Coming of Age Hyper-Online

 Hello one and all!
Today's post is a piece I submitted in a writing contest a while back, I believe with HerCampus. I saved my entry so that I could share it with all of you if nothing came of it. Most of you are aware that my current writing interest is writing stories outside of myself, fiction stories, and not so much centered on personal anecdotes. This piece does not align with my desire to write fiction and is in fact quite a personal piece about myself. I'm not really interested in sharing the personal details of my life right now for reasons that feel too vulnerable to share here (which is... kind of the point). However, I wrote it to be read by an audience, so read by an audience it will be. I love sharing my work, and while the piece is confessional in nature, it wasn't written to be. It was written to be read and enjoyed by an audience. I have a lot of short piece I've written over the years that I want to share with you guys, and this is one of those pieces.
The prompt for this post was as follows:
"What does it mean for you to come of age in a hyper-online, always connected world?
Living in the digital age can mean something different to everyone, and we want to hear what it means to you."
I wrote the following piece (as far as I can tell from my record) on July 15, 2021. I hope you enjoy!

To me, living in the digital age is just like everything else: it is special, and it can be used for bad and good.
When I was sixteen, my best friend and I started casually dating each other, and we talked to each other every waking minute. When we weren't together, we texted each other. From 5:00 in the morning to late in the night, we were always together, whether in person or on our phones. That relationship ended treacherously. He said he wanted to start using his phone less, so he wouldn't be texting me as often, which I understood, considering we literally were never not talking to each other over text. What I wasn't prepared for was for him to slowly but surely drop out of my life entirely. Suddenly he made an effort to talk to everyone that wasn't me, and it took me nearly six months to realize it was over. When I think of life in the digital age, that's honestly the first thing I think of. I wonder how things would have been if we hadn't spent every moment texting each other. The let-down would have been so much easier; instead, I had practically become addicted to talking to this boy.
That's just one example of the torture we can inflict upon ourselves by living in the digital world. That's not to mention reading negative comments (whether about ourselves or someone else) online, social media stalking someone our crush used to date just so we can find old pictures of him even though we know it will only make us upset, or measuring how liked we as people are based on how many likes the photos we post get.
With all that said, however, we can take that into consideration and realize that the digital world is just like the natural world. It is beautiful and unique, and in its uniqueness, it has unique dangerous--but it has unique privileges too. People can get hurt in the digital world, but people can also find joy in the digital world.
I've been blogging for eight years. I started writing because I needed a place to talk about my thoughts and opinions on literature, but my online writing platform has since transformed into a way to connect with others and have a positive influence on the lives of others. I think of friends online I've met throughout my life. Some of them are from the same place as me and have moved away (as have I), and some of them are from all over the world. Thanks to social media, I can keep in contact with them easily and see what they're doing with their lives, no matter where in the world any of us are.
Thanks to the digital world, we can also meet people we would never have the opportunity to without it. My little brother is an actor and was a huge participant in his high school's theatre program. When school shut down due to the corona virus pandemic, he had to find a new way to perform while he couldn't be in plays. Like many others, he took to TikTok and started making comedy videos. Slowly but surely, he gained a lot of success there, until he finally exploded with his "Red's Kinda Sus" parody, earning himself thousands of followers and millions of likes. He started building a community on TikTok, then started live streaming on Twitch, where he gained more followers. My little brother's career as a professional social media influencer has become a huge part of my family's lives. Everyone helps out with his platform in some way, and we have met the most amazing people there. Personally, I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this digital community. I get to interact with young kids every day and help them navigate life; it makes me feel more prepared for my future career as a teacher once I receive my bachelor's degree.
Living in a digital world can be crazy. It can feel trapping and destructive. It can feel excruciatingly lonely. But it can open doors to wonderful opportunities and connections.

Feminist Theory in “The Story of an Hour”

 Hello one and all!

As a full-time uni student that’s also very dedicated to her job and personal projects, making new blog content isn’t always a high priority. I’ve also felt a shift in the kind of content I’m interested in making recently, but in general I’m struggling to find the heart to make new content. However, this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but have only done a few times in my senior year of high school, and now we’re going to start doing it more often!

As a long-time English and writing student, you can imagine I have written many pieces for school, be it literary analyses, narrarives, or something else. Many of these I really love and feel would be a good fit for the blog. This also helps me post more consistently even when I don’t have time to write a whole new piece.

The following essay was written for my critical theory class, about the iconic feminist writer Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” If you haven’t read the story yet, read that first, and then check out the feminist messages and symbols I found in the story. Please leave comments about your own thoughts on the feminist ideas in the story!

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Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is a groundbreaking piece of American feminist literature. The story is about the role of women in society and expectations placed on them. This is a large role of feminist criticism, which looks into the way gender affects our world and the way it is portrayed in literature. When “The Story of an Hour” is read through the feminist lens, there is clear message of the subtle repression that women face in society. This story illustrates the gender roles and expectations that have been forced on women for centuries, and how the only truly safe place for women to be free of these expectations is with themselves.

Feminist theory is a study of how gender affects the world, and how the world affects gender. Literature has a great deal to do with society’s view of the world; stories are representations of reality and the things that people think and care about. Thus gender portrayal in literature can create a reality of either strength and freedom or judgment and pressure. An important concept in feminist criticism is the patriarchy, which is a unit of standard power in the world that causes negative effects, such as oppression or negative societal expectations as opposed to choice. Understanding the patriarchy is essential to understanding feminist criticism, because it is the general cause of why the world has issues in the way it views gender. Patriarchy is the general, if unspoken, enemy in “The Story of an Hour.”

“The Story of an Hour” is a piece about women that defy expectations, whether publicly or privately, giving women a more diverse and inclusive representation in literature. The story begins with the protagonist, Louise Mallard, being told of her husband’s untimely death. It is implied in the third paragraph that Mrs. Mallard already goes against the grain of the expectations of women upon receiving this news: “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment….” (Chopin) This quote automatically implies that women have expectations put upon them by society to behave a certain way. This is something Mrs. Mallard is having to deal with even in the face of a personal tragedy. When considering the effect the patriarchy has on the behavioral expectations of people of all genders, this statement shows the courage of Mrs. Mallard in breaking out of the norm, and gives a wider representation of the many different ways a person might react to the loss of a loved one.

