To Who I Am Becoming...

So my ward once a month has a potluck dinner. This time I sat with one of the counselors two girls. It was so much fun. I started talking to the oldest (around 10) about what she was reading. I found out we were reading the same book! That proves it, I have the mentality of a 10 year old. The younger one decided to try and sneak up on me and scare me. I in turn began to corrupt them. It was so much fun to play with kids and forget how old I am. I hope they come next month as well.

So I have been having lots of things happen. I have been working on the stories of my life. Many of the stories I have are funny and I have told but I am learning about all of the stories I didn't know I had. I have been writing and writing stories about my family, me in school, the time I spent at the Day-care. I am now so interested in all of the stories that I may have forgotten. What stories do you remember or have? Please comment and help me remember.

I am sitting at my desk. I am typing on my vintage Mac. I am sitting in my office full of pictures and stuff. I am looking out onto beautiful University of Alberta campus and downtown. I am listening to wonderful music on my iPod. I am realizing how lucky I am to be here doing what I am doing but there is something that is pulling at me from the shadows. It is slippery and elusive like the Loch Ness Monster. It teases me with its presence and non-presence. I can't catch it but I know that it is there. I am trying to fight it off but I know that at some point it will spring from the shadows and envelop me. The comfort that I have is to live in a fantasy world. Not one where I can fly and do what ever I want (not that that sounds bad). In my fantasy world I am everyone I want to be, powerful, purposeful, self-assured, confidant, productive, brilliant, fully loved, beautiful, and meaningful. I may be all of these things in small portion but in my fantasy world I am all of thes...

Sometimes you don’t know when magic is happening. Sometimes it takes a while before you realize that you are experiencing a moment you will remember for the rest of your life. Sometimes, however, it is not hard to see it. Sometimes the power of it overcomes you so much that you must remind yourself to breath. Sometimes it’s magic. Red cohort, A.P. Group, overachievers. We went by many names but what we really were was almost never spoken. Perhaps it was because if we said out loud what we were it might go away. For two years we laughed together, cried together, made fools of ourselves in front of each other. We celebrated when someone found out they were pregnant. We went to each other’s weddings. When there was death we supported, cried, and cared for one another. We lifted each one up on their journey, for as we did so for the one, we did for the whole. Other groups did not have this magic. Perhaps the magic came by but no one noticed it and so it left without making much of an...

So today is my twenty-fifth birthday. So far in my short life I have seen horrors, I have felt love, I have been truly alone, I have been comforted, I have given, I have taken, I have been proposed to but have not felt true love, and I have carried hope and faith with me everyday. I sit in an apartment in Kowloon overlooking Hong Kong Island with some of my dearest friends. I have always tried to work hard and become the person I would like to be but have just never been able to find the space to do it. So many times I have prayed that I could have something happen to me that I could just remove myself from my life and become a better person. God has given that time to me. Many of the things that I have always wanted to do in my life I have been able to do here. The past year has been hard. This time last year I had just graduated, moved home, and was looking for a job. I did not find one. I did get an offer for North Slope Alaska but decided that it was hard enough for me to mee...

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She would often yell into the universe as a young girl questions that she knew had no answer. People always tried to give her answers, and they often sounded right, but she knew in truth that there were no answers to her questions. There was no solution to the puzzle, no fix for the broken, and no answers for the questions. She had found a strange comfort in this realization. If there were no answers then she could never be wrong. She could never fail to get it right. She could continue to go through life admiring the amazing ways in which the universe could destroy every beautiful thing just to build it back up and destroy it again. Her life had been like one big experiment by an evil ten year old mad scientist. That was how she liked it. When she got older she started to wish that there could be just one answer. She didn't care what question it answered as long as there was an answer. She started going out into the world to look for answers. It was rare when she would find one, ...

The clock flashed 12:00. It had been flashing like that for a few days and She hadn’t set it. It was easier to believe that time had no impact on her life when the clock flashed. As soon as those sinister glowing numbers stopped it was like their bright luminescence focused to burn away all possibility and fantasy. That light would wake her up to reality of what her life had become. As far as lives went, hers was not a terrible one. She was loved by family and friends. She had people who depended on her and thought her wonderful. She was involved in lots of activities and projects. She cared about a lot of people. None of that was why she had chosen to stay in this space where time had no meaning. She knew that she shouldn’t feel as though she was an extra in her own life movie, but she did. She had allowed her life to become like the doilies that grandmothers put on every surface, unnecessary when it came right down to it. People would be able to survive without her, and she c...

It had been almost a year. The time had passed slowly and far to fast at the same time. She had thought she had done a good job of controlling her thoughts and covering the hole in her heart but as she sat on yet another bus traveling to her new home she was becoming aware how poorly she had done. The air was thick with the smell of past travelers coming and going from their lives and the activities that they engaged in the middle. The seats had the indentations of those with questionable hygiene practices. The windows didn't show much, not because of the late hour of the night, but because the remnants of traveled road were splattered across the edifice. She didn’t notice any of this. She barely noticed the violent starts and stops of the bus. In the last year since she had lost her light she had worked hard to believe that it hadn’t mattered very much. She was over it. It no longer mattered. She was better off. She had heard characters on television recite these same lies ...

She stood in the middle of the room. Her eyes closed so tight that they started to hurt. She knew that the light was on, that there was nothing in the darkness behind her eyes waiting to jump at her, and that good people existed all around her. She opened her eyes hopping to have the light dispel the darkness but somehow it stayed with her like an evil babysitter, watching, waiting, and needing to nothing more than to just be there to smile and remind that it was there. "Isn't this party so much fun!?" For the third time her friend Andy had said this. She smiled with mild enthusiasum and went to get some water. She wondered why she could not get into the fun of the party? She liked these people. She was healthy, for the most part. She had cool toys to entertain her. She was studying interesting things in University. She was important to so many people around her. They would come up to her and see her smile and listen to her stories and laugh and never knew about her const...