She Ain't Heavy, She's My Brother

Photo attribution here. 

Two weeks ago I was sitting in sacrament meeting, sketching, minding my own business when God asked a favor of me. In a very polite, yet insistent way He said, "Will you please go out yourself as a divorcee by bearing your testimony in front of your entire ward?"

I have made a lot of progress in being open about my relationship history. All my close friends know and I discuss relevant details when they come up, but any time I'd considered sharing the facts in one of my Sunday School lessons, I had always gotten the feeling that I would be doing myself more harm than good. Then, pretty unexpectedly, there I was--sitting in the congregation of my BYU--Hawaii ward with my hands shaking so harshly that I had to stop sketching. That's how I know, by the way. That's how I know He wants me to get up and say something--jitters in my belly and my limbs. Makes for kind of a funny moment for me, but who am I to complain about the way God chooses to speak to me. I asked probably three times, "God, are you sure?" And He was.

So, I did it. I wasn't very happy about it, but I did do it. At the time I thought it must be for the sake of someone in the congregation. I thought it must be pretty important if God was going to go to all the trouble of outing me for it. Maybe there was someone out there who it helped, but now I am not sure.

I have one real guy friend here. He's a musician, a thinker, a talker and a tender lad of twenty-two. We are perfectly content to plant ourselves somewhere on campus and talk each other's ears off until security finds us and reminds us that it's well after midnight curfew and we need to be on our way. A couple nights ago we were engrossed in just such a conversation. I was explaining to him about my guts and how deep down inside them I feel like being transparent about the things I deal with (my divorce is just a drop in the bucket of a dysfunctional family) would be an unbearable burden and nuisance to anyone I opened my mouth to. "So you feel like you're inflicting yourself on the people around you?" he asked. And I had to admit--yeah, I really do. And it occurred to me in that moment that that mentality is at the heart of my deep seeded loneliness. I feel so alone often in my life. I feel misunderstood and undervalued and mostly I feel like all that I have gone through and am going through is just too much for any acquaintance to take in, so I don't show it. And this is what my friend, we'll call him Brown Pants, has to say about that.

"Well, that's a load of shit." Which was followed by, "Sharing experiences from your life with your friends makes the relationship better, not worse. I can't fix it and I can't completely understand the experience, but I can empathize with you. It's good to know--the things you go through. It helps me understand you."

I went on to tell him about how I had already burdened him enough with stories about my life (my divorce, depression, family problems etc.) and how everything I disclose is so heavy and I don't want people to think I am just drama, but also how it's not fair because this is just the hand I was dealt and I can't do anything about that and I try so hard to be healthy and happy, functional and progressing but no matter what I do I will always be divorced and that separates me from the rest of the crowd and makes me a heavy load to bear as a friend so I need to compensate for all the issues I have by being an especially excellent friend and... (Yeah, it all came out as a rapid fire run on sentence, just like that, but it ended with...) Don't you feel burdened by all that I tell you about my life? It's just so heavy.

To which he responded with a very simple but sincere, "Not really, no."

If the atrocity that was my marriage had continued the other night would have been my four year wedding anniversary. My aunt just got diagnosed with an especially aggressive form of cancer and my mom was recently served divorce papers, so I was a little emotional. I called Sassy McLadyBoots, and like the rockstar best friend she is, she snatched me up and fed me gelato 'till I felt better, but there was something in that exchange that was, like the Brown Pants moment, surprising to me. I've always considered myself a particularly socially savvy person. Not that I am super popular or do any kind of networking, but that I understand people. I am absurdly empathetic and have always been able to pick up on the moods of others. So the other night at Sassy McLadyBoots' I was perceiving that it was getting later and she wanted me to go home. I'd been venting at her, so I was sure that she had had enough of my emotionally heavy banter and said told her I would start heading home. She looked at me, totally confused and said, "Why? I thought we were having fun."

When you have been hurt by someone, I mean really, intentionally hurt by another human being, especially if it goes on for long, it alters the way you perceive yourself. I consider myself very healed at this point in my recovery. I have done the work, seen and paid my shrink, written my blog, talked it out, and moved on in my life. But here we see it clearly--my misinterpretations, the way my views of life have been skewed by destructive influences remain.

