Loving Yourself

Late night post again. I really should just write these the night before and then schedule them to be published in the morning, but how much forethought does that require? A lot. Too much for me. And so here is your 11 pm post again.

I was in a group therapy session for anxiety on Friday and at the end of our two hours we were doing relaxation exercises. We were supposed to visualize a relaxing place, and then visualize ourselves into it, but I couldn't think of anything. Every pretty place I could conjure had some memory of my family associated with it, so visualizing them was just making me more and more panicky. Obviously, the anxiety therapy wasn't working.

Then I remembered a beach where I spent a lot of time with my family when I was little, and visualized myself on the beach as a little kid. I was this small, stringy girl with hair so blonde it looked bleached. I had a perpetual smile and was covered in bruises and scrapes from running around and crashing into things and falling down, like most kids. I could be loud and extroverted with my family, but was quiet and shy at school, and felt responsible for absolutely everything (kind of like the little girl and the butterfly effect in Beasts of the Southern Wild) (and wait, I still feel that way) (even though she learned the valuable lesson that she doesn't directly cause every bad thing in the world, and is a lovely, good person even though bad things have happened to her) (end parenthesis). Back to the therapy session--we were then supposed to cover ourselves with something symbolizing peace. I thought of blue paint. I pictured adult me sitting down in the sand and covering smiley, hyper, white blonde-haired, sunburned young me with deep blue paint. And then I smiled and ran all over the beach getting drops of blue paint on everything.

I've learned that sometimes it helps to picture yourself as a little kid. As adults, we tend to blame ourselves for things. We feel okay criticizing and hating ourselves. But it's hard to hate a little kid. Or, at least, it should be. And I've found that seeing myself as a kid made me want to be less hard on myself.

Part of this is because my parents keep telling me how much I've changed. A favorite expression of theirs for a while was that I'd become a robot who had replaced their daughter. I tried to talk to my dad about this over Christmas break. I only stayed at home for three days, and when he was driving me around in a blizzard so I could run errands, I tried to tell him how uncomfortable I'd been feeling at his house, that I'd cried myself to sleep every night, that I was feeling highly suicidal, that I'd had to leave the house on Christmas night and go to my boyfriend's, where I spent several hours crying because Christmas was so miserable. I told him that I felt incredibly anxious whenever I went home, even though everyone was very nice to my face, and his response was, "Why do you feel that way? We've been so nice to you and aren't trying to make you feel uncomfortable. We want you to be comfortable at home." And I said I was grateful that they'd been nice to me and that it wasn't necessarily the things they did that made me anxious. It was more the way I am. I tried to remind him of how I'd been as a kid--I would wake him up crying because I was so scared our house was going to catch on fire and he'd have to come tell me that our house had smoke detectors, that we'd call the fire department, and that everything would be okay. In the home videos we watched on Christmas, I was the awkward older sister lingering in the background cleaning up wrapping paper from my brother's birthday party and following the baby around to make sure she was happy. I was telling him that nothing had changed in my personality-wise, and that I just wanted everyone to be comfortable and happy. He said, "Well, those were good things that you did in those home videos," implying a contrast between how I acted then and how I act now.

My parents tell me that they've seen a shift in my behavior when I started taking anti-depressants. This is probably true, as this is what should happen when you start taking anti-depressants. I became a lot more vocal about my opinions. I let myself get annoyed about the dumb things people would say in classes, and I complained about them to other people and tried to make responses in class. I became more empowered and vocal. I said more things that I wanted to say. Of course, there were some weird side effects too, and I don't remember a lot of what was going on in that weird adjustment period where I was taking these new medications. For some reason, my parents interpreted this change in my behavior as me becoming a robot. What they fail to understand is that I'm still the same little kid who was scared to talk about things and who wanted to be happy and make sure that everyone else was happy. I'm tired of being seen as someone completely disconnected from my past--sure, I've changed, but so has everyone, and some parts of us just stay the same, no matter what.

