the truth comes out

at the beginning of the semester, jarom and I dropped our religion class. we didn’t like the teacher or the way he had set up the requirements. this meant that we needed to attend institute in order to keep our ecclesiastical endorsements.

we’ve really meant to go every week since then. my stake meets on wednesday nights, his on thursdays. if wednesday didn’t work out for whatever reason, we’d say, oh, we’ll just go tomorrow. and of course “tomorrow” we forgot, or were too tired, too busy, etc. but this week it was written in my planner in very large lettess that we had to go.

wednesday night, though, I just wasn’t feeling up to it. so I promised jarom that we’d make it on thursday. we made sure to be back from class and shopping in plenty of time to go…except we never had bothered to find out where it was. no one answered the phone at his house. finally we braced ourselves, drove to his house to get the address, and headed to the church by my house.

when we got into the chapel, there was a healthy-sized crowd. we took our seat in one of the back pews; a woman came over and handed us a half-sheet paper. “while you wait, how about taking a quiz?” it read. I figured it was a personality/getting-to-know-you sort of thing, but in fact it was about the reading material for the week. not too bad so far, I thought. could be a lot worse.

got a lot worse.

the lesson covered d&c 111-116. the teacher started talking about the name of our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. she told us that before she had children, she read in the Book of Mormon about prophets naming their children Nephi and Lehi so they could have the Nephi and Lehi of yore as exemplars. it was such a good idea she wanted to do the same – name her children after people she wanted to have them emulate. therefore her first son is named samuel…not after samuel the lamanite or samuel from the old testament, but samuel smith, the first missionary of the church.

sound ok so far?

“samuel smith never went by sam,” the teacher told us, “so I decided my son would never go by sam either. I don’t like nicknames. parents give you a name because that’s what they want you to be called. it’s important.” she went on to say that whenever anyone calls her son sam, she clarifies, he goes by samuel. her daughter amelia – named after her great-grandmother, so it’s a very important name – once told her second-grade teacher to call her amy, because she didn’t like the name amelia. when the mother (our teacher) found out, she called the teacher to explain that her daughter was to be called amelia. nicknames are offensive.

so we’re thinking this lady is just a little bit anal, when she finally ties this back in to the lesson.

“I think of how I feel when people call my children by something other than the name I gave them, and I think that’s how Heavenly Father feels when we change the name of His church. it is not the mormon or lds church; it is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. saying something else is saying that we don’t care what he thinks should be the name of the church, that we don’t care about Christ’s name and His church.”

wow.

gets worse.

a girl raised her hand and said, “this may be overstating it a little, but I think when we take Christ’s name out of His church, like saying the lds church, it’s denying the restoration.”

the teacher wholeheartedly agreed.

…we left.

and so, we’ll be attending my stake’s institute next week.

catharsis

I got angry today. honestly and truly angry, like I haven’t been since december. it’s never a good thing, I know, and I hate that I allow myself to get angry. or stay angry. I also hate being upset with someone as dear to me as ryan; I seldom have reason to be upset with him, and I don’t know that I can say I really did today.

the thing is, though, I’m not angry with him now — I mean that the anger I felt was directed at him in the past. historical anger? is that a ridiculously abstract concept? it’s the only term I can think of for it. anyhow, for a brief moment my historical anger flashed forward, and something I shouldn’t have said slipped out of my mouth.

for a long time I’ve been hurt by the fact that ryan jerked me around so much after we broke up. of course at the time it didn’t seem like he was doing that; we both wanted to spend time with each other, we were such good friends, right? over the summer after freshman year I remember telling him that I wasn’t sure if the last time I’d seen him he kissed me because I was me, or because I was a girl there to kiss. he replied that if I was there in front of him he’d have a hard time not kissing me. I thought it was a great answer, but later I figured out he didn’t answer the question. not the real question, at least. and it’s the same question that’s pestered me these past two years. I know exactly why I kept letting him be so important to me and letting him act the way he did towards me: I was still in love, and I wanted him back. part of me was convinced that he wouldn’t behave that way towards me if he didn’t also want me back. I trusted him.

the problem is that I think he abused that trust. and it may not have been intentional, and he may have rationalized any doubts he had about whether or not it would hurt me. but from where I am now, I look back and see very little to make me think he was trying to heal the heart he broke.

