doesn't know what she's talking about.

It's one thing to know that you don't know what you are talking about, but it's another entirely when other people know that you don't know. I hate feeling this way.

woke up a man.

I looked into the mirror this morning too quickly to notice the stubble on my face. Grabbing my towel and heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth I quickly skimmed over them with my eyes half-shut. Once I began undressing I noticed that my "waiting for my Edward" t-shirt clung to my bulky figure and after pulling it over my face I groaned. A new crop of hair had appeared on my chest. The first thought in my mind was "argh. Today is swimming. I'll have to shave." The second thought was "wait... I have pecs." I stared into the mirror not sure if I was seeing correctly. Performing a quick survey of all major body parts I let out what was I thought would be a shrill cry. My voice gargled in my throat and I panicked. I'm a man! My roommate started banging on the door and I stifled another cry. I'm a naked man! I quickly jumped into the shower and shouted back in a gruff falsetto that I wasn't feeling well and hoped she would ease up. She pounded harder, shouting "I need my contacts. I'm already late!" Tossing aside my minuscule bath pouf and banging my head on the slanted roof of the shower, I slung my magenta towel around me, just barely, and cracked the door just wide enough to poke the contact case through. But she pushed. The door swung open and I dropped my towel out of fear.

is giving you 16 posts for the price of 1!

Okay, now don't get scared about the size of this post. It was a creative writing assignment and I decided to write it in blog format, so why not post it?! If you decide to read any of it, I think you'll be surprised, annoyed, amused, maybe frightened, and hopefully not bored. It's really rough, but anyhow, I'll stop explaining. Take a look:

I’m the kind of girl who wants to be free.

My first word was “hot.” There are a couple theories about this, but I think the one I believe is true is my mother would frequently tell me that the stove was “hot”, that I shouldn’t touch it. I don’t know if I ever touched it, but I believe I resented the rule and so I would yell “hot!” at the stove. I think I yelled it. I never really liked rules and I would always test them. Once when I was looking for my play dough, I spied it on the countertop and my mom told me that it was off-limits to use that can. I didn’t know why. I grabbed the can and tilted it towards myself, expecting the play dough to be inside, but instead I was burned with scalding-hot oil. I learned then to trust the word no. I still don’t like some limits. I hate speed limits. I hate cell-phone limits on minutes. I hate calorie limits. But I like some limits. I would list them but I’m already bored of that.

I’m the kind of girl who wants to be loved.

It’s true, I want to be loved, just like most people. I found out that I’m not heartless after all. I always had crushes and most of them crushed me. I know why they are called crushes now, it’s because that’s what happens when they are over. I remember Bobby Peterson. He was practically Jonathan Brandis’s twin. I would see him in the hall by my locker as he stooped to get a drink from the fountain. He’d flick his chin-length blond hair and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. Like a god. So beautiful. I’d wait to see that during passing time to get me through the day. At one of the final dances of my seventh-grade year (his eighth-grade year) I asked him to dance. I will never forget the feeling. My head was literally spinning and my arms went numb. Even if he’d said yes I probably wouldn’t have been able to dance with him anyhow. But he said no. Then I wanted to puke. But I didn’t. Luckily. I turned around and walked over to my friends to resume throwing crepe paper at those who were dancing. Later on, I had many other crushes, but none that crushed me like John. But I’ll tell you about him later.

I’m the kind of girl who wants to be understood.

I hate it when people misunderstand me. I know it happens all the time to everyone, but I especially hate it. About halfway through my mission in Ukraine, I remember a day when I was wandering around Odessa with my companion in search of a member’s house. I asked an old, bitter woman for directions and do you know what she said to me? “Girl, I don’t understand a word you are saying. Where are you from? Poland?” It made me so angry! Maybe it’s just because I didn’t say it right and it was my fault. But maybe I did say it right and the old woman was just a hag. Whatever. P.S. I found out later, through family history, that I am Polish,
however.

I’m the kind of girl who wants to write.