I think my parents think that I told them I was bisexual just to shock them. That's what my bishop thinks. And I can see how that looks true--it's not like I needed to tell them. I'm in a committed relationship with a man, and bisexuals are known as the invisible sexuality--we can blend in with whichever sexual orientation depending on who we're dating at the time. But I'm a confessional person (...as you may have gathered from my lengthy posts) (sorry), and a huge part of me wants my parents' approval. I wanted to tell them what I knew they thought was the worst possible thing in the world to them and still be able to feel like they loved me. And I didn't feel that at all. I got cut off entirely, I got yelled at, I got told I was on a speeding train to self-destruction and that my parents were moving out of the way before I took them down to hell with me. I got told I was the Laman and Lemuel of the family (a reference you'll understand if you are or were raised Mormon) and, in that same earlier discussion, my told told me that both suicidality and bisexuality are mentalities of the world and I need to "get over them." Because I can definitely control both of them. Obviously.

I guess I'm learning what not to do to your depressed, suicidal child. I guess I'm learning that it's important to see the adults around you for the vulnerable children they once were and that some part of them will always be. I'm learning to have more compassion for people and to be less judgmental (though I very much doubt that I'm succeeding on that particular front). And I'm trying to learn to stand up for myself and do what I think is right for me, regardless of what others, even my parents, think. And that's empowering.

Sorry for the lateness and the rambling. These are just the things I've been thinking about this weekend. I hope you all have a lovely day off tomorrow! Enjoy those dead presidents, or whatever. I'm sure I've posted this poem before, but it's one of my favorites, and everyone should print it out and hang it up on their wall for all those times when you feel lonely and shitty and down.

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The Act of Fantasy

Matt here. Still not ready to finish that series I started, but getting closer.

For the last several days I’ve been full of fantasy. In the morning before work, still damp from the shower and half dressed, I’d lay on my bed and think about how life might be in two months, when I’ll be back in the US. In the breaks between classes I swept my fantasy across the backs of worksheets with a particular pen whose weight is perfect. Pages and pages of hopes and dreams looped out and hanging there, dependent on other people’s reactions to my several stateside applications.

Back in my dark days at BYU I tried to imagine a life in which I was straight/married/happy/unconflicted, and I couldn’t do it, couldn’t get my brain to make those leaps from where I was. Too far. Too bogged down. Too dark out there, too unknown.

When did the future stop being something to dread and tremble at?

Answer: January 2009. That month, with the help of my counselor, I got up the courage to take responsibility for my life and trust myself. That was the first step.

That month, I stopped going to church. I rejected the church’s claims to my body and my life. That was the second step.

Sometimes I wonder if it could have gone another way, if I could have taken a different second step. Several friends have. I wonder if I could have trusted the feeling I once confided to a friend that “everything just seems to go better when I’m reading the scriptures every day,” or the heady, burning feeling all through me when I performed my first and only live baptism. Sometimes I wonder if I would be happier in the church.

I think, though, the answer is no: I couldn’t have taken a different second step. It was distance from the church or standing still for me, because the church offered nothing for the pain. There was a lot of pain, then. Most BYU days I don’t remember individually, just as a feverish black cloud like last February when I had the flu. Stepping away from the church was my antibiotic. Stepping away from the church, I could slowly stop hurting and imagine turning twenty-one.

Now the pain is mostly gone. (Oh-my-god-the-pain-is-mostly-gone!) I can imagine turning twenty-five.

I’ll live on the west coast, said the loops on worksheets between classes. I’ll have a small, vibrant houseplant and a job I don’t hate. I’ll have my people, and more people. Books. I’ll keep learning stuff, whether languages or how to build stuff or how to make a relationship work for more than a few months.

It may not turn out anything like I imagine (the last four years sure haven’t), but because I was gay and Mormon and in a very dark place, I don’t take the act of fantasy for granted.

---

If you haven't read this essay by Adrienne Rich, you might want to do that.
If you have been or still are at BYU, you might want to look here.
If you haven't realized Eminem's just stopped trying, you might want to listen to "Lighters."

I’ve Lost My ME-Ness

Today I’m going to let you guys into my writing brain. Usually throughout the week I keep notes of what I want to talk about and then something happens on Thursday night and I throw away all the thoughts. So while I would like to keep to the original script I had planned for this post, I also need to recognize some things that happened this evening.