As Mrs. Mallard goes to her room to mourn her husband alone, the setting reflects a beautiful and peaceful feeling that is not expected of her, but that is true nonetheless. While it is said that a “physical exhaustion haunted her body,” the scene is described: “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air…. The notes of a distant song… reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds….” (Chopin) Despite the tragic news she just received, Mrs. Mallard experiences beauty in her first moments alone. When looked at through feminist criticism, the text is thick with symbolism of the freedom women desire to give themselves versus the roles the patriarchy wishes to force on them. The blooms on the trees, the song being sung, and the birds calling are all clear signs of life, while Mrs. Mallard is at the beginning of a new life for herself. The rain, which is frequently a dreary symbol, is described as “delicious.” Other people aware of Mrs. Mallard’s situation might see the rain as a symbol of her mourning, but to her it is beautiful. Only outside the confines of the patriarchy, when she is in her own company, is this able to be realized. The sky is generally bright. The sentence in which this is described is given its own paragraph for emphasis. The patriarchy would have women like Mrs. Mallard standing in the shadow of their husbands, able to only have life attached to a husband and not have one of their own. In the blue sky Mrs. Mallard is able to see in the private of her bedroom window, that shadow is gone.
    The subconscious, based on Freudian psychocriticism, is what begins Mrs. Mallard’s awakening to the unexpected joy of her new situation. As theorized by Sigmund Freud and expanded on by others, people have a subconscious that makes them able to think even when they are not consciously thinking. Mrs. Mallard experiences this as she starts to calm, “except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.” Between sorrow and joy, Mrs. Mallard has a moment of numbness that allows her subconscious thoughts to come out. Whether or not she had before realized it, having a husband came with expectations for Mrs. Mallard, some that were more constrictive than she would like. In their article, “It’s a Man’s World: Re-examination of the Female Perspective in Chopin’s ‘Desiree’s Baby’ and ‘The Story of an Hour,’” Adisa Ahmetspahic and Damir Kahric describe it as thus: “It would appear that Louise’s gender dictates her rules of conduct; that is, her role as a woman in the nineteenth-century American society, and moreover her position of wife in her own marriage would force her to lament her husband’s passing.” (Ahmetspahic, Kahric) The thought had not previously crossed Mrs. Mallard’s mind that life could be joyful for her following her husband’s death, because that was not a possibility in a world run by a suffocating patriarchy. Only in this subconscious moment does she realize that this is a chance for her to experience a freedom that she hasn’t known, at least since before marriage. It is then described, as she is transitioning from subconscious to conscious thought, “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky….”

At this point in the story, Chopin illustrates through Mrs. Mallard’s experience that it is only in their own company that women are allowed to experience the freedom they desire. As Mrs. Mallard becomes more aware of what she is feeling, it is described as a feeling of surrender when she comes to the realization, saying she “abandoned herself.” The pressures of the patriarchy dictate so much of what people do. It is only by making herself free that she was able to accept what her real desires were, that she wanted to choose to be joyful rather than sorrowful. She even has to push back the urge to question if she is feeling “a monstrous joy.” It is a constant fight for women to push away the gender roles that the patriarchy has placed on them and others. However, Mrs. Mallard chooses to indulge in the unusual, which is what she really wants.
    Over the next few paragraphs, Mrs. Mallard revels in her newfound freedom. This is described by Ahmetspahic and Kahric as “the story of a heroine who, at least within the course of an hour, manages to harbor thoughts of a life created in an alternate sphere.” These visions of freedom that Mrs. Mallard is experiencing are so opposing to the patriarchy that it is not even described as reality by most. The gender roles that have been forced on people for centuries have become a strong part of reality, so that when freedom in gender roles is expressed, it seems like a fantasy. At times she feels to question her joy, but she is always reminded of the true feeling of liberty that she is facing for the first time, saying, “There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself.” Despite the fact that she had been loved by him, this moment was not about him at all. This was a moment purely about her, a moment in which women were in charge of their own narratives. This is not all to say that the intentions of men are all not good, but it is rather to say that it is not always, if ever, about the intentions of men. The people affected hold the most stock in the situation and are the ones that should be listened to. In Mrs. Mallard’s marriage, it appears that she felt powerless in her own situation, even though it had as much to do with her as it did with her well-intended husband. Thinking of the limitations put on her by her marriage, it is narrated, “A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.” (Chopin)
    At the conclusion of the story, Mr. Mallard comes home, apparently not being anywhere near the scene of the accident where he was supposedly killed. Upon seeing her husband, Mrs. Mallard is killed by her heart disease, overcome with shock. “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of joy that kills.” (Chopin) When looking through the lens of the patriarchy, this is so. The reality forced on the world by the patriarchy dictates that a woman can only be happy when married to a man. In Mrs. Mallard’s reality, the one where she is allowed to choose for herself, she died of heartbreak. This again has nothing to do with her husband; it is really about the situation that Mrs. Mallard is in where the voices of women are drowned out by the voices of men. Having a husband meant no longer being her own person, and after the joy she had just experienced of newfound freedom, the rain in the sky turned bleak, and she died of shock. She still did what she was expected to do in the beginning–die of heartbreak–but she did it in secret. Patriarchy shifts the world view so that people see only what is considered normal. In the safe secrecy of her own mind, Mrs. Mallard died from the loss of freedom.
    With feminist criticism, Kate Chopin’s story illustrates the safety that women find in themselves and nowhere else. Patriarchy affects people’s relationships with gender and other aspects of identity, painting a picture that is not accurate to the personal relaties of individuals, which are vast, despite fact that many different aspects of identities are shared among people. The reality of this individualism in women was well illustrated when Chopin wrote: “She saw beyond… years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.”

Works Cited

Ahmetspahic, Adisa, and Damir Kahric. “It’s a Man’s World: Re-examination of the Female Perspective in Chopin’s ‘Dess Baby’ and ‘The Story of an Hour’.”The ESSE Messenger, vol. 29, no. 1, summer 2020, pp. 23+.iree’

Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature to Go, edited by Michael Meyer, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, 13-15.

New Year, New Me: "i thank You God for most this amazing day"

