alone

I hate math. I always have and I know EXACTLY where it stemmed from.... a boy named Dusty. I am sure he is grown and his red-speckled mullet has been trimmed to something respectable. I bet he is an accountant or in financial planning. I'm sure he is married and has maybe one or two kids. But, for a brief period in first grade, he made my life a living hell.

Back in Mrs. Pickett's class, we were given daily math assignments and knowing first graders weren't any good with homework, we were required to finish before lunch. However, this meant concentration for people like me, who loved talking more than addition and subtraction problems. It was hard for me, and a young red-haired boy who hated my enthusiam and creative mind, loved teasing. We were told sternly if we didn't finish our problems, we would stay behind in the class during lunch and work while everyone else ate. Now, I don't think it ever happened to me, but daily I lived in fear of never finishing and having to stay behind. Where would I sit when I got done? Who would I play with at recess? Where would I go? Dusty's taunting brought me to tears on more than one occasion and I hated him with all of my might. He simply knew my weakness.

As I went through school, I continued to face the same fears of being alone at lunch or recess or even on the weekends. I was in love with people and if I was bad, being sent to my room as a kid was the WORST punishment. I couldn't stand being alone.

Now, I am 25 and feeling some of the same childish fears re-surface in areas of my life. I am a young single woman, graduated from college, working a desk job. In front of me, I have too many options to count. But, I feel like I am stuck in an elaborate project from elementary school. We are being faced with a very large task, that would be much easier to accomplish with a partner. I have been watching since I was 18 as many of my friends hooked arms with a partner and started working on their elaborate project in this life. I am content to work alone for the time, but some of my fears are rushing back.


Let me back up again...

At the end of May, something occurred to me; I was the happiest I had been in a long time. I owed my happiness to two things. Number 1- I was finally feeling useful. Dreading my 25th birthday, I decided to make it as memorable as possible. I had recently made a list of 25 things to do before I reached 25 and I was goals accomplishing my goals. It was like the joy of school but without grades. I was doing new things and embracing what I had always wanted to try. My list consisted of everything from making an apple pie from scratch to going sky-diving on my 25th birthday. Happily, I worked through June and learned so much.

Now, my second reason for being happy? Number 2- I was loved. I was not only making myself useful, but I was supported. The beginning of the year had been tough as I had seen another relationship fall through. But something I didn't expect had blossomed and I had connected with another person who shared himself with me. This realtionship was never easy, but I was learning more about myself than I ever had. And, when I woke up in the morning, I literally felt loved. The experience of loving and being loved was more like an awesome light. I literally was filled with light.

So, what do these things have to do with being alone? Well, I want to focus on one of my list items and how it reminded me of what matters in this life.

The day before my birthday, I had only two items left to be checked off. One was to go sky diving, which was all set up for the next day. But the other item was still in question. I had wanted to go to Lagoon, but no one I knew could go with me and my interest in going to a teen-filled amusement park on a friday night, was dissolving quickly. At my desk during the work day, my mind raced as I thought of what I could do to pull this other item off. Suddenly it occurred to me, I would like to visit the Red Butte Gardens in Salt Lake City. I had never been there and I wanted to enjoy this last item. The guy I was dating at the time wanted to throw out his plans and come with me, but I told him, I needed to do it alone.




So, directly after work in my dressy work clothes, I drove to the Gardens, paid my fee, and walked in, alone. At first being alone was not what I wanted. The Gardens were full of couples and people taking wedding photos in fields of flowers. But, somehow, peace filled me. I walked though the medicinal herb garden, scented garden, and down to the duck pond to watch the first friday in June fold away under the mountain. Looking back on my birthday, even compared to jumping out of a plane the next day, I was most grateful to spend some time by myself.





Now, the summer has swept in, full heat, and brought me to my knees. My favorite season has begun to curl the leaves of the trees and change the color of my skin. The year is folding away like my first Friday in June and I am facing different decisions. Many of which I will be asked to make alone. Where do I want to go from here? What is most important to me right now? The girl who was scared of eating her lunch alone is now trying to live her life. It is time to fill myself with that same light I felt in May. Few things in this life are constant. Change is what we came here to feel. But, I firmly believe people come into your life to teach love. People naturaly fill each other, but we choose to accept or reject what we offer each other. The day I went to the Gardens, I was not alone. God filled me with the light I felt from others when I was with them. It is love that fills and teaches no matter who you are with. And no matter how scary things get, "Perfect love caseth out all fear."

My Cousin Pip

"Can we be the type of friends who live across the road from each other after we've grown up?"



Ten Years ago, I sat behind my best friend in Enlgish. I knew her from gym class. She had long brown hair, was loud, and laughed at all the same things I did. But most of all, she was always happy about something. I wanted in on it. We started to talk at the beginning of the year and I knew we were going to be perfect friends.

Ten years later, sitting in her backyard, I watched lights flit and fade over the Salt Lake. I looked at Jess. We were now 25 and we had been through hell and back... together. We survived High School, College, 5 months together in a foreign country, boyfriends, rejection, family pain and joy of all kinds. But looking at her, I realized, ten years was nothing. We had our whole lives ahead. We were 25 and our decsions were only half made.

Let me tell you about the two of us. Jess and I light up in the Fall. She feels like Frodo Baggins leaving on an adventure and I need to have those colors all around me. Her family loves illegal fireworks on the 4th and my family is obsessed with Halloween. We read "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoniex" out loud to each other every night for the first month we lived in New Zealand. We do all the voices. Jess loves hiking and I need her to encourage me to get past my fear of being outdoorsy. I love poetry and Jess has read it all.. or as much as I let her. She writes stories and I help her get past her fear of letting people read her work. We are both obsessed with movies and music. Her singing voice is broad and warm like the sun, while mine is clear like water. We sing together all the time. Jess has performed in plays for almost 12 years and I think I have seen all but two that she has been in. When Jess is sad, we go to the pet store to hold puppies. When I am sad, we go to the cemetary or the bird refuge to walk and talk. My biggest desire is to own a huge parrot and be poet lauret of the United States. Her biggest desire is to own lots of dogs on a huge farm and be in movies.... good movies.

It makes you wonder how friendship lasts doesn't it? We all meet people by the oddest circumstances. We connect and support each other and some leave as quickly as they come... others stay like songs we can't let go of. We play them over and over again, always eager to hear their words, and discover why we need them around.

In my experience, a kindred spirit (forgive the term coined from Anne of Green Gables) is one who can be as different from you as water to oil, but when that person looks at you, they know you. Not necessarily because of time spent together, but a connection exsists. Somewhere, one knows what the other needs and they feed their connection, surviving on forgiveness and charity and love.

We are flawed beings. We change and lose ourselves in ridiculous turn offs. Jess and I share everything. Pain, anger, and frustration included. When one of us is hurt, the other one steps up. When I lost my first love to another, I came back to her house to enjoy my first mourner's dinner. When Jess was adjusting to life after being gone for a year serving an LDS mission, I brought her Superman Returns and we laughed and swooned together. I see this all the time in my life. When one person falls roughly and loses thier balance, the other comes to cover what they can't.



I guess, what really hit me the other night was how lucky I was. To know her and have her when things have been tough. I only have a handful of people I trust as much as family and she heads that tiny group. One day, she and I will be past this point of life. Past the stage my friend Fiona lovingly refers to as stuck "in the meantime" of life. We may have extra degrees, poems, stories, and movies as a part of our 20's and 30's. We may have families and careers. We may be letting life wash over us, numb and heavy. But I know she will always know me. AndI will know her. And maybe when we are grown-ups, we will be living on the same street, across the road from each other.