I came up with this idea where all the great ideas are born: the shower. I was blasting my music per usual and the song Girl On Fire came on. Now for those of you who haven’t listened to Girl On Fire… scroll down. If you need a refresher it’s simple: she’s passionate yet alone. As I was belting out the chorus and pretending to be a rockstar I thought Yea! this is so me! Then a tiny dull roar yelled That WAS you. Was? WAS? As in, not anymore? I’m passionate. I’m hot. 

But the voice was right. I’d lost my ME-ness. Now before I continue on you should realize something about me. I’ve realized that I’ve lost my ME-ness a lot. This is not an uncommon experience. I also realize that I’m better off alone a lot. However this time I didn’t really want to realize that I’m better off alone. I know that I am. And I should be grateful. Because I could be in a crappy relationship or married like some of the goons around here but I’m single (and have always been) and almost 21 and if we’re being completely honest, that’s not, nor was it ever, my choice. Now you’re probably wondering why I’ve tangented into being alone. It’s because originally this post was going to be about myself and being alone and being awesome and being happy about it. But if I was happy about it I wouldn’t continually try to change that status and then it would be lying so let’s just focus on the good: ME… I’ve lost my ME-ness and have realized that I must go out rediscover it.

This was my original post:

I just feel like I've lost myself.  I used to be crazy and passionate and now my free time is spent bonding with my bed.

I miss the girl who laid, danced, jumped down the middle of the road.

The girl who skipped class to go nude sunbathing at the lake.

The girl who would go to the club by herself to dance with eyes closed and just completely lose herself.

The girl who drove home with the windows down in the rain.

The girl who rode the train into Portland just to forget about her small town life.

The girl who would walk on the wall above the mill pond.

The girl who drove fast and sang loud and for God sakes gave zero FUCKS!

What the hell happened to me? Yea I get that college can tire you out but these are my glory years and I'm spending them being sniveling and pathetic.  I want to dream big. I want to desire to see the world and to just leave this place and to love and to explore. God I just want my curiosity back. I want my excitement back! Even as I write this post I feel an insatiable madness to be wildly passionate and crazy about something. I'm tired of mediocrity; I'm tired of routine. 

I want to scream

I want to cry

I want to get angry

I want to dance in the rain 

I want to kiss in the rain

Maybe I just want this snow to end so that it can rain!

I want to sing in front of people, LOUDLY!!

I want walk down campus and not take my headphones off once. 

I want listen to the doors on campus unlock at five in the morning. 

I want to not constantly worry about my next assignment or what I'm going to do after graduation.

I still want most of those things… I just don’t want to be so selfish about it...

This evening was the grand opening of my place of employment. My favorite band was coming and two of my favorite guys were there as well. I got off my shift early and just in time for the third (and best) act to start. Now one of these boys (ya’ll know him as Lee) is kind of affectionate with me. Which is nice; he’s my GBF. But for the most part I make people believe that I hate to be touched. I shove them out of my bubbles, scoot away from them on the bus, generally make my hugs the most awkward things possible so I don’t have to hug them again. Why? Because I really Really REALLY love to be touched. No that wasn’t a typo. I love to be touched. I love to feel someone next to me. I love it when people are affectionate with me; when they play with my hair or scratch my back or lean on my shoulder. But I’m not really used to it because it just wasn’t something we did in my family. Now I’m trying to figure out how to let people close to me without having a nervous breakdown; constantly wondering if I’m actually allowed to be near them. And that’s what I love about Lee and R. I can just cuddle with them and it’s great. Yay for gay men and straight women.

In summation: what I’ve concluded this week is that yes I want to get back to a more passionate me but no I don’t want to do that by myself. And also I’m on a lot of drugs right now, like 6 doses of DayQuil, so if none of this made sense, pay no attention to it.

Much love and peace,

Dupree

Girl On Fire

Hotter than a fantasy, lonely like a highway 

Filled with catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away 

Everybody stares, as she goes by 

'Cause they can see the flame that's in her eyes 

Watch her when she's lighting up the night 

Nobody knows that she's a lonely girl 

And it's a lonely world 

But she gonna let it burn

Divine Chaos

“Hi, I’m Nick. I grew up Mormon. A few years ago, though, I had a crisis of faith, and now I just identify as Christian. That crisis came mostly because I am gay and couldn’t deny it anymore.”