I do. I love writing. It has always been my refuge. Whoa, I almost wrote that as “refuse.” Maybe that’s true as well. Either way, I do a lot of it and it has always been my own world. I realized I was not bad at writing when my junior high English teacher read my essay about Ethan Frome to the class. I got made fun of for that, I’m pretty sure. Then in high school I wrote another essay and I think I used the word “solace.” For some reason the class thought I was being pretentious and I got made fun of again. That’s when I decided to dumb down my writing so that I wouldn’t stick out too bad. And I didn’t again for a while. I forgot about it until I went to college and discovered I had gone too far with my efforts to write poorly. I perked back up again. It just goes back and forth from there, but here I am again. I’m trying to make something of my writing and I hope I can.

I’m the kind of girl who makes mistakes.

Oh, there’s too many of these to write in one place. But I think the biggest mistake in my life was also one of my best learning experiences, so I’ll tell about that one. His name is Jonathan. I now refer to him as “loser.” I know, it’s not very nice. He lived in Canada and I went there to visit a friend once when I was about 18. I met him and three days later we were dating. He had tattoos everywhere: neck, arms, back, but he wasn’t all pierced up or anything. For the most part. He was bipolar. He was a redhead just like me and we fought all the time. His father was an Anglican minister, but he didn’t believe. His favorite part of church was the fact that communion in the Anglican church was brandy. But for some reason I fell for him (see “I’m the kind of girl who wants to be loved.) That’s really a lame excuse too. I know why I fell for him. He was a little dangerous and he seemed like a lost boy to me. I’ve always been like Wendy, collecting lost boys and then losing them again. The rift inside of me began to grow through the months of our dating and I realized that I couldn’t be two people anymore. I wanted to be a good girl. I wanted to go on a mission. I couldn’t make any more compromises and so I wrote him a letter that told him how I wanted to live a different life and do what I knew was right. He slammed the phone down and the last words I heard from him were “I hate you and I hate missionaries. I’m going to kill every missionary I see.” But he didn’t kill me, I went on my mission. And I learned from this mistake that I needed to choose for myself, and not only that, but act on it.

I’m the kind of girl who interrupts.

By the way, I just wanted to let you know a little more of the basics before I go on. I’m from Gladstone, Oregon. Well, originally I lived in Clackamas, but then I moved to Milwaukie and then to Gladstone. I’m 25 years old and I’ll be 26 in December. I don’t know how to celebrate that kind of birthday. There are four kids in my family and I’m the oldest and the shortest of them all. It makes no sense. I am also the only red-headed child, so I’m kind of a black sheep. Moving on…

I’m the kind of girl who is a magnet.

This is where it gets a little more strange. I don’t really know how to introduce this part of my life, but like most other parts, it involves a boy. His name is John. I promised that I would talk more about him. I met him when we lived together in a big jungle of foreign languages. He came home from his mission as a reclusive computer-nerd that couldn’t be coaxed out of his room for most activities, especially hot-tubbing. The first night I met him I invited him along and he jumped like my dog did the first time I landed him in the pool. He was scared of the water ever since and his panicked attempt to preserve himself left giant claw-marks on my thighs—the dog, not John, mind you. But John also declined, less forcibly, and I found myself determined to draw him out of his shell. I know this sounds nothing like being a magnet at this point, but you’ll understand it in a little bit. At this point we were polar opposites and I felt like I was pushing him away with my advances, which I was, truthfully. We became friends after finding some common interests in Russian, dancing, movies, and music. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I liked him. The summer left me feeling hopeful and free from my addiction again, but as soon as we were together after school started, I felt the ache again. It got worse from there. I found the courage in early October to go over to his house and talk to him about it. I called him from his doorstep and told him I wanted to talk. He took his time getting to the door. When he answered it, he looked terrible—too much time in front of a computer screen left him red-eyed and pale, but I still wanted him. So in the most awkward way I could, I told him that I liked him. His smile caught me off guard, almost as if he was trying to stifle a snicker. His answer was predictable, “I’m so glad that we are friends and that we have so much fun together, but… to answer your question… no. I’m not interested.” I excused myself and cried all the way to my friend’s house. But this isn’t the end. I thought it was over, but it really was the beginning of all the things that would happen to us. He thought about what I said. For three months. Then on my birthday he brought it up again and told me that he realized he was wrong. That he wanted to date me after all. This ideal arrangement (for me only) lasted for three weeks.

