If We Were A Zelda Game, I Would Be Midna And The Beast Would Be Wolf Link

When the Beast and the Beauty and I were all in our fives, sixes, sevens, and eights, we were taken to the Newtown Community Center thingy. I don't actually remember what it was called. We called it the NAC. And upon our arrival, the Beauty and I were signed up for ballet classes, all three of us were signed up for gymnastics, and the Beast and I were signed up for karate.

I was allowed to quit karate after about a month. I never got further than a white belt and I hated it. I liked ballet a lot more. The Beast persisted and after some time, he earned first his yellow belt and then his orange. It was pretty cool. The Beauty and I continued on in ballet. We had to buy the cutesy little slippers at Payless and sew on the elastics. All of us did gymnastics, and even though I was terrible at it, I did manage to learn how to turn a cartwheel and do a forward roll, which is a front flip done from the safety of the ground. And over at the end of the hall, there was this big room where the parents and younger siblings waited for their children to finish lessons and there was a ball pit and tunnels and it was like a McDonalds playplace, but bigger and awesomer. And usually, when we were all done with our lessons, Mom let us play for a little bit before rounding us up and taking us home.

I remember a lot of things about the Newtown days. We lived on a street that was close to being urban. It wasn't really very urban, but we had a big front yard and a big backyard and a fairly small house. There was a huge yellow goldenrod bush in the back by the neighbor's fence, and I got my first bike there, and we had two very tall trees in the front yard and we had an old computer that we played Rodent and Captain Hyperspace and Jumpstart First Grade on and at first the Beast and the Beauty and I shared this huge upstairs loft room, but then we were moved downstairs and Mom and Dad got the big loft room. The Beast got his own room, and the Beauty and I got a wobbly white bunk bed.

It was here that the institution of plays began; I began them with my obsession with Beanie Babies, and the Beauty soon followed. My mother bought some for the Beast as well, and he joined us. Generally speaking, my characters were the cool ones, the smart ones, the ones with important destinies prophecied by ancient mages in a land far gone. My sister's characters were the humorous ones, the cute ones who fell in love. My brother's characters were the heroes, the brave ones, the warriors. I usually led the story, although I accepted contributions from both of them. We built tents and nests from blankets and giggled across the hall to one another at night.

The Beast chipped his front tooth on the bathroom handle door. The Beast also went on a lot of playdates with kids in his karate class or kids in his class at school. The Beast was the first one of us to read the Harry Potter books. I sometimes think it was myself, but he borrowed Prisoner of Azkaban from the school library when he was about eight. I read five chapters of it one night when he was at karate and wished I knew what was going on because it was very good and I wanted to keep reading. 

The Beast had a wide, toothy smile with that one chipped tooth. He was always laughing about something. In those days it was often the Captain Underpants books. We giggled about them together. We practiced the piano, we went to Primary and sometimes we were in the same class. Sometimes we weren't. We went to a New Year's Eve activity at church one night and played Pick-Up-Sticks in a quiet classroom, and then we went home that night with Dad and went to bed. The next morning, we had a baby brother and we went to see him in the hospital, even though the Beauty had pinkeye. She wasn't allowed to hold the baby that time, but the next time she got to.

When we moved to Red Lion, things changed. The Beast had been on his school basketball team and had annoyed our neighbor Desiree by bouncing his basketball off her garage doors. Now we had our own garage doors, and he threw his baseball at it instead. He wanted to be the pitcher. He watched that movie where Dennis Quaid (maybe) had to try and throw a 90 mph fastball to become a pitcher for the Yankees or something. I forget. I ended up watching it a lot over the next few years.

He learned curse words from his friends. He didn't use them, but he asked Dad about them and Dad told him what they meant and that they were bad words and they were not polite to say and if they were said outside of the academic context in our home, our mouths would be washed out with pepper, soap, or Tabasco sauce, depending on the severity of the word in question.

He didn't always pay attention, and he was full of energy and distraction. Sometimes he was mean to us, but not as often as we thought he was. He had epilepsy for a while. He would space out for thirty seconds or so, not really looking at anything or breathing. He grew out of it eventually.

We took swimming lessons every summer. The Beast and I joined the swim team around the time we were in junior high school together. We both kind of hated it and when we began to skip practice by hiding in the locker rooms, Mom withdrew us.