Twenty-someodd pairs of eyes looked back at me, standing at the front of the classroom at the University of Washington. I waited, but there was no change in their expression. They seemed to say “okay, so what?” It was in that moment that it suddenly all hit me. This existential crisis I had been through, the excruciating process of accepting myself and reconciling my spirituality, it wasn’t a big deal. It certainly wasn’t going to change these people’s perception of me.

That moment standing before my new classmates was the birth of a paradigm shift. Suddenly, being out of sync with Mormonism wasn’t good or bad, it just was. Being gay wasn’t good or bad, it just was. These major issues that I had been wrestling with had become my identity, and now they really didn’t matter. For the first time in my life I realized that there was nothing left to be, no identity to claim, other than the very first line I had spoken to my class: “Hi, I’m Nick.”

I had never had so much freedom to determine what that meant. Sure, maybe the freedom was always there, but now there were no strings, no social expectations pulling me down. I was a blank slate and could be anything I wanted. But as I looked at the expanse of possibility I felt a bit lost, and I had to accept a bitter truth: I didn’t know who I was, or even what I wanted.

There was a period of time that felt pretty much like I was floating in limbo (to some degree I’m still there). But all this open space has allowed me to dream, to listen to my heart as I figure out what passions excite me and give me purpose and meaning.

As I fell into limbo the work of author Paolo Coelho became a guiding star. The theme underlying all his books is that there is something each of us is meant to do, our Personal Legend. When we find that legend, that passion, we will feel ourselves fall into sync with the rest of universe and we will truly come alive. Life cannot be completely fulfilling unless we have found that passion, that personal legend.

The last five years have taught me the tough lesson that in order for grand creation to take place, and especially for that personal legend to emerge, there has to be destruction of anything standing in its way. It was this way with my sexuality. It was this way with my faith. And now with my identity and my dreams it has happened again. Creation requires divine chaos. Though I haven’t yet mastered it, I can sense that there is a certain power in being able to react to that chaos like a sculptor to a mass of clay, rather than desperately trying to stop the inevitable. We don’t need to fear change. Change isn’t tragedy, it is opportunity.

I leave you with a line from Coelho’s masterpiece The Alchemist that has framed much of my journey through fear, destruction, chaos, and creation:

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.  And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

My Funny [Problem With] Valentine

To be honest, I’m not too fond of Valentine’s Day. It’s not even because I get to watch privileged couples flaunt their love and relationship in front of my face. No, it’s because I really do not see the point in going all out to show your love for someone on one specific day of the year. Annually, I wonder why more people can’t treat everyday like it’s February 14^th. Who’s to say that on some ordinary day, a day with no holiday or celebratory significance, I can’t do something special for the person or people I love just because I love them? Add in the capitalist element of cards, flowers, chocolates, expensive dinners, and Valentine’s Day just seems like a financial expenditure. And didn’t J.Lo sing about how love doesn’t cost a thing?

For the single population, Valentine’s Day is another reminder that we must find a romantic partner so that our cats, ice cream, and television aren’t the only things keeping us company at night. The abundance of speed-dating events and other activities on this holiday seek to eliminate the single population. But to be real, I would rather curl up with a warm blanket, dessert, and an intellectually stimulating documentary than meet a crop of failure guys who cannot stimulate me in any sense.

However, there are 2 perks of Valentine’s Day:

1    1). Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the shape of hearts. Yes, these are exponentially better than the eggs at Easter time, trees at Christmas, or the pumpkins at Halloween. If love had a taste, it would be these.

2    2). Plans with my best friend. This is the third year in a row that we've done this. The tradition started when she broke up with her boyfriend 2 years ago, just a few days before Valentine’s Day. I suggested we go to a fancy dinner together for February 14^th, and the tradition has since stuck.

For those of you out there feeling alone this week, I want to say sorry. Sorry that life can be unfair sometimes. Sorry that you have to go throughout Thursday thinking about whoever broke your heart, or whoever is no longer present in your life, or when you’ll have people in your life who you care about and cherish. If you’re lonely or bitter, keep your chin up. I discovered this video a few years ago. It articulates everything I wish I could, and so eloquently too.