I think God wanted me to let other people see this horrifying thing that's been lurking in the depths of my belly, riding my shoulder, whispering in my ear, "Fake. Liar. Burden. Worthless. You have no right to ask for help." He wanted them to see it so that when I watched their faces for the shock, disgust, repulsion and pity I would see, it's not an ugly thing at all. It just is, like a red sweater or a tuna sandwich. It's one of the many building blocks that make up me. To most it's largely insignificant to their daily lives. To those who care it's a way to understand me, relate to me and hold a space of love and acceptance.

Realizing these things is a strange mixture of painful and alleviating. I am more broken than I thought, but I am also a lot more whole. I'm a lot more lovable, more acceptable and valuable than I had apparently thought. So goes the journey of divorce recovery. Two steps forward, one step back--but we keep walking.

"You're divorced? What happened?"

Photo attribution here. 

On the issue of telling people I am divorced, I have two opinions:

1. The incredible shame of going through a divorce in the church causes many to clam up about it. I believe it's because we're not talking about it that those not touched by divorce are not thinking about it, therefore they stand in judgement by default of our culture, and the shame remains. Opening up about what life is like in the post marital world is the only way to open people's eyes and hearts to empathizing with us. It's hard, but we can do it.

2. It's none of your damn business. Leave me the hell alone.

I often feel these both, simultaneously.

When you tell someone you're divorced they always want to know one thing--what happened? The reason I don't like this question isn't what you think. I have no problem talking about my experience. I find it pretty cathartic--as is evidenced by this blog, it's just that I have no good answer for the question that can be conveyed in a 20 second window. This is because when you are a Latter Day Saint, there is an unwritten rule that there is a short list of reasons that make it "okay" to get a divorce.

1. Your partner is beating you black and blue.
2. Your partner was unfaithful.
3. Your partner has an addiction - usually drug or pornography - that is negatively affecting your family.

And really, with the exception of number one, these issues are not a hall pass to the courthouse to file. As a people we favor reconciliation in pretty much every case, and while no decision regarding a marriage and family should ever be taken lightly, I think this, "There are three people in my marriage and as long as God and I are two of them we can get by," mentality is doing long lasting damage.

I need to reiterate to you here that I deeply respect the marriage covenant. My relationship with The Mr. would have passed its expiration date six months into the marriage if we had not been sealed in the temple. Three quarters of our time together was spent turning myself inside out to avoid the inevitable. In the end there was no other way to retain even a shred of my self worth or identity than to let it go, and still somehow I feel guilty for finally releasing the long dead weight of the relationship.

When people ask me, "What happened?" I have no concise answer. I have spent days and weeks of concerted effort trying to encapsulate into a simple phrase the kind of life it was being married to The Mr. "We got married too fast." "He wasn't kind." "He changed when we got married." "We were just too different." But none of it covers it, and I know--because before I crossed over into this no man's land I would have done the same thing-- that while people have sympathetic feelings and faces, many of them are ultimately trying to discern what I would be like to be married to and if the break up was my fault or his. Ultimately they want to know if I "tried hard enough" and if the break was justified. It's not really the individual's fault. It's a product of a religious culture that honors lists of dos and don'ts. Divorce is a don't. I know that, but to convey the nuance of all the different layers of hell that I lived for those two years is impossible in a 20 second window, or even 20 minutes. Knowing that someone could think I would tap out because I was too tired, that I would walk away when the going got tough, that I don't have it in me to be in a healthy relationship, that I made this choice out of selfishness, or that there is any part of my soul that feels okay about breaking a covenant with God is extremely painful and insulting to me. It leaves me feeling unknown and completely misunderstood.

One of the hardest and most heartbreaking aspects of the end of my marriage was when I would show up at The Padre's house, completely distraught, bawling my eyes out, trying so hard to convey what was going on. The Padre and Lady Pants are sympathetic people, but they are (fortunately for me or I would be the last one standing in the family) very active in the church. While they have both gone through divorce, the counsel they gave me was essentially--So sorry this is happening to you. He's just a young guy. He shouldn't treat you like that, but he is your eternal companion. I hope you two can work it out. And off I would go, back to the vortex of my marriage to see again if I could make sense of it. I can't really blame them for not being able to give me what I needed in those moments. They were doing their best, I'm sure, and couldn't know the full extent of what was going on behind our closed doors, but what I needed was for someone to tell me it's okay for me to think of what's best for me. It's okay to own up to how horrible things had gotten. It's okay to put myself first this time. It's okay to say enough is enough.