 Hello one and all!
I really enjoyed last year's post celebrating the new year. I used to not really understand the hype, but I so do now. While the turn from one year to the next is not a magical reset button that makes everything perfectly fine again, while we can't expect the year to be inherently good on its own, I do see the magic in celebrating a new year. As I said in last year's post, there is something absolutely glorious about a new thing, a new opportunity. That's beautiful, and that's worth celebrating.
As most of you know, I choose a song to be my theme of the year. The songs in the short time I've done this tradition have included "(Just a) Simple Sponge," "Sad Girls Club," "Bring on the Monsters," and "I Am Enough." Usually, these songs were all easy and natural choices. I would hear them or think of them and know that they were the songs I needed to be the theme of my year. This year, however, was different.
2021 was difficult, and I'm honestly exhausted from saying that, but that doesn't change the truth of the statement. It was way harder than 2020 was for me; it wasn't even a contest, really. It was probably the hardest year I've had since 2016, the only year in my life that can kind of compete with it. So at the end of 2021, I think it was hard for me to choose a theme for 2022 because there were so many things that I felt like I needed that I didn't even really know where to begin. I just felt empty.
In 2021, my favorite girl band, Cimorelli, rereleased and did a whole new campaign for one of their songs from the early days of the band, "You're Worth It." This was almost the theme of the year. My strong self-worth that I take way too for granted had seemingly diminished. I faced a lot of health issues that drained me. There were a lot of traumas that I had uncovered that year that left me simply feeling empty. This song is pretty cliché and basic in its message and writing, but I felt like I needed cliché and basic. I felt like I needed to go back to square one and just remind myself that I was worth living a happy life. I frequently reduce myself to my appearance or view myself as a production to be put on for other people. But none of that's true about me, and I think I needed the reminder. I in particular was drawn to the lyric: "There's so much that you've been through that nobody knows, so many things you never show." I felt misunderstood and lost in my darkness. It was worse than people even could understand. I'm remembering one time during the summer that I was at work and my mom called me. She was discussing my well-being with me, and asked a couple times if I was okay. Once even saying, "You're okay, right?" I said yes, but I couldn't even do so without crying. I didn't know how to tell people how poorly I was doing. I needed my worth to be reestablished. Those things were addressed further in last year's therapy, which lead me to reconsider my song of the year.
I began to wonder if instead "Hope for It" by Cimorelli needed to be my song of the year. I am literally just today starting to find words that adequately describe the whole of what I just went through in therapy. It was fascinating. I went in talking about the shameful feelings that I had associated with my missionary service. On my mission, I had been so open, loving, and trusting with people, especially with people that I normally never would be. It was a gift from God. But I put expectations on myself, as did others, that I wasn't supposed to think about God's greatest gift to me. I tried detaching myself from the past, saying no to everything I'd ever gone through and trying to pretend it didn't happen. That surely contributed greatly to the complex feelings of loneliness, shame, and misunderstanding that I was facing. I wasn't making myself open to the truth. A lot was based in my issues of self-worth. Just as much, if not more, was based on my damaged trust. I was so angry at all of my old missionary friends. They had so much of me. I was able to be open with them in ways I had never been with anyone before and hadn't been since. This anger turned into absolute resentment. Why couldn't I get that back? And worst of all, why them? I'm okay with the fact that people go in and out of my life. But the people that know intimate details about me, I want them to be the ones that stay, the ones that are there all the time. While I still talked to missionary friends on occasion, I didn't as frequently as I would like to with people that know me terrifyingly well. Or rather, people that don't know me terrifyingly well anymore, but kind of used to. I felt like I had changed so much, and they had so much of me, and I was outraged that every time I would talk to them, they would say something about the version of me they had known. Something that was no longer true at all. It broke my heart, and they would have to sit and wonder why I suddenly looked sad in the middle of our conversation. I was intimately known and at the same time not known at all by people that once were the best friends in my life. All of that led to a severe lack of trust. I didn't want to share any of myself with anyone else ever again.
The lessons learned from discussing these feelings in therapy (which previously I couldn't even say out loud--thank God for that saving grace of being free to say the truth) were beautiful. First of all, my missionary service was a gift from God, and I knew that. Anyone that wanted me to suppress that and never think about it ever again didn't have my best interests in mind. It's a gift from God, after all! There were great experiences and lessons learned. Remembering them could be a new spiritual experience in themselves. And while this brought up problematic emotions for me, it was still a great way to bond with people. It is not good to say no to gifts from God. They are the most beautiful and precious things everywhere! Denying remembering my past would be denying a gift from God.
We of course talked a lot about my trust issues, which are many and deep. It's something I still have to practice a lot and something that many days I still don't want to practice at all. But we talked about letting myself learn to trust people, because I have to do it slowly, and that's all. I can evaluate how much I trust a person based on my relationship with them. As I evaluated my relationships, I saw a lot of boundaries. I realized that is something I'm really good at. I am good at saying no to things and people to protect myself. As a person with anxiety, this has always been in my nature, but it's gotten even worse over the past year or so. It was almost as if I only thought about things that I say no to. However, my boundaries are only kind of in my control. I can control how I keep them, but people break boundaries sometimes. That's how abuse happens. It's heartbreaking, but it's true. I wonder if there's a cycle of boundaries being made and then broken, which leads to more boundaries and walls, which can also be broken.
Boundaries are important, but I have those down. What I realized is that I have trouble with what I say yes to. I have absolute control to my yeses. What I intentionally do is where I hold my power, and that can bring me more happiness than anything else! I hadn't even noticed that I was really bad at saying yes.
I've made saying yes the focus of my life. No relies too heavily on other people. I've said yes to so many more things. I prioritize my writing, education, religion, and job because I say yes. I am finally living my dream of doing a study abroad/writing retreat this summer. I am working hard to make my dreams a reality. This is because I am saying yes in ways I wasn't able to before.
This led me to think of "Hope for It." It's about how when life gets hard, we trust God no matter what comes and push forward. We hope for good things even if on the surface it seems like there's nothing good to hope for. But saying yes is all about hoping for good things. Only through hope can those yeses exist.
That was my song for 2022 on New Year's Eve. But during the first week of January, I couldn't get a different song out of my mind.

This is Me Trying: The First Time I've Genuinely Tried Really Hard in School

 Hello one and all!
While it's been a hot minute since I've written a post, much to my dismay, it's because for the first time in my life I've actually been working really hard in school.