Tanya Davis' "How to Be Alone"

Sunday Night

The dog is whining at the door. My brother is letting in a variety of ward members here to hear his customary (for our ward) post-mission fireside for the youth; he just got back from his mission a month ago. I can hear my former leaders talking in the entryway. These are the people who taught me in young women's, in Sunday school, in all the basic tenets of the Mormon church.

Now, my mom enjoyed telling me over the summer, they judge me. The ones who were facebook friends with me would comment to her on my liberal leanings and my lgbtq rights lobby. One of my former leaders, the woman whose children I babysat for years and years, came to my mom with tears in her eyes (says my mom) because I had sworn on facebook. "What on earth happened to Kylie? She used to be such a wonderful girl!" Not any more, apparently.

These are some of the people about to come into my house and hear my brother give a talk telling the youth of the ward how to be a good missionary. There's him at the front of the room, pounding the invisible pulpit, and there's me hunched over on the couch, anxious and worried about being judged by the people my mom says judge me.

Frankly, it's not that big of a deal. I'm anxious about it, but I don't actually care what they think of me. I don't care how many of them know I write on this blog. I'm comparatively comfortable with who I am right now. But the one thing that gets me is that I know they all wanted me to fit into a normal Mormon life--make good Mormon choices, marry a good Mormon boy a few years into college, settle down into my good Mormon life. A Mormon life as defined by my parents--obviously not all Mormons live this way. But for my parents and my ward, there's a perfect way to live, and I'm not living it. And I'm trying to make some huge life choices right now--a year into grad school, wanting to decide what to write a thesis on, if I want a PhD, so on and so forth--and none of the people I looked up at as role models when I was growing up no longer believe that I have the capacity to make "good life choices." All of my life choices are bad, from their perspective, which my mom and dad had no problem telling me over the summer, and now I don't know how to regain the confidence I need to move forward with my life.

Anyway, they're all here now, gathered around me, so I have to close this and listen to the devotional. Here's the poem of the week, in closing, and if you're living in Utah, be safe in the cold and the snow this next week!

Snow
Mary Ruefle

Every time it starts to snow, I would like to have 
sex. No matter if it is snowing lightly and unseri-
ously, or snowing very seriously, well on into the 
night, I would like to stop whatever manifestation 
of life I am engaged in and have sex, with the same 
person, who also sees the snow and heeds it, who 
might have to leave an office or meeting, or some ar-
duous physical task, or, conceivably, leave off having 
sex with another person, and go in the snow to me, 
who is already, in the snow, beginning to have sex in 
my snow-mind. Someone for whom, like me, this is 
an ultimatum, the snow sign, an ultimatum of joy, 
though as an ultimatum beyond joy as well as sor-
row. I would like to be in the classroom — for I am 
a teacher — and closing my book stand up, saying 
“It is snowing and I must go have sex, good-bye,” 
and walk out of the room. And starting my car, in 
the beginning stages of snow, know that he is start-
ing his car, with the flakes falling on its windshield, 
or, if he is at home, he is looking at the snow and 
knowing I will arrive, snowy, in ten or twenty or 
thirty minutes, and, if the snow has stopped off, we, 
as humans, can make a decision, but not while it is 
still snowing, and even half-snow would be some
thing to be obeyed. I often wonder where the birds 
go in a snowstorm, for they disappear completely. 
I always think of them deep inside the bushes, and 
further along inside the trees and deep inside of the 
forests, on branches where no snow can reach, deep-
ly recessed for the time of the snow, not oblivious
to it, but intensely accepting their incapacity, and 
so enduring the snow in brave little inborn ways, 
with their feathered heads bowed down for warmth. 
Wings, the mark of a bird, are quite useless in snow. 
When I am inside having sex while it snows I want 
to be thinking about the birds too, and I want my 
love to love thinking about the birds as much as I 
do, for it is snowing and we are having sex under 
or on top of the blankets and the birds cannot be 
that far away, deep in the stillness and silence of the 
snow, their breasts still have color, their hearts are 
beating, they breathe in and out while it snows all 
around them, though thinking about the birds is not 
as fascinating as watching it snow on a cemetery, on 
graves and tombstones and the vaults of the dead, 
I love watching it snow on graves, how cold the 
snow is, even colder the stones, and the ground is 
the coldest of all, and the bones of the dead are in 
the ground, but the dead are not cold, snow or no 
snow, it means very little to them, nothing, it means 
nothing to them, but for us, watching it snow on the 
dead, watching the graveyard get covered in snow, it 
is very cold, the snow on top of the graves over the 
bones, it seems especially cold, and at the same time 
especially peaceful, it is like snow falling gently on 
sleepers, even if it falls in a hurry it seems gentle, 
because the sleepers are gentle, they are not anxious, 
they are sleeping through the snow and they will 
be sleeping beyond the snow, and although I will 
be having sex while it snows I want to remember 
the quiet, cold, gentle sleepers who cannot think of 
themselves as birds nestled in feathers, but who are 
themselves, in part, part of the snow, which is falling
with such steadfast devotion to the ground all the 
anxiety in the world seems gone, the world seems 
deep in a bed as I am deep in a bed, lost in the arms 
of my lover, yes, when it snows like this I feel the 
whole world has joined me in isolation and silence.