Because my relationship didn't fit into scenarios one through three, there is a small part of me that refuses to die off that still says, "It could have worked out. I should have tried harder," and I don't think that's fair. I don't want anyone else to have to live with that feeling. My life with The Mr. was full of half working cars dangerously jerry rigged, camo shorts and black socks, beard hair trimmings left in the sink, a tragic lack of social skills or understanding, his inability to settle on a career path, a constant fear that he was going to get fired, pressure to have a baby when I wasn't ready, discontent at my desire to complete my education, lack of spiritual connection or involvement, and a complete dismissal of any element of me that slightly resembled an artist. In the last couple months I've seen three plays, started a student activism blog, joined the music club with a trip planned to the symphony, hand crafted a pitcher that looks like a whale, made the perfect salad bowl in ceramics, started juicing, planted an herb garden with fresh mint, made plans to launch a vintage inspired clothing line, and learned to properly capture a human likeness in charcoal.

The Mr. and I do not belong together.

He didn't hit me, cheat on me, turn to porn or pot or suddenly develop an affection for Neil Patrick Harris, but when I was with him, all that I loved about me hid itself away in a deep, dark corner of my soul for fear that it would continue to go unnoticed, unappreciated, dismissed and rejected. He was not good to me and I was not right for him. We are better off apart. As clear as God speaking to Moses, night following day or the human body needing oxygen, that is the truth. Can't that be enough?

As a culture we are endlessly looping through this idea that a list of dos and don'ts will be what saves us-- that it's somehow an all inclusive package to salvation. This mentality is how we end up criticizing those who drink coke but have no qualms serving brownies with every meal. It's why we can feel justified telling ourselves that home and visiting teaching members of our faith alleviates us of the opportunity to better the world at large or to reach out to our non-LDS community. This mentality disconnects us from the Sprit and our core knowledge of what is right and wrong. It creates a blinding hyper focus on a fear that we are somehow deviating from the list.

When we do what we do out of fear--fear of losing, fear of disappointing, fear of punishment or falling short-- it is not the same thing as when we do it out of love. The point of this existence is to become changed beings. Fear does not transform us for the better. The right thing for my parents to do in that time was to reiterate to me that the destructive elements of his behavior were absolutely unacceptable and help me remember to value myself while I was married to a man who couldn't find anything about me to love. The right thing for me while I was in that relationship was to say, "I will not allow you to treat me or anyone this way. You are not being a good husband and will not make a good father to my children. If this is the life you choose, you choose a life without me." The right thing for any of us to do in the myriad of situations life throws at us is to look inside, connect with that voice that never lies and is never wrong, and follow it--end of story. The dos and don'ts are guidelines. The voice is a lifeline. Pushing it aside for the sake of the list doesn't bring us closer to salvation, it alienates us from direct revelation. It separates us from God.

"I'm blessed."

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I'm turning 29 years old. Twenty nine. The number that comes right before thirty. I spent a couple years living in the midwest of the US. When you ask someone how she's doing today in Missouri she'll reply, "I'm blessed." Today I have to say, there is no more accurate a description for my current state.

It's funny. When I got home from my mission and immediately threw myself headlong into The Mr. (who was leaving for his mission in 30 days and counting) I was 23 years old. I spent two years waiting for him, three months dating/engaged to him, two years married to him, one year grieving him, and now... I'm here. I applied to this campus fresh out of high school. There was nothing discernibly wrong with my application, but they firmly bid me good day, even after petitioning my rejection letter. Not to be deterred I applied again at the age of 20, and was likewise rejected. This third application to get my education in an isolated, paradise, safe haven was the the dialysis treatment that allowed new hope to start pumping through my crusty old cat loving, divorced lady veins. When I got my acceptance letter I literally, immediately dropped to my knees and cried and sobbed and gushed out thanks to my benevolent God for my chance to start this new life.

When people here guess how old I am, I find it an interesting coincidence that they almost always guess 23 years old. It's like I've been transported to another universe where I applied to Hawaii instead of Provo when I came home from my mission and the whole thing with The Mr. never even happened.

But unfortunately, it did happen, and sometimes I get really stuck in the sadness of it all, the wrongness, the injustice, the tragedy. I find myself re-impailing myself over the same broken, distorted memories again and again: trying to discern where it started to go wrong, wondering if there were things going on I missed, recalling the way his voice sounded when he called me to say, "I don't love you anymore," wondering how I could have ever been so stupid.  This is a terrible habit that I do not recommend and lately I've gotten almost overwhelmingly fed up with the deep mental groove this pattern has worn in my synapses and psyche, and I've been making my most conscientious efforts to change it. Today I experienced some success.