I've always done well in school, but never because I did more than the bare minimum. It's amazing that it took me most of my adolescent life to realize I was a genuinely smart person. I started learning how to read at age three, and a lot of that was self-taught (with the help of a dear friend--thanks, Reader Rabbit). I was reading at a high school grade level years before I ever started high school. And most books aren't written at such a high grade level, so for any of you teachers that think it's a good idea to have your ninth graders read a book that is their exact reading level for their book project, think again--books aren't typically written for college level readers, whatever that even actually means.
Anyway, I got my first B in second grade. That was pretty earth-shattering because I was proud of my straight As, but after a few years of being on the A/B honor roll, I realized the straight A train had long passed, and that I would  never be there again. It was disappointing, until I realized I didn't care. I didn't study for math tests. I wrote one draft of an essay and called it a day. I got good grades on all of those things.
Despite all of that, I only realized that I was smart when I was fifteen. I was in a chemistry class, with a teacher that was disliked  by all the students and parents alike (she was a mad intelligent woman, but that very thing can sometimes get in the way of someone being a good teacher), and most people that I knew always said that chemistry was difficult anyway. Let it be known that I did terrible, at least by my standards, in my biology class the year before. (I got a C. When I had a grade check for choir late in the year, she wrote "could do better" in the notes section, and I saw that and knew it was true, but science in general and biology in particular is so boring to me that I didn't care to pay attention enough to try harder. It's like my brain was physically incapable of focusing on any of it.) That science is the absolute worse subject to study in my humble opinion. That everyone said they understood physics better, which I was looking forward to since it was the science of color guard. (LET IT BE KNOWN--PHYSICS WAS FAR WORSE THAN CHEMISTRY. I DON'T CARE WHAT THE HATERS SAY.) But chemistry was rather understandable to me. One fateful day in that class, we were working on a group assignment that was pretty difficult. All of us were struggling to understand the topic and find answers to the questions before us. As we worked it out together, it all of a sudden made perfect sense in my mind.
I started writing as quickly as I could on the paper. I told my group I would explain in a bit, but I needed to write in silence for a moment so that I could get it all down on the paper, because I  knew that if I didn't, I wouldn't have it anymore.
Once I had written everything down, once I could see it in front of my face and thus had no chance at forgetting it, I started explaining it to the other students in my group. I completely understood it, and after a while, the rest of them did too, or at least they understood a little bit.
That was the first time that I realized that I am naturally, genuinely, really, really smart.
Which of course explains how I have never had to put much effort into school, ever. I was usually 25 out of a 500-something students in my class. The people above me, many of them very good friends of mine, cared a ton about their grades. But I certainly didn't. If I could graduate, as far as I was concerned, I was good.
My first year of university was pretty easy as well. I did a special program called Jumpstart that was nothing like normal college, which I only learned after returning from my missionary service. Then college got hard. But even then, I didn't start putting in real effort until last semester, 2021.
The classes I took were creative writing in the genres, intro to literary studies, theatrical design, methods of teaching English, and intro to critical theory. The majority of these classes meant a great deal to me.
The literature class definitely wasn't for me. I mostly took care of other responsibilities in that class, although I did read a lot of good stuff in that class. However, I learned that there is more of a difference between analysis and interpretation than I realized. I'm really good at analysis. I still don't know what interpretation means. Even if I say "this thing in the text means this in real life," that's not enough? Everything in literature means something, but apparently people that study literature instead of writing want things to mean even more.
The design class taught me that I am definitely not good at design. I'm definitely a director, because I know what feeling I want to be portrayed, and I have general ideas (like "blue is an important color in this scene"), but that's about it. I feel like my design concepts were a lot weaker than a lot of other people in the class, but that's nothing I didn't expect. I was surrounded by a lot of talented people, and it was great to learn from them! I did learn, though, that of all the design elements, I kind of have a knack for lighting design. I surprised myself during an online class discussion by writing very passionately and with great insight about lighting. So if I have a talent or future in design, it's there! Which is good, because my current job involves lighting design from time to time, even if it intimidates me a little bit. Maybe I should try it more often!
My theory class was a really big deal for me because it's what helped me realize that studying English was for me. There were many years of my life where I didn't want to go to college, and I didn't make the decision to do until my mid-teen years. It was around sixteen years of age that I made the decision to attend university, knew that I had to study creative writing because it's been the only thing I've cared about my whole life, but didn't want to at all. In my junior year English class, we did a unit on critical theory. I was not looking forward to it; it sounded like the worst thing in the world. What really worried me about it, though, was that my teacher said that critical theory is a large amount of what you study if you major in English in college. I knew that I would major in English, so this sounded like a nightmare.
But once I got an actual taste of it, I absolutely adored it.
My group studied and presented to the class about archetypal theory. (Which is a theory I absolutely adore, and I'm studying it a little more this semester--but I'll get to that later.) A short version of archetypal theory is that characters in a story fall into a certain role (hero, shadow, mentor, etc.) and follow the general same story arc (the Hero's Journey). This is based on the idea of the collective unconscious, that there are some things that humans just know because that's the way it's always been.
I loved it, like I said, so that was a relief. But the purely magical part was when the time came to present. As we were explaining the collective unconscious to the class, they kept asking questions because they didn't really understand it. Other members of my group would make poor attempts to explain it, to no avail. Since this is the basic foundation of archetypal theory, that was an issue. Finally I spoke up. (Most of you know by now that I am a pretty quiet person, and I was especially in high school.) I said, "You know how there are people that are afraid of spiders, and they're like, 'I can't explain it; I've just always been afraid of spiders. They've just always freaked me out'? That's what we're talking about. There are some things humans have just known from the beginning of time, like, some spiders are extremely dangerous, so humans have feared them from the beginning of time, and they still do whether they understand it or not. That's the idea of this theory."
The looks of understanding on their faces was priceless. Thanks to what I, the most quiet person in the class, had said, people understood this theory. I think that was the first moment I realized I really would be good at studying English. As I look back on it, because I certainly didn't know it then, that was my first successful moment with teaching too.
So while it's standard, I of course was overjoyed to have the opportunity to take an intro to critical theory class. It's what really got me into the idea of studying English, after all. I'm so glad I got to learn about theory on a deeper level and all the different ways it influences the way we read and the way we live. I also had the best professor ever. Dr. Dib is a SoCal fashion queen who brought snacks for us during exams, used Alan Menken songs as examples of post-colonial theory, is an absolute meme lord, recommended great books for us to read, brought us snacks during exams, and taught me the Arabic word for "welcome back from your shower." (I can't remember what it is, but it's my favorite word in the history of ever. I need to email her about that eventually.)
I took creative writing in the genres last semester, my first creative writing class of my college career. (Many thanks to my high school for offering me my first imaginative writing class at seventeen, which was such a joy for me.) I remember sitting in class on the first day before the lesson had started. I looked around at the other students, realizing they would all read and critique my writing. I work hard to make myself unashamed of that, which is really difficult for most people, but this was a scary feeling. Complete strangers would have to read my work and talk about it right in front of me. I thought to myself, I am in a very vulnerable situation.
But then I thought about that same thing again: I work hard to make myself vulnerable with my writing. I know that no matter how a writing career goes, it doesn't happen without absolute vulnerability. If you don't feel powerless, terrified, and weak at some point in your writing career, there's no way you're doing it correctly. But since I know that's true, I go out of my way to put myself in uncomfortable writing situations, just so I can make the best of them. Because I know that's how this goes. I thought about how I have made myself kind of used to the feeling, and I looked at the other students and knew that more than likely, most of them had not put themself through the necessary turmoil to get to the point of acceptance that I was at. And we were all going to do it. We were all in an incredibly vulnerable situation. And I knew that knowledge made me the strongest person in the room. As I continued through the class and saw how scared so  many of my writing classmates were, despite their obvious talent, the truth of that knowledge was confirmed.
I met amazing writers, got to read incredible examples of work, and I felt myself become a better writer. I read differently now, and I've gotten new ideas for stories and writing techniques that have really helped me grow. I am overjoyed with how my first writing class went.
All of those classes were hard work. But the one that really got me was methods of teaching English. It's a 4000 level class, and I am more or less three years away from graduating. That should have been the first indicator that I was in way over my head. It's typically the last class that English educators take before they start block and student teaching. I am nowhere near that part of my education. It's a small and intimate class, which was really fun, but I definitely felt like the odd one out most of the time since everyone else was so far along in their education.
This class required a lot of lesson planning and other activities to help us become teachers. We filled out mock applications of what we would have to do to get our teaching license. We planned a six-week unit full of lessons based on texts of similar themes. It was hard work. It took everything in me.
But I had never wanted to try for my education this hard in my entire life. As I thought about why that was, I realized it was because in this class it was the most obvious that my education wasn't my own. With everything I did, I thought of my future students, and I just wanted to make everything as amazing as I possibly could for my kids. The stress of lesson planning kept me up at night. I talked to my friends and my dad all the time about how I just wanted to help my kids, how I didn't know anything, how I wanted to make sure I planned the standards right so they were understandable for my students.
I'm grateful I took this class way earlier than I was supposed to, at the end of the day. For one, I now understand lesson planning and other essential parts of teaching in a way that I didn't before, so now I have years to think about it and practice it before I go out and do the real thing. That makes it a lot less intimidating to me. The second reason is because it taught me how to be a good student.
For better or for worse (usually for worse, but it has its good moments too), for a good portion of my life I have struggled to care about pretty much anything. There's a lot of factors that play into that, but it definitely explains why my interests are so few. I don't have the energy to care about anything else. But while I cared about my education before, I now care about doing well in it, and about working hard in it. And let me tell you, last semester I learned that caring about things isn't fun. The anxiety I got from worrying about my grades was a new kind of pain to me, and I don't know how so many of you have been doing it for all this time. It's not pleasant in any capacity. But I know it's worth it. And last semester was a rough go. Sometime next month I'm gonna have an appointment with my academic advisor and see how many of those classes I have to retake in the fall. (I think I passed them all, but honestly, it was such a rough run that I can't be quite sure about all of them.) But while that was true, it taught me the lessons of what to keep doing and what to fix. I know how to succeed for the rest of my college career now.
This semester I'm taking mythology (that's where the archetypal theory comes back into play), beginning French II (DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TAKE A YEAR OFF OF STUDYING YOUR LANGUAGE is all I'm going to say), American literature II (I'm drowning in reading, but at least Mark Twain really is as good as everyone said), screen aesthetics (essentially watching a lot of movies and pausing them every two seconds), and foundations in education (I failed this class last year, but now I have a professor that actually makes sense, as well as control over my depression). I'm also taking Jesus Christ and the everlasting gospel at the religious institute. It's awesome. I'm working hard the first week in, and good things are happening for me. I'm staying ahead.
Let us always remember that some things are hard, but that's what makes them priceless. I barley got out of last year alive, but now that I have, I have lessons that I'd never take back.
Thanks and much love!