I Feel Human Dark With Sugar.

Matt here.

The series finale is still postponed, until I have time to think it through. This week  I haven’t had that. This time when I’m sitting down to write is not that much.

I love that it’s Saturday. Yesterday a friend flew into Tokyo on a flight so late that, because I didn’t plan accordingly, we missed the last train home. We looked for a hotel but (no longer being in Tokyo and by this time thoroughly exhausted) we couldn’t find one. We ended up renting a karaoke booth for a few hours and singing until the trains started up again. We got to my apartment and went to sleep around six.

I love that I paused at the railroad crossing on my way to 7-11 to pay my electric bill and I saw the crown of Mt. Fuji nearly but not covered in smoky clouds. I’d just finished reading The Fault In Our Stars, so every pain and irritation felt far away and it has been one of those days when I feel I have extravagantly wonderfully much. Clouds. Novels. Tangerines. Poetry. Friend.

I love that my friend asked about the quotes on my mirror. The one from Joan Didion saying that “Character--the willingness to take responsibility for one’s own life--is the source from which self-respect springs” is if not my favorite the one I am most determined to apply. I blamed family and church for my unhappiness for too long, but slowly I’m making it habitual to say “I could have acted differently.”

I love that my friend let me  read to him from Human Dark With Sugar.  Feeling my tongue make the beautiful words to be heard made me hungry to live, to be human dark with sugar hot to melt the snow. If sex were like that I would not object.

---

Here is one of the poems I read to him: Why Is the Color of Snow?

Here is a website that made me smile and then recoil. Then smile again. WTF, Evolution?

Love... EW

Much as you blame yourself

You can’t be blamed for the way that you feel

All I want is the taste that your lips allow

Benny, won't you be the one? 

Come on make it happen

A loveless romantic, all that he really wants

Is someone to want him back

Who am I to say I want you back?

When you were never mine to give away 

Who Wants to Be a BLOGGER??

We're still in need of some extra bloggers. If you're interested email me at tiffanydemings@gmail.com

Please include: 
1. a sample blog post (this will be your first post on the blog, so make it good)
2. a short biography--Who are you? What do you like to do? Favorite music? Anything you want people to know about you. 
3. a photo (preferably of you, but anonymity is okay, too). 

Peace, Love, and Happiness :)

Hard to Handle

Sorry about the late in the day post. I thought today was going to be busy, but then my boss asked me to work for three hours, so today wasn't busy. It was INSANE.

Non-stop work, and I'm still not ready for my class at eight tomorrow.

I feel like a normal person right now. I don't feel gay. I don't feel oppressed. I don't feel angry. I feel... stressed. Trying to get all my work/tests done so that I can see my beautiful half-asian tomorrow.

However, I would like to share a little something. I went to a play called Adam and Steve last week. The premier in fact. And it was good. Small stage, and we (half-asian and I) were in the front row. Basically about a straight mormon man and his best friend who, in the first scene, comes out as being gay. How their friendship developed, fell, and picked up again.

I loved the play, mainly because I knew the man who wrote it was a gay mormon. Because of how EXACT some of the scenes were to my life (and I wouldn't be telling the truth if I didn't say I was crying my eyes out for about 30 minutes during this hour and half play). And the play made me realize that I need to start writing some of these stories for you guys. But not tonight. Tonight I need to get ready for my lab class tomorrow. And do dishes. And be normal.