I need to start a new paragraph here because it’s just getting too long. I’m sorry about that. Plus, this part needs to be separate. This is where it all came to pieces, or maybe it finally came together. He drove me to the airport to go home for Christmas, and all I could think of was how much I was going to miss him. All he was thinking of was how he was going to tell me he was gay. This is how he did it. We reached the point of the mountain and after the conversation petered out, he said “I need to talk to you about something. I don’t know how you’ll take this.” I reached out and patted his leg and told him that he could say anything. I remember him calling his being gay “SSA”, short for same-sex attraction, and I had to ask him what that meant. He said that he knew for a long time about it, even before his mission, but he wanted to try. And I was glad that he did. I forgot to talk about our first kiss, which was our only kiss. It happened two days before I left for home. It was snowing out and he walked me out to my car, which he didn’t generally do. When he hugged me goodnight I held on and just looked at him. After a few short pecks, he said “I bet you’ve been wondering why it’s taken me so long to kiss you.” I said that I wasn’t wondering and that I was just happy he did. I didn’t want any explanations, I didn’t want anything to change, but it did. That’s what happened in the car. We both cried so much I’m surprised that we didn’t swerve off the highway. I have no idea how he could have concentrated then. I flew home, still in tears, and when my sister met me in the airport and asked me what was wrong, I told her “John’s gay.” That’s all. Maybe I should’ve put this all under “I’m the kind of girl who cries”, but there are lots of times when I’ve cried, so I think I’ll leave it where it is.

So John was gay. I felt like my life had caved in. I read everything about SSA that I could get my hands on and I felt hopeful that maybe we could work something out. We didn’t, but we stayed friends. From that time on I realized that most of my guy friends are gay. I found out that three more were gay that very month and from there the number just multiplied exponentially. That’s my point, I’m a magnet. I was surrounded by gay men and I had no idea. I’m still surrounded by them, and they affectionately call me their “fruit fly.” Turns out that BYU isn’t quite the marriage factory I thought it was. But the truth is, I needed to know this. Realizing this made my life fuller. I have more wonderful friends than I did before and it has caused me to try and be a more compassionate person. I know John didn’t want to be gay. I know he wanted to try, but I also know that he taught me more as a gay person than he would have if he were straight. I continue attracting gay men, and being attracted to them. My theory just gets proven over and over again, and I’m glad.

I’m the kind of girl who cries.

More about crying. I guess I can talk more about that. When I was little I think I cried a lot because I was frustrated or because I wanted something. Now I cry because something strikes me as profound and beautiful, although I still cry when I get frustrated. Less than a month ago I was in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris. As I walked through the second floor among the impressionists’ works, I wanted to cry. I think I let one or two tears leak out. It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

Earlier on in the trip I cried while I was running around madly in the Milan airport. It went down like this. I was mad at my travel partner. He was being annoying and strange and I didn’t want to be around him, frankly. In my annoyance, I misread the flight information and I missed my flight to Paris. It was a nightmare. The Italians were very kind, but the layout of the airport was a maze and I ran back and forth from the Air France ticket desk to the Alitalia desk to the lost baggage desk and back to the gate. I didn’t even seek to hide my panic. I ran around crying as a 25-year old girl, but they didn’t know that. Maybe they thought I was younger. I hope they did. I did get on the next flight, but I don’t really want to remember this tearful event very much. Ugh.

I’m the kind of girl who reads.

Now this is something I love to talk about. My life has been filled with books since I was old enough to sit still on my mom’s lap while she read to me. My love for reading began with books like I Like Cats, The Berenstein Bears, The Pokey Little Puppy, and others. My taste became a little more sophisticated when I discovered a thirst for WWII novels and the librarian would set aside her picks for me. This, incidentally, is social suicide in sixth grade. I conquered veritable giants in that grade like the Merchant of Venice and the Yearling, which wasn’t that large really. I don’t even remember what it was about. But the most important thing is I never stopped reading. I have no idea how many books I’ve read. Now I read about two or three a month, depending on the reading that I do for homework as well. Most of the time, my favorite entertainment is reading. I was once caught reading something under my desk during a history lesson. Ha! I’ll never regret that. My sixth grade teacher was a bore. My latest reading addiction is the Twilight series, I know, I know… vampires and all that. I’m really too old for it. I even went to the book signing in Seattle when I went to visit my cousin at the end of the summer. Part of my desire to write comes from my love for literature in general. I guess that’s a given, but I want to produce something that someone else will read and feel the way that I felt when I first discovered books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Harry Potter. It’s young adult fiction that really excites me, but I can’t avoid the heavy realm of Russian Literature. Is it wrong to be in love with Pushkin and Edward (the vampire) at the same time?