This is Me Trying: Depression, Mission Reunions, and Not Giving Up

 Hello one and all!
The past few weeks have been really hard. My depression has been absolutely horrible. I feel like I say that all the time, but some days/moments that's all I can feel, so it does take up a lot of my time.
I've made a blog schedule for the next few months, most of which was supposed to get done the last two months, but my life was crazy so that didn't happen. I have a lot of great blog content in the works that I would love to share with all of you. However, with the current state of my health and how hard I am working to combat it, I don't usually have time, energy, or motivation to finish producing those things. I still have them all written on my blog planning board so that when I'm ready, they will get done. But if working on those things and meeting deadlines that I've already missed is causing me stress just to think about, I don't want to do it and I don't want to make myself do it. Writing every day is really important for me, but right now I want to focus on writing only the things my heart is drawn to and that bring me peace. I'm currently really drawn to a character-based project I'm working on personally; I started writing my first play and I've found a lot of comfort in the characters and stories there. I also need to work on journaling more because I have struggled in the past year to let myself participate in self-reflection, which is vital to existing, I think.
While the blog projects I have planned will be on hold, however, I don't want to be completely MIA from the blog. I love it here, but I just can't bring myself to work on things that are bringing me stress to just think about. I'm focused on healing and improving right now. So this is a new series called "This is Me Trying" (yes, that's for us, Swifties), and hopefully it won't be around too frequently, but it's just for me to get on the blog and write about whatever I want when I can't write about anything else and this is the best I can do.
With that said, the remainder of this post may get a little triggering/disturbing regarding depression and disordered eating.