Listen Girl, You Gotta Know It's True

I wouldn’t be completely honest with y’all if I didn’t admit my love for pop princesses. These are the teenyboppers singing bubblegum pop, the singers that millions of young girls aspire to be like. In another life, these included artists Tiffany, Britney Spears, and the Spice Girls. Nowadays, it’s Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana, Ashlee Simpson, and my personal favorite: Hilary Duff.

Duff released her debut album, Metamorphosis, in 2003 – at the young age of 16. And while many will be quick to write her off as another Disney princess who doesn’t even deserve a record deal, I have 2 words: “Inner Strength,” a track off the album that doesn’t get nearly enough credit. Written by Hilary’s sister Haylie, the minute and a half long track proves that maybe these teen queens deserve to be listened to. Haylie’s beautiful lyrics (she was only 18 at the time this was written. Such wisdom!) and Hilary’s raw voice make “Inner Strength” a must have for my iPod.  

Gotta find your inner strength

                                                     If you can't then just throw life away

Gotta learn to rely on you

Beauty, strength, and wisdom, too

You're beautiful inside and out

Lead a great life without a doubt

Don't need a man to make things fair

'Cuz more than likely he won't be there

Listen girl, gotta know it's true

In the end all you've got is you

Spider poem

I have some sort of terrible flu-ish disease, so I'm afraid this post won't be super long! In fact, this post might just be a poem of the week. I hope you will forgive me. The poem is at least by Walt Whitman, and it's been fairly amusing this week to watch BYU undergrads try to talk their way around his flamboyant homosexuality obvious in so many of his poems. This poem is one of my favorites, and a good reminder that we're all together in our alone-ness, and that fate and our own actions work together to refine our characters. Have a good, healthy week, everyone.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Celibacy is a lanthanide. Pretty useless.

Matt here. Putting off the end of the series I've been working on.

Like my profile says, I was seventeen when I first thought about not marrying a woman. I was sitting on a floral-print couch at LDS Family Services, talking with my young and bald counselor, Curtis. He asked me to imagine my life at forty—married, children—and then to imagine what I would feel if I realized at that point in my life that I was gay.

Leading question, right? It was needed. I'd honestly never considered it before. It just wasn't a possibility, being gay. Not for me. But then in that safe, weirdly antiseptic Curtis-space I thought about it and I knew that I would hate that situation and that it was entirely plausible. I also realized that my complete lack of sexual feelings for women meant that I wasn't straight.

The thing is, I didn't want to have sex with men either. That's kind of a buzzkill in relationships. Maybe that's why I just don't see myself having a family. Sometimes it looks almost possible and I try to convince myself that somewhere out there is a guy I'll love who either shares or ends my weirdness, but most of the time I think I will probably stay single. Maybe that's why when I come across things like the Night Watch in Game of Thrones* I think, ah, I could work with that. Celibacy is my element.

Unfortunately, it seems to be a pretty useless element. The only brotherhoods that require it in the real world seem to be religious, and I'm not interested in religion. There's no sword-wielding, ice-wall-guarding group of mostly badass misfits for me to dedicate myself to and feel at home in. (Not that I'm particularly badass . . . but I could be!) There's just the same sex-crazed world everybody else has, and in that world, a lack of interest in sex is just odd and problematic.

It doesn't make me particularly sad. Just restless. All that energy the other guys put into the quest for sex . . . what to do with it?

---

*It's possible that my love for fantasy novels is as detrimental as anything to my search for a mate, but Game of Thrones is cool now, right? Thanks to HBO? Right?

My Moral Compass Doesn't Exactly Point Due North

Has everyone seen 27 Dresses? Na? Okay quick synopsis. It’s a chick flick about a girl (Katherine Heigl) who loses the guy she’s been in love with for years (but never told) to her bitchy younger sister who lies and manipulates everyone. In the end Jane (the older sister) splits them up and ends up with the ridiculously attractive and understanding and cynical/sarcastic James Marsden and they quite literally get married on the beach and everyone is happy blah blah blah. So my title happens to be my favorite quote from the awesome best friend and then there is this line right after:

Jane: You're the one who's always telling me to stand up for myself. 

