on a new beat was not a big deal. Walking in every day with what I felt was a scarlet letter on my chest was a little more challenging. The women, particularly the married ones, took a long time to let me into their circle. Who could blame them? I was tainted. Oddly enough, my former boss seemed to suffer none of the same repercussions. I, not he, was blamed almost entirely for the scandal. Oh well, what can you do about people’s reactions to a thing like that? We all have our opinions. For my part, I simply refused to show fear or even concern for what anyone thought. The pep talk from my new editor meant the world to me. He was going to judge me not on past behavior but by how hard I worked to get the scoops for him. It was music to the ears of an obsessive overachiever like me. Pleasing that editor – by breaking the biggest stories and beating the competition - became my chief goal in life. I slapped on the confident, upbeat exterior I’d perfected!
over the years and threw myself into my work.
I was on the cop beat so it was easy to stay busy. Fires, murders, political scandal – we had it all and I loved every minute of it. So did my editors, who knew they could count on me to go to any length to get the story. Any time of the day or night, I’d run out to a crime scene and wait hours for the smallest detail other reporters might miss. “How many dead?” my editor would ask when I walked in after the police briefing every morning. It is comical to me now but I developed a bit of a reputation as a pit bull reporter, never letting go until I got the story. I’d always been a bit of a crisis junkie and the job fueled my hunger for excitement. I had my 15 minutes of fame after I interviewed a cop killer just minutes before a SWAT team stormed the gas station where he was holding a woman hostage. I developed good sources and often knew things before the cops did. I felt powerful, in control and loved it.
Looking back, I’m pretty sure I was using my position to mask anything else that might be going on inside. With all the chaos on my beat, there was no need to deal with or even acknowledge any internal chaos. The job suited me perfectly. I lived and breathed the news. If I wasn’t chasing stories, I was out with other reporters who drank as much as I did and tried to outdo each other with their wit and war stories. It was an exhausting but exhilarating pace.
The whirlwind – at least for me – came to an end the summer my best friend’s parents – a second family to me - died. I kept working but moved through each day like a zombie. Drinking, isolation and feverish work encompassed my world for months. The change in me was obvious to co-workers and friends but I refused any offers of help. I preferred to endure my pain in solitude.
The editor I’d fallen in love with two years earlier appeared again and came to my rescue, at least temporarily. In short, he had divorced his wife after she revealed that she preferred women to men. That explained a lot and somehow, I felt vindicated, though looking back it was just rationalization. Either way, we were together again and I was happier than I’d been in months. I pushed the demons away and focused on my new life. I threw myself into his world – dropping my friends for his, joining him and his two boys on camping trips with the Scouts, trying desperately to fit in with the older, more experienced moms who never really accepted me. It was a new life but yet another house of cards doomed to topple, taking me with it.