I've mentioned this before, but it's in one of the first posts here, which was almost a year ago now, so I feel like I'm justified in revisiting the concept. It's something I need to be reminded of again and again. Sometimes we get so caught up in the wrongness of what happened. I find I can almost feel guilty or inauthentic being okay, healing, moving on, even being glad or grateful for it. Today was a beautiful reminder that it's okay to be okay. As I walked to class today instead of fretting about my long dead love life with The Mr. and how I might have saved it if I had only…I thought about how he was strongly opposed to me going back to school to finish my bachelors degree. I thought about all the times  he was completely emotionally disconnected when we had sex and how empty I felt after. I thought about the time I got pregnant, how I was going to tell him I was expecting, but before I could he sat me down and told me he was almost at the end of his rope in our relationship. I thought about how the stress, panic and anxiety I felt during that pregnancy was so palpable it may as well have been a bowling ball, unexpectedly careening around my world. I remembered the cruel way he responded to me in my desperate loneliness and depression during my miscarriage, and then I thought about how that baby would be just over one year old now, and how different my life would be if she were.

After all that I thought: Thank God. Thank God I went through a divorce. Thank God I don't have that kind of life irrevocably laid out before me. Thank God I get a second chance. 

I am 29 years old in one day and counting and I get to spend hours a day with charcoal and clay, learning chants in Hawaiian and planning trips to leave the country, learn languages, build businesses and dream as big and as free or as small and as me as I want. I am the luckiest girl. The luckiest, and it's okay for me to feel it. It's okay for me to let it be.

I like banjos.

Photo attribution here.

Something magic started happening recently. I was sitting around by myself one day, as I most often am, thinking, as is always the case. A happiness monster was sitting in my heart, chewing her happiness gum. She slowly blew a big fat bubble of joy and it rose up in front of me, getting bigger and bigger until it stood in front of me, equally as tall and twice as wide as me. The bubble of joy then burst and covered me entirely in a sort of a sticky bliss, as sweet as pie and twice as enjoyable.

That's the best I've got for describing what life's been like lately. Highlights from today so far: 

Sleeping in (that would be enough, but the list goes on!)

Some yoga and meditation in the morning and a breakfast of homemade carrot ginger juice.

A trip to the farmer's market where I purchased myself fava beans, sugar snap peas, a small bunch of asparagus, the most sumptuous salmon you will ever lay eyes on and a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, just for me, not to mention the most adorable jar of honey for my boss's birthday on Monday.

A trip to Target where a very cute employee (bearded, of course) offered to help me discern the price of my new adorable Important Things folder I've purchased in preparation for my move to Hawaii.

A delicious lunch of asparagus grilled with apples, pine nut couscous, water with mint leaves and the salmon from the market. It was every bit as delicious as anticipated. 

(This one is part of the meal, but was so freaking delicious that it gets its own bullet point.) Banana chocolate swirl Talenti gelato for dessert. I am pretty sure that half pint I just consumed was better than most of the sex I've had. All this to a backdrop of William Elliott Whitmore and various musicians provided by Pandora, all quite adept with a banjo and/or harmonica. I may or may not have done a hillbilly, knee kicking dance while I was grilling my apples and asparagus.

This is kind of a new thing for me-- being able to enjoy myself. At least it was submerged for quite some time in my recent past. The way it all started was that I began letting myself dream again. 

At first I just had this assumption that The Mr. and I would have the same dreams. A few love drunk conversations we'd had while cuddled up and cozy between kisses before he left on his mission had sprouted within me the idea that we wanted the same things. Part of The Mr.'s charm is his odd and fragmented way of speaking, especially in his letters. While they were chalk full of phrases like, "You are the apple of my eye and the reason some people think I'm asthmatic," they were essentially void of much that I could build on. So, being the romantic, creative, hopeful, optimistic girl I am, I started building ideas and expectations all on my own. I'm a dreamer, a planner, a romantic and an adventurer. Somewhere along the line between, "I met this cute bearded guy," and, "He says he doesn't want to be married anymore," I came to the heartbreaking realization that absolutely none of what we wanted out of life was the same. My attempt at resolving this during those years sandwiched between the aforementioned statements was to start tossing cargo out of the sinking ship. I didn't really need  to travel, did I? Maybe it was okay for me to get pregnant before I was done with school. Who really needs a bachelors degree? Or a husband who understands her sense of style, her jokes or her intense devotion to all things retro?