Best Friend: Yeah, but that's not what you did. What you did was unleash twenty years of repressed feelings in one night. It was entertaining, don't get me wrong, but if it was the right thing to do, you'd feel better right now. Do you feel better right now?

I remembered it right after I had this conversation with my brother:

Mike: (paraphrase) Can I borrow money?

Me: (paraphrase) No. I’m not a bank and I’m not loaning out money to anyone besides Mia.

Mike: Ok well thanks a lot sis the one time I’m doing good and need a little positive reinforcement you back out like I mean nothing to you? (he says this to me every single time he needs something)

Me: You constantly use me and steal from me. If we want to talk about meaning nothing to someone I’m pretty sure you got me beat.

Mike: Go about your wonderful fake pampered life you’ve always had and wanted! Don’t act like you give a shit about Mia!

Me: (String of expletives) Pampered!? I’ve worked my ass off to get here and I refuse to feel like I owe you because you’ve done shit with your life!

And that was it. Now to some this may seem calm but it’s the first time I've said no. Generally the conversation would be more like this.

Mike: I need money

Me: ugh grumble grumble I really hate doing this and this is the last time and you really need to start working but yea how much do you need?

However with that approach nothing ever changed so I went full on bitch to him. And you know what? I didn’t feel better. I felt like shit. Because for most of my childhood I resented my brother. I thought he got everything, the love, the attention, and I was left with nothing. I had to work my ass off to get any ounce of recognition but Michael was like a gift from the Gods. He was beautiful and popular and I was fat and ugly and spent more time with books than I did people. But even with my resentment I always stood up for him because my brother and I were taught that the only two people we could count on were each other. Whenever he was accused of something I fought tooth and nail to clear his name. Even when I knew he was wrong I still fought for him. I also fought him a lot as well; throwing punches was like the equivalent of hugging in my family.  

But come my senior year of high school I was working with one of his friends who had kind of grown up with us and he just throws out “your brother had it a lot worse than you did.” I thought about that and asked my mom what he could mean. She opened my eyes to what actually happened growing up. 

See my grandparents raised my mother, brother, and I, making us kind of all like siblings in my brain. And my grandparents were very much addicted to drugs. They were also diabolical and manipulative. When my mother was young they got her addicted to drugs so that they could have an inside resource into the young person’s world of drugs. When my brother came of age they did the same to him. They pretended to love him and get close to him so they could use him. I saw my charismatic brother getting all this attention and awkward me getting nothing. If I had known what was going on I would have wanted nothing to do with their “love.”

Now for the last three years I’ve used that to let my brother’s actions slide. So what if he used me? If he stole from me? If he neglected his daughter and beat/cheated on his wife? That’s all he knew. But yesterday I finally cracked. I was tired of being played, lied to, and cheated. But most importantly I was tired of feeling terrible about myself because I was successful and he wasn’t. I used to think that the reason I was here was because of good fortune and luck, things my brother simply didn’t possess. But I need to give myself a little more credit than that. I didn’t go out and party. I didn’t screw a bunch of guys in high school. I did skip class a lot but I always made up the work. I did my homework, I participated in any extracurricular activity I could, I worked for my money instead of stealing it, I spent my entire senior year up to my eyeballs in applications for schools and scholarships and got up early every morning for seminary and to practice for the SAT. My brother didn’t do any of those things. I did.

But even with all that knowledge, I still feel like shit. Because I wasn’t simply correcting my brother or telling him no, I made him feel terrible for even asking. I brought up twenty years of resentment over twenty dollars. And now I’m sitting here remembering every sweet thing he has ever done for me and wondering why I feel this need to constantly prove I am better than him. Why I have friends that say things like this:

I react like this: 

And because I really don't want to end this with me being all sad and wondering about my worth to the world let us have another quote from 27 dresses. 

Jane: I think you should just admit that you’re a big softy, that this whole cynical thing is just an act so that you can seem wounded and mysterious and sexy…

Kevin: Whoa, whoa, whoa. What was the last one? 

Jane: What? 

Kevin: Did you say “sexy”? 

Jane: [nervous] What? 

Kevin: You think I’m sexy? 

Jane: No. 

Kevin: It’s okay if you do. 

Jane: I don’t! 

And then after that comes this: