Back in Cedar City

Hello family, friends, followers, fans, and fandomeers!

Today was my first day of school in Cedar City. As I said earlier, I have been living here for a few days. I moved here shortly after arriving home in Las Vegas from my year-and-a-half-long mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Let me tell you something about return missionaries. Our first few days/weeks out of the mission, we don't want to be anywhere other than where we served our mission (for me that was Los Angeles, California). Our missions are really sacred and happy experiences for us. We miss our friends and our new home. We miss getting to teach people about Jesus Christ all day and getting to live away from the evil and chaos of the world. If you all know me, you know I love my hometown. So after living in Henderson for three days, I was starting to get okay with the idea of living in Vegas. (Because the first few days I wasn't sure. I really wanted to be in LA.) Right at that time, I had to move to Cedar City.

I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself. When I was seventeen, I started applying for colleges. I was really looking into Utah Valley University for awhile, but it got to the point where nothing was seeming to work out in my favor for that school. I stopped desiring to study there. It was very apparent that that wasn't where I was supposed to be.

Then Southern Utah University came into my path. This is the university that my sister attended, so I had visited it before. The first time I visited campus I knew that it was a university I definitely didn't want to go to. (God works in mysterious ways and His plan is always better than ours, I'll leave it at that.) But when I got to the point in my life where I needed to choose for myself what post-secondary school to attend, strangely enough SUU seemed to have all the right things. Upon searching for colleges, I realized that most universities don't have a creative writing program, and those that do typically have a poor one. SUU was one of three or four colleges I found that had a suitable program. It's also the Shakespeare capital of the world (or at least the United States), and of course you know I love that. I also around this time decided to minor in theatre and film. SUU has great programs for both of those disciplines, so I would be getting an unbelievably sound education in all of those areas. I was so excited! What really sold it is the Jumpstart program. Many places have programs to help students advance quickly through their post-secondary education, but Jumpstart is entirely unique to SUU. Other universities have looked into it to potentially adopt the program but have backed out because of how difficult it is. In this program, we are in one class of about fifty students for one year. We do all of our general education classes (except for math since the requirements by major vary so much for that class) in this one class, taught by many professors. Any professor can chime in at any point of another professor's lecture to make it more of an integrated learning experience and show how all of the different subjects of the world connect. Along with that, we study all of these things with a certain emphasis. My emphasis was in theatre and film. (I write a little bit more about it in a blog post from that time.) It's an incredible program, and it meant for me that I would have all of my general education done in one year, so after I served my mission, I would be entirely prepared to just get started on my major. It all seemed so divine, and I want to note that I knew that at the time. SUU was a gift from God to me. I was super excited about it.

So what happened that made me less than eager to go back this semester? Well, a lot. I moved out of my parents' house two months before my eighteenth birthday, and I did not take it well. I had the most charmed life at age seventeen. I had gained a new understanding of where I wanted to go in life, I lived in a city that I adored (I am a huge city girl, so anything smaller than Vegas is a no for me), I was doing stellar work in all of my performances and had finally reached a really good achievement level, started feeling comfortable in my own skin, and had amazing friends. I had it made, essentially. Which, from God's standpoint, is of course the best time to shake things up so more growth can happen. I was going through the crisis of growing up. That in itself is very difficult, especially for someone who was as emotionally out of control as I was.

When you take that into account, I had a very difficult time making friends. I am a pretty naturally closed-off person, so it wasn't hard for me to just close myself off from the world, resent everyone around me, and pretty much be bitter all the time. I didn't have the best living situation that year, so that definitely didn't help either.

If all that wasn't enough, I had just recently started to overcome a health crisis and was doing good, but when you take the above into account, my health declined very quickly. I sometimes forget just how bad my anxiety and depression were at the time, but they were very, very bad. My eating disorder behaviors that I had tried learning how to improve shortly before I moved away came back so much worse. Very few people know just to what extent my health dropped, but it was genuinely terrible. I have traumatizing memories from that period of time that I had shut out for about a year until they randomly came back to me on my mission. I do not have healthy memories of this place.

I was just very bitter at Cedar City as a whole. It was always dreadfully cold, it was a tiny town in my city girl eyes, and Utah has never been one of my favorite places; the culture there is very different from my adored hometown.

So, long story short, I was not in a good place and thus it was not a good place for me. But it wasn't anything in particular wrong with the university. I remember at the end of the school year at our Jumpstart party and looking around at everyone. They were all so close to each other. I loved all of them and they were great friends of mine. But I knew I hadn't developed even close to the relationships that they had developed with each other. I felt terrible. That feeling soon turned into a lot of regret.

And even a lot of guilt. I told people on my mission about it because it troubled me that much. SUU was God-given. I knew that. And my circumstances and state of mind didn't change that fact. Instead, I felt like I had abused the gift God had given me. I let resentment fill my heart towards the gate to my future that was gifted me. It was the most terrible feeling.

After that, I was determined, without a doubt, to never make that mistake again.

So yeah. Was pulling up to Cedar City, right after returning to Las Vegas from Los Angeles, in particular exciting? Was I happy to be around that culture again? No. I remember pulling into Utah a few days ago, looking around, and thinking to myself, "I have absolutely no desire to be here." I still have a hard time talking to people. I still prefer life without snow. All of those things have remained true.
But I also recognize that I am a stronger person than I was three years ago. I recognize that I learned how to overcome a lot of challenges during my time away from Cedar City. I have come more into who I am. I have learned to let myself enjoy people's company if I want to. And it hasn't been easy, especially since I'm making such a big transition right now. But like I said, today was my first day of school. My classes at the school are French, educational psychology, methods of teaching grammar, acting, and tap. All of my professors are so awesome and I am so happy. I can tell I am really where I am supposed to be. I haven't said goodbye to friends from Las Vegas or friends from Los Angeles--I still talk to all of them. But I am also okay with being myself here. It's not the town I ever picture myself living in, but it's everything I need right now. And life is never not going to be hard, but that doesn't mean it can't be happy. I am happy.

One more thing before I head out that has really helped me navigate this experience. Because trust me, it has been really hard at times. My mission therapist told me that I have a backburner confidence, so it's just time to bring it forward. It doesn't matter how inadequate we feel, how much we feel we don't fit in, how incapable we seem to be, or whatever else we don't seem to measure up on. Confidence comes from realizing that we all have the potential to be astounding. No human was born naturally worse or better than another. We all have the potential to be something great. It's okay if we're not perfect or even if we're anywhere close. As long as we are progressing and trying to do our best every day, good things will happen.

Whatever you're going through, you can do this. We got this!

Thanks and much love!