I often use the term, "ghost of myself," when I describe me at that time. It's the most accurate description I've got. Now, there's got to be some level of compromise in marriage. Two separate beings becoming one is a process, to be sure...but how far is too far?

Today the pendulum has swung as far back into Frowfrow Land as it can possibly go, and I am thoroughly enjoying the experience. Somewhere between today and the moments I experienced in September of 2012 there is a happy medium that I hope to find again someday, but today I want to say this. I believe it is the nature of certain individuals to give too much. It's a hard thing to be in these shoes, because we live in a religious culture that champions charity, sacrifice, service, selflessness, submission, obedience and devotion. I believe in cultivating these virtues, but today I need to say, God wants us to stand up for ourselves as well. He wants us to be treated well. He wants us to be healthy. He wants us to be kind and loving and helpful, and He wants us to be unrelenting in our stance that we are worth it too. What we want, need, love, learn and laugh at is just as important as the next guy. We don't have to be second citizens to be in God's good graces. There is a balance there, and God wants us to find it. Too far to the selfish side is no worse than too far to the giving side. God wants His babies souls intact. 

I don't understand.

Photo attribution here.

The most universal question in this Devout yet Divorced community must be the question of why?  Why did I let this happen? Why did she do this to me? Why didn't I see it coming? And inevitably we throw God in the mix, like most of us did when we were getting into this mess. Why, when I asked God if I should marry my ex did He not say no?

It was two years in the making for me, asking that question. I'd been faithfully awaiting the day when he would come home from his mission and pop the Q. I was absolutely dying for him to while simultaneously being scared out of my mind. (I mentioned the track record for my parent's marriages, yes?) What this confusing combination culminated in was a sincere, but kind of haphazard moment stolen at work, of all places, where I directly asked God if I should marry the man I had long ago devoted myself to. His response was interesting. What He said was, "You can. It's going to be difficult, but you can." I quickly interpreted this to mean - you will probably have financial troubles. The Mr. hadn't gone to college yet. *Note: That's not what God said. But was I troubled with such trivial things as what I was certain would only be monetary? Of course not. All you need is love. If that was good enough for John Lennon, it was good enough for me. The thoughts that The Mr. could ever be anything but adoring, devoted and endearing, or that John Lennon likely was a bazillionaire when he wrote that song had not even entered my twiterpated consciousness.

Getting married after a short courtship is a gamble. I won't speak out completely against it, because I've seen it work out. However, there is no avoiding the fact that it is irrefutably, undeniably, (to me now) terrifyingly a gamble. So if this gamble was destined to work out so tragically for me, could God have said something like, "Absolutely not," or, "Sure, but it's a terrible idea and will break your heart and end in divorce," instead of, "You can, but it will be difficult"? After all, Latter Day Saint women are up for difficult. Our lives are built on the backs of pioneers who walked across thousands of miles of frozen ground without shoes, burying their babies along the way while their husbands were off on missions. Difficult? We got this on lock.

Perhaps your story is similar to mine. In retrospect we see moments of doubt we harbored. We wonder if that feeling was a warning that we ignored in the wake of romance. Or perhaps you took every precaution, and felt 100% assured. Either way, the answer is yes, He could have been more clear. And I'm convinced now after this most recent study, that He may very well have wanted to be. So, why wasn't he?

These thoughts come from Moses 7. The Lord has taken righteous Enoch into his bosom and is showing him the state of things. Satan has a chain around the world, causing there to be darkness, and he's laughing. The Lord, which is to say, the God of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, is watching the earth and crying. Enoch is confused. He asks Christ, (paraphrasing) How can you be so upset about these things? You have millions and millions of creations in the world. How can you weep over this moment?

Christ then responds, "Behold, these thy brethren, they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the garden of eden, I gave unto man his agency. And unto thy brethren I have said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood." (Moses 7:32-33)

I have always admired Job for one powerful phrase he contributes to the Bible. After trials that make even the heartache of divorce feel minimal, he boldly declares, "Though He (God) slay me, yet will I trust Him" (Job 13:15) I can think of no better application of this verse than to these moments where we find ourselves again and again asking God why. I have had moments in post divorce aftermath where I have felt crushed, eviscerated, even slain or betrayed by God. These feelings are real and can feel completely justified, but somehow they always leave me lacking. There is no light in them to sustain me. After nights of masticating these thoughts for sleepless hours I am left once again seeking truth. The truth I've found is this:

Jesus Christ (and therefore God, since they are one in purpose and character) loves me, enough to cry over what He sees happening in my life. If He loves me that much, then there is a part of Him that wants to prevent any pain from befalling me, especially knowing that He would have to suffer that same pain in Gethsemane. When, knowing all, He chooses not to interfere or even leads us to pain, it must be an even greater act of love. As a teacher, mistakes and heartache are some of God's choice tools for sculpting our character. He allows us to make our choices knowing He will ache with us, He will grieve with us. And when we cry, the God of the Old Testament does not remove the cultivating force from us. His tender heart cries with us, the workmanship of His own hands. I cannot know why some things will come or others have passed, but I do know that the Man who is willing to walk even this road with me is a Man I can trust.