I'm lucky to say that I have been finding a lot of solutions lately. Over the past few weeks, I've been able to identify some specific problems I'm facing. I've known for a hot minute that I need to go back to therapy since this has been a hard year for depression in general, but I didn't know what I would even talk about. I didn't want to walk in and just be like, "Hey, I'm really sad but I don't know why." But things that have been happening recently have gotten me reflecting on quite a few things, and I realized there are a lot of problems I have buried. Now that they're identified, I feel ready to work on them. I'm going to start seeing a therapist again within the next two weeks.
I've also been working on my sleep and exercise routines, because those things can really change the game for depression. It has been so helpful, and I'm working every day to get better. I hate to sound like a downer by talking about what I'm going through all the time, but while it's true that I am really struggling right now, I am happy to say that there is so much hope involved. I feel God beside me and I feel the improvement ahead of me and with me right now even.
Some things you expect about depression, despite still being unsettling, like crying your eyeballs out and having an anxiety attack as you lie in bed waiting to fall asleep, or like standing on a balcony or by a train track and picturing the worst thing possible happening to the people around you. What people frequently forget to mention is how absolutely gross depression is. My gosh, my room is a mess. Before I got home from my mission, I was definitely the neatest of all of my siblings, but now it's like I can't seem to keep a space clean for my life. I have to work so hard to make sure I have the right amount of nutrition/hydration/sleep to be able to do anything, so the idea of cleaning my room can be really exhausting a lot of the time. Taking a shower is so difficult. I find myself eating at irregular times because I'm afraid of doing it at normal times of the day. Everything just feels super ugly and messy. People know that depression is sad. Sometimes we forget to mention that it is so much more; sometimes it's just plain vile.
My depression almost affected my life for the worst in a new way this last week. On July 31, I had a mission reunion. President Cordon and Sister Cordon moved on to their new assignment. They are done with being the California Los Angeles Mission president and have moved on to be the area presidency of the North America West area of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We all got together at Brother Galorath and Sister Galorath's home in Provo, Utah. I was so scared to go that I almost backed out. It was the cause of many anxiety attacks, and I cried about it nearly every day approaching the event. What was I so afraid of? 
The truth is sad and disgusting, as all things with depression are. I hadn't seen most of my mission friends in quite awhile, and a lot of them live in northern Utah, so most of them are together most of the time. I was scared that if I showed up to this party with all my mission pals, I would be with people that are already always with each other, and I would be the odd one out. No one would want me there. Nobody would care whether or not I had showed up. It had been so long, so many of the friends I had made on my mission didn't even feel real.
A lot of things about my missionary service didn't feel real. I realized I don't let myself think about it much. My little brother, Jacob, recently began his own missionary service for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With him beginning his own incredible journey, it brought me to a lot of reflection on my own. When I would try to recall a lot of awesome memories, I realized it was incredibly difficult. And I don't mean it was emotionally difficult. I mean it was like I physically could not bring myself to hold onto a memory for my life. Everyone knows that this is a pretty common symptom of depression, but I noticed that it was more specifically with mission memories. I had trained myself to not think about my missionary service. I did definitely go through periods of time over the last year that made it more painful to think about my mission, but I think the main contributor to this is how a lot of people made me feel when I had first returned. The guilt that people make return missionaries feel for talking about and thinking about their mission is disgusting. The longer I was home, the more guilty or embarrassed  I would feel for bringing up anything surrounding the subject. Literally anything. I have loved and adored California, and specifically LA, since the first time I went there. I'm a film student. But even the mere mention of California in a conversation made me want to run and hide. To anyone and everyone: people talk about their lives. They should not feel guilty for talking about their lives. Take some time to consider that when a return missionary talks about her/his missionary service, she/he is talking about some of the most special experiences and memories she/he has up to that point. That is something she/he has lived and breathed for the past couple of years of her/his life. It is as natural as you bringing up whatever happened to you a few months ago. It is completely normal. How dare you?
As you can see, I'm quite angry about it, and what I'd come to realize is that I was quite angry about a lot of things. The above statements and more made me realize my mission had grown a negative connotation within me, something I never wanted to talk or think about. It just didn't feel good. It was a heartbreaking realization. One of the most sacred things in my life, something I had worked the majority of my teenage years for (and the first year of my twenties), something I had prayed for and waited for so long in my life, now brought me pain, anxiety, or even resentment to think about. I didn't want to be in a room of people from that time of my life. That would bring up even more resentment; these people were my best friends, my family even, and now I hardly ever talk to them. I was more vulnerable and open with them than I have been for most of my life. Looking back as a woman who tries to play tough sometimes to the point that she can't feel anything, I feel so much anger that I shared so much of myself, even with people that meant the world to me, just to be so far away from them now.
However, I prayed. Some of my plans in going north got conflicted, and I told God in the middle of the night one night, after yet another mental breakdown regarding this reunion, that I didn't even know if I was going to go anymore. It seemed like I wouldn't be able to, and no one would miss me if I didn't go anyway. Or better yet, maybe they would miss me, and me not being there would make them realize how much. I talked through this with God, and then a feeling came to me so clearly that I said it out loud: "This is going to change my life, isn't it?"
I was overwhelmed by the thought of, Yes, it absolutely is. You need to go.
Of course at that point I was sobbing even harder, because that is terrifying. I didn't even know if I wanted to go. But now I knew I needed to. I slept on it, and everything felt better. I woke up with a clear thought of a new plan. I felt good about the things that were going to happen. I felt at peace. Did I want to go? I had no idea, but at that point it felt divine so I felt determined. I was getting there no matter what it took.
It took some working out. It took a lot of crying. It took a lot of talks with my family. I made a deal with myself, unhealthy as it was, that if I at least showed up I wouldn't have to eat. (Sometimes it's about compromise, people.) But I did get there. My friend Emily and I both live in Cedar City and reported to the mission at the same time, so we got to drive up together. It was a blast listening to Taylor Swift and One Direction, and even talking with her about the reasons I was so afraid to go to the reunion. It felt good to talk to her about the things that were bothering me, that I had confessed to very few people, especially since she was a sister training leader of mine on the mission, so we had had similar talks before. My dad's aunt Sherri was generous enough to let me stay in her home for the weekend--and was kind enough to not say anything when I started crying after she asked how the reunion went.
The reunion was amazing. I was terrified of no one caring if I showed up, but it was amazing to see so many friends. People that I had barely known on the mission wanted to talk to me. The few people that knew how hard it was for me to show up congratulated me on how brave I was for coming and said they were glad I came. It's special to be around people that you dedicated so much time to serving God with. It really is a reminder of the amazing miracles that have happened in my life, and how many angels God has granted me, especially in that period of time. I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful it was to be able to see Sister Cordon again--she greeted me with the same words she always does, "Beautiful Day!" I can't begin to tell you how great it was to get to hug President Cordon (some of my friends said that was weird, but pals, I've been waiting two straight years for that moment), to have him ask about my depression and being able to tell him that it's been a hard year but I'm finding solutions. How great it was to have people ask about Jacob's missionary service and how he was doing. Finding out that an old companion of mine has a sister that is going to his mission and reported at the same time as him, and my president telling me that Jacob has a great example in me of what a missionary should be.
President Cordon and Sister Cordon had us all sit down so they could share a devotional with us. It was exactly what I needed to hear. They said that being a disciple of Jesus Christ doesn't mean just doing things. It is in fact much more about becoming. If we wanted to follow Jesus, we couldn't just do what we needed to be doing, we needed to try to be a better person every day. They said that the thing people usually miss the most about the mission is the spiritual experiences, and President said that those spiritual experiences come through service. I've decided to make service a huge priority in my life, because I know that is the best thing I can do as a daughter of God, a disciple of Christ, and a person who loves others and is looking for personal happiness.
After the reunion, I went with a few of my closest friends to see the sequel to my favorite movie. A Quiet Place Part II had stopped playing in the Cedar City cinema, so when I realized I was spending a weekend in Provo, I knew it was my perfect and probably only chance. When my mom suggested to me that I get a few of the friends to go with me while I was there, I was afraid and the thought hadn't even kind of crossed my mind before. Remember, I literally almost didn't show up to the reunion because I was afraid no one would even want me there. But I had a blast with my besties. They really are some of my best friends, and I think that was something I forgot. It was nice to remember how alone I'm not. And of course A Quiet Place Part II was another masterpiece by the Krasinski-Blunt family and rest of the amazing crew.
While I was there, I did on occasion wonder what the life-changing element of the weekend was supposed to be. But when I got back home to Cedar City, it was so incredibly clear. I had more positive feelings about my mission than I'd had in a long time. I had spent so much time shoving the memories of my mission away because remembering my mission made me feel guilty. With every recollection, I felt like someone was shaming me for it. But when I had the privilege to be around my angels again and to remember the wonderful times and experiences that we had together, it brought joy back into a really major part of my life. It reminded me of a lot of great relationships that I almost subconsciously had forgotten I had. My life was changed indeed.
I'll have you know that I spent about a month writing this post, which is pretty much why this post exists in the first place. I have so much amazing content lined up for the rest of the year, but I'm trying to take it easy, and if a post rambling on my most recent thoughts is the most I can do, then that's what I'm going to do.
Life has been so wild this year, but I have not given up. Not even close. I try my best every day, and sometimes I do my best. However, sometimes I don't, and I need to be okay with owning up to the fact that I did less than what I could do that day. Other days, I need to be okay with the fact that my best isn't as good as it usually is, because it's just a bad day, but that doesn't mean it wasn't my best. Don't be discouraged by hard days. We're all just trying our best, and whatever you can do is enough. That's why I'm a Chritian; every day I am increasingly aware of what I can't do, but I don't need to be able to do those things. I'm saved by the grace of God, because he can do it all. He does everything I can and can't do.
*insert sappy One Direction lyrics here, something from the first two albums preferably* You have all of my love.

Happy Eight Years!

Hello one and all!
I understand that I've said this so many times already, but it has been a very hard year. With that said, I missed a very important event on the blog: on May 27, 2021, the blog had its eighth birthday.
Normally on the blog's anniversary, I publish a post to celebrate the occasion, but this time life just got so out of control, or at least that's how I felt. I have tried. I just never got around to writing this post, but I definitely had plans for it.
The blog birthday post doesn't have a theme to follow each year. I just write about whatever feels appropriate, and whatever fits the spirit of It's an Adventure! I contemplated a few different things to write this year, and I finally landed on the idea for a post I wanted to write regardless but felt fit the bill for the blog's birthday. Like I said, it's been a rough year. I definitely would appreciate some advice right now, as I surely would have many times during the year. I've wanted to write a post about some pieces of advice I could've benefitted from over the course of my life, and that's what I wanted to celebrate this blog birthday with. I've narrowed it down to eight pieces of advice to celebrate eight years.

You don't need them to be cool. I adore being liked very much. As I've entered adulthood, however, I have gotten increasingly comfortable with the idea of myself as an individual. It sounds weird, especially for those of you that know me personally and know that I always have been quite a loner, a very independent person. But I so desired having friends in my youth, and once I had those friends, or had chosen the friends I thought I should have, I wanted nothing more to be liked by them, and at times when I felt I didn't measure up, I took that out on myself. I thought it meant something was wrong with me, or that I had to do something more to be liked. Only in the beautiful innocence of childhood have I ever really considered myself cool--once junior high hit, however, I definitely felt less certain of that. As I approach, twenty-two years of age, however, I've changed my mind again. I'm a pretty colorful person, and I think that's pretty cool. And I realize now that I was always this cool and vibrant of a person, but the people that I loved weren't always okay with me being that kind of person. Because that was true, I viewed myself as uncool and would suppress parts of myself that I wanted to be but thought the people around me didn't want to be. Let me ask you this, past Lizzo and all others that find herself in the same situation--who the heck made them the foremost authority on what is and is not cool? Their opinion isn't more valuable than yours, homie. If you think it's cool, don't let the haters stop you from being that way. And, consider this--who says you need to keep associating yourself with those people? Why do you need those friends? Why can't you find friends that you enjoy being with and enjoy being yourself with? To adapt the catchphrase of a dear friend of mine, the cool comes from within.

Stop writing secret admirer notes. Just be bold and say it with your chest, girl. It's more fun.
(This goes for everything by away. Tell the guy you like him, stand up for the people that are being mistreated, say what you think. At best it helps yourself and others, at worst it starts an adventure.)

It's okay to just like what you like--you don't need to fit in or stand out. As you can infer from the first piece of advice, I really love fitting in. I hate being the odd one out. Well, unfortunately for me, I happen to be the odd one out a lot. My entire life people have called me weird in a variety of ways--that I march to the beat of my own drum, that I'm a character, you name it. It has driven me absolutely crazy (by the way, I hated being called crazy too). It took me twenty-one years of life to finally accept it. I stopped denying all these statements and finally just took an honest look at myself and realized the truth: I am really weird. I'm just very different from the majority of people. That has led to me feeling like an outsider for the majority of my life. As I've examined my life this year, however, I've finally decided that doesn't have to be a bad thing. When you think about it, what is objectively right or wrong about being weird? Why can't my favorite colors be pink and blue? Why can't I prefer cats over dogs? Why can't I love Taylor Swift? Why can't my two favorite movies be the 1992 Aladdin and A Quiet Place? What is so wrong with me sleeping with a book? What is wrong with being reserved but not being shy? I've finally accepted that the things that make me really quirky also make me really brilliant. I think I'm quite the fun person, to be honest.
With this said, I've had the opposite preached to me many a time in my life. Don't fit in--stand out! The same, however, is true. What is objectively right or wrong about standing out? Standing out isn't fun if you're manipulating who you are to make it happen. I've heard so many people say that being normal is boring. Some of the most "normal" people I know are also some of my favorite people. Why? Because it's who they genuinely are, and they are genuine about being that way. It is so beautiful, and there are so many types of beautiful people. So go ahead. Fit in. Stand out. I don't care. As long as it's true to yourself and true to what's good, that's what really matters.
The strong majority of people are not trying to hurt you. Sis, I don't know where you got the idea that anything otherwise is true, but it's not. Being born with anxiety probably wasn't helpful, but most people are trying their best just like you and are so very kind. If trusting people is too much of a leap to start, then begin with not fearing them. Because there is nothing to be afraid of.

Change is a good thing. As a person with anxiety, change used to drive me crazy. And it's not like change is entirely stress-free for me now. But a few years ago I finally realized the truth about change: it's what life is all about. I realized it's what Christianity is all about. I mean, my core belief in life is that Jesus suffered, died, and lived again for me so that no matter what happened to me in my life, I could have a second chance. That means the purpose of my life is change! Change isn't something we should run from or be afraid of. It's something to not just be anticipated but to embrace!

Take care of yourself. Sure, the purpose of your life is to take care of people. But people includes yourself, chica. Plus, it makes the rest of life so much easier if you are just making sure you have the things you need. It is okay to prioritize being okay. This doesn't mean being selfish, it just means making sure everything that needs to be taken care of is taken care of. (You are something that needs to be taken care of, honey.)

Don't apologize for taking up space. This is a lovely piece of advice that I've heard for years, but only this year did I fully embrace what it meant. I wonder if it was said so many times that it kind of lost meaning. I wonder if it was something that no one ever really elaborated about so I didn't ever actually understand it. What I've come to understand about the phrase is this: people apologize for just existing a lot. However, being alive isn't a crime. There's nothing wrong with you being in a room. There's nothing wrong with eating. There's nothing wrong with walking. Nothing wrong with breathing. I've apologized for/felt guilty for doing all of the above things. No offense to myself or anyone else, but it's ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with existing. In fact, I'm glad we all do!

Make the place you want to be wherever you are. In regards to concluding my missionary service and my college summer plans, people would always inquire to me about going home. That has annoyed me for a long time. I know what they mean: they're referring to where my parents live in Henderson, Nevada. But I hate that that is what people refer to as my home, because it's not. It certainly is one of my homes, because I consider all the places I've lived home. And Las Vegas certainly is my hometown. But it's not my main home, because my main home is wherever I live. I have spent so much time in my life wanting to be wherever I'm not, and not just physically. When I was eighteen I finally reached my breaking point with that matter. I felt like I had blown my freshman year of college, and I promised myself I would never face that level of regret again, not as far as it was in my control. So to me, home is where the heart is quite literally--home is wherever I happen to be. Because in my mind, home should be the place you feel most comfortable and I want to be most comfortable in whatever my current situation is. Not every situation is ideal, but it can always be better or worse. It's all about trying to make your situation the best you can and be as happy as you possibly can be while you're there.

I hope any of the above advice helps you. It definitely helped me to write it out. Those are some of the things I need to remember most, things that I too frequently forget. But when we live by those rules, when we prioritize happiness coming from inside ourselves and doing whatever is good and true, life is not only an adventure, but an enjoyable one.
Thanks for being a part of my great adventure. Here's to another great year!

My Experience at My First Pride Celebration

I have been away for so much longer than I intended to be. This has honestly been a pretty hard year. Between personal struggles, depressive episodes, lots of school and work, and anxiety, there have been a number of roadblocks. That said, I'm really happy to be back and I'm really happy with where I'm at in life right now.
 

