4/19/2011

So I've never been one to think I'd start a blog, but here I am with a cold and nothing else to do, so I'm lying on this horribly uncomfortable air mattress I call my bed, starting my online journal. I've been journaling since I was 8 and have been paranoid about anyone reading anything I wrote in my journals since then. But I figured that since no one will really read this anyway, it won't make much of a difference. I'll be talking to myself with an open, unknown audience potentially in the background. It will be an interesting experiment at the very least. I'll still leave the most personal thoughts in my hand-written journal, but I guess I'll open up a little bit here.

Just so it's clear, I'm going to try not to worry too much about grammar or spelling or anything, and just let the thoughts flow freely like I do in my journal. Any other time, except for in texts, I am kind of a grammar snob. I had an English emphasis in my Humanities major at BYU and tutored English in college and just really want people to speak and write correctly, but in a journal, the rules vanish. Just like dating rules go out the window if something larger steps in front. For example, I recently broke up with a guy, well he broke up with me, which usually makes it easy to just cut those ties. But then his mom died. So I did everything I wouldn't do in the case of being dumped, or what I imagine I wouldn't do, because that's actually the first time anyone's ever really dumped me, and I pounced. Well, that sounds a bit cat and mouse, and makes me think of Mean Girls when they have these random scenes showing people as animals, but I did kind of do that. I called and text and emailed and even stopped by his parent's house, giving gifts and cards. It was a bit comical in my opinion but I felt so incredibly bad about not being able to do more, that I did what I could. That was an incredibly stressful time for me, though I was nothing in that equation of his loss. But I did exist, not in his world, but in mine, and it was so hard wanting to be there for someone that I cared so much about, but not really being able to. An email is an email. When I'm there for someone, it's a whole lot more than that. I'll bet that's how Heavenly Father feels all the time. When we're struggling and He'd want to shower us with his unconditional love and peace, but we push Him away for whatever reason it may be. Or we let him step inside the door, but not come inside the home. So we get a little comfort and direction, but miss what could be the very thing we need the most, so much more than the taste we limit it to.

So I mentioned my air mattress. I could buy a bed. But I get anxiety if I don't save a nest egg and that is getting thinner since the move, naturally. Nest egg is a phrase I would not use under normal circumstances but my life is NOT normal right now. I got involved in this play and it's sucked out all of my time and sent my stress through the roof. I thought it would be a good way to get a change of pace, sometimes sucking stale air can make you go crazy. So I volunteered to be in this play, filling in for the lady initially cast as Costanza, the Italian Housekeeper in Enchanted April, who just wasn't working out. And they use the word nest egg in that play. It's been fun and I've loved the people I've met doing it, but it's too much for me right now. I work a ton and then go to rehearsal and in the middle of it all, I moved.

I'd been living with my parents since I graduated from college, which was two years ago, and I'd been wanting to move out for a long time, but then there was the elderly grandma to take care of and later the older sister who moved in and I just never felt like it was the right time. Was it the right time now? Who knows. As I'm sick with a cold today, lying on my blow up mattress that hurts by already bad back, I wonder. I have no food for sick people and no filtered water, so my motivation to hydrate as I should is rather low. I thought about the delicious tomato soup and squaw bread that would be waiting for me at my parent's house and all the purified water I could drink and great company, including that of my parents who I rarely appreciated enough, and how everything now is in boxes and I don't have time to unpack because of work and the play, and I wonder even more. Plus I miss my sister. We hadn't lived together since she moved out when I was 8, so for the first time, I got to know her as a sister, not a guest on holidays. I really love her. For the first time, I understand what the definition of sister means. I'd used that word all my life, but had I had a sister before? A different kind maybe, but this is the real stuff. I guess that's how any kind of love is. It grows and changes. But I kinda wish we could have spent more time together as sisters sharing a roof, but I got over-anxious to get a new scene, be closer to work, and be independent. It's a good thing.

Perhaps 26 year olds shouldn't live at home. But maybe it doesn't really matter where you live as long as you live right. I still consider myself living right, in the sense that I am trying to be a good person, but when I can't stand up straight in the teeny shower because I'm too tall, my room is 10x10, my clothes are everywhere because there's no room in the closet to hang them and I have a blow up mattress, it doesn't seem that glamorous. This is what I'd hoped for and thought about for two years and now I have it and it's not that great. I think that happens a lot. We want this or that and we'll be happy when, but once that time comes, we realize we forgot to really appreciate all of the happy moments along the way.