He moved on to high school. I began my music years, and he was trying to decide what he wanted to do in high school. I did so many activities that I was horribly busy. He told us funny stories about his friends at lunch and the stupid and occasionally disgusting things they did. He took wrestling for a little while.

The rest of his story begins to be his own. These are just the memories I have of our childhood. They are neither good, nor bad. They just are. And even during the times when I hated the fastball movie or I thought he was being mean to me, I still liked him. A lot of the time, I was jealous of him. He was much better at math than I was. He was quiet, but he didn't have any problems with talking when people wanted him to. People never teased him the way I was teased a few times in junior high and high school. He never cried in front of people and felt horribly humiliated about it later- at least, not in my recollection.

There is one specific memory I haven't mentioned yet. It's the one where my whole viewpoint of the Beast changed, and he became not just my brother, but one of my best friends.

I was a freshman in high school- maybe a sophomore. I was walking through the hallways, headed for my English class. I saw the Beast in the hallway, walking with a friend from a Tech Ed class to somewhere else. I waved at him and smiled and said, "Hi, Joe," and kept on walking. It was not a big deal to me.

Several weeks later, when for some reason or another I was annoyed at the Beast, my father sat me down and told me something in confidence. He told me about what happened that day when I waved at my brother in the hallway.

My brother hung out with a lot of people I never really trusted or even liked. I was a little afraid of them, although in high school I was afraid of my own shadow and anyone taller than six feet. But it was one of these friends my brother was walking with. And because the Beast and I do not share a particularly strong family resemblance, this friend assumed I was just some random girl who happened to know his friend Joe. And this friend, being immature and attempting to make the Beast laugh, said, "Do you know that ugly chick?" Or something like that. I wasn't much to look at in high school, frankly, but it was still immature and rude.

The Beast grabbed his friend by the shirt and slammed him into a locker.

I'm not joking. It sounds like the kind of thing that you would see happen in a bad Disney Channel movie. But my brother, honest to goodness, picked up a kid and slammed him into a locker and said, "Don't ever talk about my sister like that again."

I am not advocating violence in the event of discovering that one's friends are unchivalrous. But that incident touched me. As mean and annoying as the Beast sometimes was at that age, he loved me deeply, and he would have done and would still do anything for me and for anyone in our family.

And from that day forward, I stopped thinking of the Beast as only my brother and began to think of him as a friend. And the few times that he was mean or annoying gradually faded down into nothing, and we became friends who talked about books and video games and movies and who sometimes confided in each other and who, in our own separate and distinct ways, grew up. The Beast liked to channel his energy into movement, sure- but he was also a deep thinker, a philosophizer. He believed in the few things he believed in with his whole heart and mind and soul. He had strong roots. He was my definition of passion.

The Beast is serving the people of Gilbert, Arizona right now. He's a few years older than a lot of missionaries, especially recently. Yesterday was his twenty-second birthday. I teased him in the email I sent about that Taylor Swift song, but in all reality, the Joe I know now is not that much different than the Joe who slammed a kid into a locker to defend my honor, if you could call it that. The Joe who slammed a kid into a locker was a brave knight. He didn't always have shining armor, and he didn't care about having a horse. He preferred a more interesting steed, like an elephant or a whale- representations of pure, brutish power. And sometimes he was not sure what he was fighting for. But he was, and still is, a knight. And what do knights stand for? They defend the weak and protect the small. They guard those who are unable to defend themselves. They keep others safe. They are noble and chivalrous. They are brave and they will fight to the death to safeguard what they have sworn to protect.

I may never get married or have children. It's a hard truth for me to accept, but the fact of the matter is that I am not and probably never will be able to understand how other people form relationships, because I am so bad at it. But I am not desolate. I will not be left alone. I will always have my Beast to keep me company.

Happy birthday, Joe. You won't even read this for a year and a half, if ever. But that's okay. You would probably be embarrassed by it anyway. May God bless you and keep you safe as you spread his gospel.

The Sad Thing Is, I Didn't Make Any Of This Up

Lonely is when you want to spend time with people and can't.
But alone is when you want to spend time with people but are too afraid to do so.

Lonely is when you don't have any friends to sit with in class.
But alone is when you can't even try to edge past people you don't know to sit in the middle of the row without feeling terror tantamount in your heart.

Lonely is when you miss your family.
But alone is when the missing of them renders you incapable of sleep or hunger.

Lonely is when you spend hours just staring at your computer screen, hoping that your sister will comment on your Facebook status so that you'll have someone to talk to.
But alone is when you haven't even made a status.