I’m the kind of girl who falls asleep in class.

This is another sixth grade story. The first time I ever fell asleep in class was in Mr. Katz’s class. He didn’t know how to treat twelve-year-olds and so when I fell asleep on my book, he walked over and slammed his teacher’s manual on my desk right in front of my head. That did a lot for my self-esteem. It didn’t cure me either. I am an incorrigible class time sleeper. One of the worst times was in ninth grade during biology. I fell asleep again, and I drooled on my book. When I was awoken, I slammed by book shut and later the pages were almost pasted together with my spit. I felt bad for the next person who was issued that book. I usually have falling dreams in class too, and I wake up shaking in my desk and gripping the edges. I really do feel bad about it, really. I’m also a church sleeper at times and even worse, a temple sleeper. The room is just so dark and the big dress is so comfy. It’s a recipe for sleep.

I’m the kind of girl who likes to cook.

I discovered the desire to cook when I was still saying “hot” and I would bang pots and pans with a wooden spoon. I liked to pretend that I was on a cooking show and I frequently watched Yan Can Cook and Julia Child on PBS. Then we got cable! The Food Network is still my favorite channel. I remember tuning in to the Naked Chef just to see what that show could possibly be about and finding the love of my (cooking) life! His poster hangs above my bed and his cookbooks line my shelves. He is brilliant and his food is just as good.

I’m the kind of girl who daydreams.

My daydreams range from sentimental to honestly weird and disgusting. In the margins of my thoughts that aren’t filled with a to do list, there is usually some crush waiting, my “imaginary” boyfriend. Sometimes it is a real person and sometimes it is not. He is always glad to see me and kiss my hand politely. Or something. I also like to think up stories. My most recent is a cross of two of my favorite daydreams about elves and vampires. I wonder what might happen if an elf is bitten by a vampire? While I was in St. Petersburg over the summer (and often bored out of my mind) I would sit and think about this story. It involves a young elf girl. She finds herself attracted to an alien presence in her ever-vigilant perception and she follows it into the forest. Inevitably, this is where she gets bitten. But there are no details about this occurrence. She finds herself on the floor of a cave, altered, immortal, and thirsty. She doesn’t know what she’s become. The plot gets more complicated as she kills a human boy and then
poisons her lover. We’ll see what happens with it. See, I just started daydreaming right then.

I’m the kind of girl who is scared of heights.

I think I can trace this fear back to an incident when I was maybe six years old. I went to a playground with my friends, Brandon and Rebecca, and we were sliding on slides and all that. There was an especially high slide that had been taken down, possibly for safety reasons, and I failed to recognize its absence. Jokingly, I pushed my friend Rebecca from the top of the “slide” and she fell. It seemed like fifty feet up to me, but in reality it was probably closer to ten feet. Watching her fall and then accompanying her to the hospital left me morbidly afraid of doing something similar to anyone else or myself. To this day I hate ferris wheels, high swings, driving on certain bridges, and even the Eiffel Tower. I went there in August and was mortified when I realized how high up it was. Riding the elevator up to the highest level took all the willpower I had, but I paid 13.50 Euro to do it, so I couldn’t just stand there on the second level shivering.

I’m the kind of girl who is a rebel.

Well, I thought I was a rebel for most of my teenage years. I will never forget my mother’s reaction when I had bleached out my red hair to a hideous shade of margarine yellow the summer after my senior year in high school. It was already cropped in a hideous fashion: blunt Betty Page style bangs in front, and the back was shorn down to about an inch. My poor mother. I even went to church like that. This is where loser comes in. Apparently he found my hair attractive. Mostly, I just looked weird, and that’s just punishing myself. I think most teenagers punish themselves with their appearance. Thank goodness I’m over that.