She took a deep breath, and let it go.

So, funny story. Directly after composing the post below about the detrimental effects of contacting ones former spouse I had a week of ridiculous and illogical intense desires to contact my former spouse.

I was at my parent's house for Easter Sunday. Among the updates from Lady Pants (my step mom) and The Padre (what my little sis has always called my dad <3) was an offhand comment about how The Mr. had called Lady Pants one day on his lunch break saying he wanted to talk with her and The Padre. They weren't able to find a time, and that is the full extent of that story. The End. But somehow that is what commenced my downward spiral into the sinking kind of thoughts. Thoughts that, even inside my own head, sounded like an old, recorded version of myself talking to me. Sentences that start with; why, when, will he and I wonder spouted off in my head like those twirling sprinklers you ran through when you were young enough to put on a bathing suit without sucking in your tummy. The thoughts splashed about in my mind for a couple days 'till I was playing blocks with the kid I nanny on Tuesday and had this nearly overwhelming urge to grab my phone and text The Mr.

I know! Right?!

So I'm totally the girl that, when things are hard, just indulges her natural inclinations... like the inclination to eat popcorn, ice cream and cereal all day while marathoning my way through all 7.5 seasons of Bones. Or the inclination to buy myself a cheer up dress. Or the inclination to marry a man I hardly know because he's soooo cute and quirky. But this natural inclination, I am happy to report, I smashed the way a girly girl abolishes from existence the daddy long legs she discovers in her shower; frantically, and with great force. Therefore, I have the following tips for my fellow divorcees.

When you are struck with the desire to reach out... do it! But not to your ex. Send out a request to ten people who love you to remind you why you divorced the person you once loved and why you are better off without that person... on the double. I have now, conveniently located in my smart phone, an extensive list of incompatibilities to reflect on in moments of the logic stifling tsunamis of post-divorce-brain struggling to put the pieces back together.

Also, I discovered a secret weapon. This is for both the ladies and gents out there. Regardless of the fact that Pintrest is a corner of cyberspace largely navigated by women, it's a powerful tool! I now have at my fingertips a smattering of sassy, empowering quotes, images of beautiful places and things to bask in, and an entire page dedicated specifically to faces and physiques that could make a girl forget her first name, let alone her first marriage. All this and more to redirect my attention when the memories of the happy days get thick, for the low low price of a smart phone that I will not be using to call my ex-husband.

Also, in church on Sunday we kicked off a lesson on the value of the Priesthood in the home with Families Can Be Together Forever - thanks for that. My fight or flight is really more of a run away or cry - impulse and it kicked in immediately. Do not distress though my friends. I made, "I hate all the orphans in the world," my mantra throughout the lesson, and you know what? It worked! Who knew my advice would turn out to be so useful to me ; )

Hang tough. Some weeks are (apparently) rougher than others, but any way you slice it, it's another week between what is and what was.

I do not believe in fairies.

Sometimes, I think love is dead.

Sometimes I listen to pop radio or country or watch a movie with J Lo in it and I think it's all made up for the sake of money. Sometimes when I am really sad I think I will never find love again...or maybe I never did? Maybe I made that whole thing up and people just use and hurt each other to get what they think they want, but at the end of the day we're all so screwed up that we don't even know what we really want so the world is just a blur of food and sex and spectacle. Okay, I stole that last part from Lloyd Dobbler, but sometimes I lose hope.

And then, I read things like this and I feel better, even if it's just a little bit.

This is a true story. I know because the wife in the story is my cousin. It melted my icy heart, just a little and seemed especially appropriate for the blog

http://loveovercomesdarkness.bigcartel.com/product/art-prints-for-audrey

True love will find you in the end. Familial love. Love of friends and strangers. Romantic love. And if all those fail, undoubtedly, God's love. For today, let's embrace what we've got and what we've got to give.