The other week I was the audio/visual technician at a pride celebration hosted in the Great Hall at my school. While walking home from this event, I couldn't stop thinking about it and how I honestly wanted to write about it right that second. The experience was a narration worth telling about.
To preface this story, I want to say that if anything comes off as disrespectful in any way, I apologize. My intention is not to hurt anyone; quite the opposite. I just want to tell the story as it happened, and what it made me think of.
I also feel like I should give context for who I am, to maybe explain how I would see this experience. I am a Christian (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). I believe that marriage is sacred, supported by God, and that it was meant to be between a man and a woman, with complete fidelity to your spouse and yourself before and during marriage. With that said, I want to tell you about my first pride celebration.
I went to this celebration for work. I'm an audio/visual technician, so for almost all on-campus events, any sound or video/lighting equipment needed is set up by us. This pride celebration took place on campus, so we were called in to work for it, and I was assigned to the particular job. I honestly didn't know what to expect.
I think I thought it would be a campus-run event, and pretty casual.. I was wrong. When I got to the Great Hall, there were about three people already there. They were setting up a snack table. All of them were wearing pretty extreme clothing, and it made me quite nervous. I didn't know what I was getting into, and I'm a pretty reserved person. However, I was just there to work, and even though I had to stay through the whole event, I usually wasn't much of a participant in events I worked for, so I just started setting up and figured that was pretty much all I would be doing that evening.
The party requested microphones and music, the latter provided by the hosts. After I got the microphones set up, I asked the host of the party what music he had for me to play. He told me that it was his first time ever planning and hosting a party. I told him that I hadn't worked an event in this space in quite awhile (thus why I was kind of running around like I didn't know what I was doing), so we were at least kind of in the same boat and just gonna get through it together.
I finally figured out where to plug in the device to get his music playing. Soon guests started showing up and I started playing music. He had made a special pride parade for the event. I just had to sit there and let it play. I sat in the back and wrote.
As the hosts continued getting the final pieces of the party ready and people started showing up, I heard the hosts mention a drag show that would be the final event of the evening. That REALLY freaked me out. I think you guys know that I'm not super interested in engaging in sexual things, and definitely not in watching other people engage in sexual things. I was worried about having to leave in the middle of the party if I got too uncomfortable. However, as the hosts discussed this part of the event, they were so respectful. They were making a set list and even asking every participant what they wanted to be called when they performed, whether it was their real name or a stage name. They looked over every song to make sure that it was appropriate, not too explicit or graphic, because this was a family-friendly party; there were a lot of adults as well as a lot of little children there. They discussed telling people to keep their performances clean, and to tell the audience before the drag show started so they could leave if they weren't comfortable with participating. It touched my heart how much consideration they were taking into how other people felt at their party.
Like I said, I don't typically do much during events like this, so I expected to just sit in the back and monitor the music while it played. However, throughout the night multiple people came and requested me to play specific songs. Eventually I asked the host if I was allowed to take requests because I just kept getting them, and he said that was absolutely fine. It was so fun talking to people and finding the songs they wanted me to play, adding them to the queue of music. Not only was I a participant in this event, but I wanted to be, so different from so many of my tech jobs.
Most of the evening was socializing, snacking, and dancing. Friends and families were all gathered together. Contrary to what I thought would be the case, this event wasn't run by the school. It had been put on by a couple of students, so it was just a small community event for people that were interested in coming. Everyone gathering together and having a great time in each other's company was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
Eventually it was announced what time the drag show would start, and pointing out that if anyone was uncomfortable with that part of the event, that was when they should slip out. The host made the announcement that he said he would, that the performers were supposed to keep it family-appropriate. He also said that people that felt comfortable being touched or danced with should sit in the front, and those that did not should sit in the back. Again, I was filled with love witnessing this man's respect and appreciation for his guests and doing everything he could to make them feel comfortable. This was his first time hosting a party? He was doing amazing. I was so impressed.
Of course I had been initially nervous for the drag show. However, it wasn't really a drag show. Only one of the performances made me uncomfortable, so I just chose not to watch that one. The others were pretty much just people dancing, interacting with the audience, singing, having a great time together. One guy even brought his roommates and their instruments and performed a few songs. It was what a party should be in my eyes, the more chill version of the parties that One Direction sings about but that you've never actually been to. Between every performance the host hyped up the previous performer and introduced the next one. At one point, a woman went up to sing a song that she was extremely nervous for. To reassure herself, she kept saying, "You're with family." The audience cheered, encouraged, and supported her throughout the entire performance.
As the evening went on, one of my old professors asked the two gentlemen who put the party together to say a few words. She was so grateful for them for putting this event together.
The gentlemen said that they were just hanging out one evening when they casually mentioned how they should put together a pride celebration. As they kept talking, the idea became more and more of a reality until they finally realized they were going to actually do it. They expressed so much joy and gratitude, and maybe that wasn't even verbal; but the way they were glowing was so significant to me. I think it was one of multiple times that night that I got choked up.
The last thing our host said was that living in Cedar City (a small town with not much cultural diversity), he was pretty sure that a lot of members of the LGBT+ community felt alone. To that he said, "Look around! We're all here." They had a lot of friends around them, and there were more people with them than they had realized. They really did have a community in their town.
After the event, before I cleaned up, I did something I don't think I've ever done before at a job: I congratulated him on how well he did, which he really appreciated. I knew he had been anxious for the event, how much work and care he had put in, and that I had genuinely enjoyed the party. It was some of the most fun I'd ever had working an event.
For those of you that want a summary of what the celebration of pride month is all about, I'd say my host friend said it best in his closing remarks. It's just to let people know they're not alone. Sexuality aside, beliefs aside, it is about what everything should be about: showing people they are not alone.
You all well know what I believe. I stated it at the beginning of this post. What I believe, however, can be well summarized by a few simple verses from the Bible, dictating the wise words of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Matthew 22:36-40):
"Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
The most important things in the world to me are loving God and loving His children. To love God, I worship Him and follow His teachings. To love His children, I show them compassion and support, no matter what they do. At the end of the day, I believe almost everyone is trying to do what's right, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But I know if people judged me based on every time I tried to do the right thing and failed, I would hope they would show me compassion, because that happens quite frequently. I'm a Christian because I'm a sinner, which means I need help to get better. All of us fall short. If God shows me grace, the least I can do is show grace to everyone else. Quite honestly, what other people do is none of my business. I can only control how well I take care of them. I believe it's my responsibility to take care of others the best I can.
One of the education classes I took last semester was schools, society, and diversity. We talked about different aspects of identity in this class and how we could help our students in all of the different identities they come from. During the weeks that we talked about sexual orientation, the question came up (I think multiple times) of how to support our students even if we disagreed with their actions. The answer is so much simpler than people realize, or maybe than they're ready to accept. I learned when I was about sixteen years old that supporting someone and supporting what they do are two different things. Thinking otherwise means that your love is conditional, and love shouldn't be that way. It is none of my business what other people do, just like it is none of their business what I think/feel about what they do. When it comes to love, it is irrelevant. I still believe in traditional marriage, but when someone trusts me with an important part of who they are, there is no reason for me to tell them. I know so many people do things like that in an attempt to love and support the person while still making it clear what they believe, but when a person is in a vulnerable moment like that, it just makes them feel unheard and unloved, whether that is the intention or not. If someone asks or it comes up, that is of course fine to bring up, because there's nothing wrong with sharing what you believe in a comfortable and appropriate situation. But the overall priority is to make people feel loved. To love somebody, you do not have to understand them or justify what they do.
A small example is my dear friend Lily and I. She was my last mission companion, and you have never met two people that are more different. Everything that's true for her, the opposite is true for me. We even navigated our way through a personality quiz with the other sisters that lived in the building. Our personality types were literally exact opposites. But she is one of my best friends to this day, one of the companions I was the closest to. Just because we loved each other. And I think we could even recognize that the things that were different about us, the ways that we saw the world, they made us stronger when we worked together. We loved each other before we did anything else, and that is what makes any relationship good.
There's another passage from the Bible that speaks to the theme of pride month is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."
If you want to love someone, be patient and be kind. We're all just out here trying our best, and we're all just out here trying to not feel alone. Let's all do the best we can to help each other out.
Thanks and much love!