I’m the kind of girl who is scared.

I hate enclosed spaces as much as I hate heights. When I was younger and we went caving as a family, I nearly had a panic attack when we got to the part where you get down on your hands and knees. I believe I can trace this fear as well. When I was just a toddler, I was at a pizza place playing in some kind of tube where you crawl around. One genius kid in front of me just decides to stop in the middle of the tube and some other kid behind me starts pushing on me to go forward and suddenly I’m trapped inside. I still feel sick when I think about this moment.
But my fears aren’t all about physical things. I have always been scared of missing out. Every night when my dad would literally drag me to bed, I hated the idea of missing anything that went on after-hours. I couldn’t sleep at the idea. This fear has transferred into my adult life as the fear of being the last to succeed at something. And that’s kind of boring.

I’m the kind of girl who is happy.

There have been many more happy moments in my life up to this point than anything else. It seems like I write mostly about negative experiences, but often those are the most detailed in my mind because of the discomfort. Happiness is too easy to stick like that. It just flows past and because of the lack of friction, it remains a glowing blob in my memories. But I want to write about one of my happiest nights. It was before John told me. Of course my life hasn’t gone downhill since, quite the opposite, but it was blissful innocence. After the awkward car ride in which I became John’s girlfriend, we went to a wedding reception. We were a couple there are everyone knew it. He’d told all our friends that we would be together when we came. Good thing I said yes. I grabbed his hand the second we were out of the car and for the rest of the night we were inseparable. He danced all the sappy Harry Connick Jr. songs with me and didn’t mind my lack of ballroom ability. I put my head on his shoulder when we danced and when we touched legs sitting down, he didn’t flinch away. We just giggled out of amazement that something had finally worked out for us. He asked me to hug him goodnight and when we both leaned in, our seatbelts locked and held us back. I finally got what I wanted. I couldn’t think of a better feeling than that at the moment. And that night when I went to sleep, my thoughts didn’t just swirl around him, wishing in the darkness, they settled with the thought that he was mine.

is getting back to basics.

This post isn't meant to be pretty or inspirational or anything, it's just something a little deeper than what I've been posting lately. Those things consititute little obsessions for me and I recognize that I need to go back to what is most important in my life. I love the gospel. I am so glad that I know it's true. I wish sometimes that I could be as caught up in it as I am in other trivial things, but that's my choice, right? It's almost like I can step outside of myself and recognize that I am going through some stage and I will be over it soon and the most important things in my life will still be there. I feel the need again to do some soul housekeeping and clean out the things that are keeping me from focusing on the most important aspects of my life. I am a list-maker, so here are some things I know I need to work on:

1. Prayer. Doing more than reading off a to-do/thank you list to the Lord. I need to really ask for what I need and ask the Lord to help me know what I need. I need to pray more for other people too.

2. Scripture study. Not just reading the scriptures, but studying them. I need to seek answers in them and learn to ask the right questions. I need to do it when I am not dead tired too!

3. Charity. Seeing more in a person than what they do and refraining from judgment. I know that it is impossible to tell what trials a person deals with by simply looking at them or even interacting with them. And I may never know. And should this change the way I treat them anyhow? No. I need to be kind to every person I meet and interact with, letting go of past hurts, offenses, and grudges.

4. Temple attendance. Not just when it is convenient, but when I know I need to go. I feel a pull toward the temple and I know I need to spend more time there pondering greater questions in my life and seeking to understand the Lord's will as well as accomplishing work for the dead.

5. Church service. Seeking to do more than just the bare minimum for my calling, but (at the risk of sounding cliched) really magnifying it.

I have a new semester ahead of me and new opportunities to make my life and the lives of those around me better. I feel hopeful. I feel very blessed. I know the Lord doesn't do this for me so that I can sit around feeling good and being useless. I need to act and give service. I hope that I can help bring more good to pass.

is invisible.

As I walked around campus doing errands and going to class I would occasionally see someone I knew. I would try to make eye contact and wave, but five times out of six (literally... I counted)the person didn't wave back or even acknowledge I was there. Maybe they didn't recognize me? I can hardly accept that. I am not offended, but it was really strange. Maybe I have finally achieved my childhood dream of being invisible. Now I can do whatever I want!