I explained much of this to ryan this afternoon, and he seemed like he understood. I guess I was expecting an apology. of some sort, of any sort, something that made it sound like he was sorry for hurting me. he thanked me for apologizing. but maybe he’s still upset with me, and not ready to be sorry, if he even thinks he needs to be sorry.

another weird thing — when I think of ryan back then, I have a hard time connecting him with the ryan I’m best friends with now. I know they’re the same person, but in a way, to me they’re not. maybe because I feel like such a completely different person now from who I was then; but ryan two years ago is vague and faceless. not the ryan who sings me bedtime songs and gets excited for twelve-pound tuesday.

a few weeks ago I stopped trusting him, ryan-now, for about 10 minutes. I hated it, and decided even if it was illogical I was going to trust him completely again. always. if for no other reason than because I need to put my faith in someone wholeheartedly, and believe that they’re good. today has gone all downhill, but I’m turning it around right now. I’m done being angry. I’m done distrusting ryan, historically or currently. I’m done letting the past ruin something as good as I’ve got going with him.

in 12th grade jarom and I got in a fight. (ha, understatement. we got in so many fights I don’t think there’s a number that big.) it was about something really stupid, like I didn’t remind him that an essay was due that day, so he hadn’t done it, and it was my fault. of course I thought there was no reason for him to be upset with me. so I got angry and defensive, and we were both too stubborn to talk reasonably. I wrote a short journal entry during 3rd period about how awful I felt — I hated being in a fight with him. so during lunch I apologized and made up, even though I still didn’t see why I should be sorry that he couldn’t keep track of his assignments. but having things mended between us was important enough to be sorry whether I needed to be sorry or not.

I want to mend things between ryan and I. obviously I’d prefer to have him meet me halfway, help me fix things. jarom just accepted my apology, and at first that made me angry all over again. but I had to remind myself then, and I’m having to do it now, that I care enough about this person to move on without getting the response I want. without my feelings being fixed by him. I’ll have to feel better my own way.

catharsis is an excellent way.

that is all.

p.s. that is not quite all. it just occurred to me that maybe ryan treats this so lightly because he’s already moved past it. I apologized, he forgot the whole thing. and maybe he expects me to forgive and forget just as easily. in terms of one-or-one-thousand, he’s a thousand good and one bad. one bad in the distant past, even. not something new. so why should I let it affect how I feel towards him then or now? I’m completely exhausted at this point from yelling and fuming and crying (all of which were, by the way, exquisitely cathartic), and ready to let the one thousand take over. I haven’t got the energy or the desire to crusade for the one.

and so, ryan, I hope your date went well. you deserve someone to make you smile.

no end in sight

the name of a pretty good country song by katrina elam, but more importantly, the opposite of how I feel about pscu right now.

I was at work until 5 today — which is very late, considering I got there at 6am and had a half-hour lunch. rather long day. but almost everything has been passed off to final qc…tomorrow (and I’m sorry to say that the workday will start at 5:30am tomorrow) I just have to figure out why there are extra images in one folder, and rename and recopy another thousand images. oh yeah, and make the rescan lists and loader files. but those last two things will only take half an hour, maybe an hour at most. do you know what this means? the project will be over by the end of the day! ok…not quite true. mick jr is going back on monday to finish the rest of the rescans, and those will have to be incorporated, but that’s so small in comparison to all we’ve been through till now. ah, what a relief it will be.

in the past six months or so I’ve found that I feel a lot better when I can put my thoughts and emotions into words — tie them down, as it were. example: yesterday I realized that lately I’ve been restless. that’s so much easier to fix than knowing that something is distinctly wrong, but not being able to pinpoint what or why that something is. I don’t mean that suddenly I know exactly how to stop being restless. I guess I’m saying that at this point I can step back and try being objective, detaching myself from the emotion, instead of just wallowing in the nameless feeling, helpless. (that was kind of a fun sentence to write.)

I got an email from nemelka yesterday. it was really good to hear from her. I wish sometimes that we could still be such close friends as when we were roommates, but I know her life is going where she wants it to. and it makes me so happy. I’m dreadfully excited for the baby.

and now, a confession: I’m not nearly as clever as I’ve always thought. lately I can’t seem to get anything right; I mess up at work, I forget what words mean, really basic ideas elude me until after the fact. what’s going on?

another confession: the only thing I wish for right now is something I can’t have — someone to hold me. and I don’t mean a boyfriend (or to take it a step further, fiancé, or further, husband), just a best friend. he would hold me any old time, because that’s the kind of friends we were. of course, if we were that kind of best friends then eventually we’d probably decide to get married, or break things off completely, and neither of those looms in my future. so no best friend. no being held. (very unfortunate; I’d say being held is on my list of top 8 favorite things.)

on an upbeat note again…I’m wearing my silk pjs, and about to go take a nap. it’s going to be lovely, and I plan to enjoy it thoroughly.