Lonely is when you almost start crying when your boss tells you off for slacking.
But alone is when you don't feel any motivation to do better.

Lonely is when you are cold.
But alone is when you feel like you don't deserve a blanket.

Lonely is when you can cry about it.
But alone is when you can't.

Lonely is when you can look out the window and see the snow and think, "Great, now I have to get the umbrella."
But alone is when you open the door, see the snow, close it, and go back to bed.

Lonely is when you want people to like you.
But alone is when you're afraid that they don't.

Lonely is when you try to write a stupid blog post to talk about how you feel.
But alone is when none of it is really saying how you feel.

Lonely is when you're worried sick about something completely stupid.
But alone is when you can't even bring yourself to talk about it to the people that matter.

Lonely is listening to the bright and cheerful Spanish conversations of your flatmate and her friends and wishing that you could understand more than a word here and there.
But alone is when you wish they would just shut up and leave.

Lonely is when you're sad and want to feel better.
But alone is when you're sad and don't care about feeling better- just that it stops being sad.

Lonely is staring at the ceiling late at night and trying to sleep.
But alone is sleeping for an entire twenty-four hours and still being tired when you wake up.

Lonely is listening to someone talk and smiling and nodding even when you can't really identify.
But alone is when you zone out halfway through their story because you can't identify.

Lonely is wishing you had a boyfriend to cuddle with.
But alone is wishing you were dead so that nothing can hurt you.

Lonely is a solitary walk to church.
But alone is the walk back home.

Lonely is watching a chick flick by yourself and laughing and maybe even crying.
But alone is having no interest in anything.

Lonely is thinking, "Oh! Oh! Maybe this is it! Maybe I can finally react to something with the right emotion for once!"
But alone is realizing that you never will.

Lonely is looking at those "so relatable" posts on the Internet and chuckling slightly at their utter banality.
But alone is not clicking on the link because you don't relate to any of them.

Lonely is when the high point of your day is buying a burrito.
But alone is when you don't have the money to get one.

Lonely is getting over a cold and sniffling in public.
But alone is blowing your nose fifty times surrounded by attractive people.

Lonely is trying.
But alone is not.

Lonely is wishing you were married and pregnant.
But alone is wanting to stick a fork through your face every time you see a couple holding hands.

Lonely is living from paycheck to paycheck.
But alone is just existing.

Lonely is your brother writing emails from Arizona one day every week.
But alone is the six days he doesn't.

Lonely is eating a whole package of peanut butter cups in two days.
But alone is not wanting to and doing it anyway.

Lonely is anger at the things you can't control.
But alone is not doing anything about the things you can.

Lonely is wanting to cry so badly, because if you could just turn on the waterworks you could flood a city.
But alone is when you squeeze out a couple of tears but stay just as sad as you were before.

Lonely is attempting to be good.
But alone is struggling to remain human.

Apologetically Speaking: 2013 and What Is Happening To My Life?

I start a new semester tomorrow, and let me just say that it's gonna be a doozy for several reasons:

1) I may or may not have gotten iffy grades last semester and

2) I may or may not have made a sort-of bet-slash-promise to my father that I would legitimately try to get straight A's this semester and

3) I am scheduled to graduate in August unless I can't but it would be next December if not August and

4) IT'S REALLY SOON AND EVEN THOUGH I LOVE MY MAJOR I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE.

This is a large problem that has risen from last semester's grueling schedule of work and classes in the mornings and realizing that even though I love being at college and taking fun classes, none of the classes I have taken have the potential to prepare me for a real job.

I have taken steps to rectify this. I went to the career office at BYU and was like, "Help, I have no idea what my life has become!" and the nice girl at the desk was like, "Here, look at all these very fat books and take this little piece of paper and look at the websites on it! It will help!" and I did those things and now several months later I still have no idea what I want to do with my life.

Well, okay. I know exactly what I want to do with my life. I want to write a best-selling YA fantasy novel (hopefully involving feminism, POC, and queer characters because have you noticed how every hero is a straight white male these days? that's not a bad thing or anything, but the thing is that the world is like eighty percent not white and therefore white people should not be the main characters in eighty percent of the books. yo.) and I would like to get married and have either four or six children, preferably four because that will be a heck of a lot easier on my body but six if I decide I want more later, and an even number because then everyone has somebody to play with and I can keep one eye on them and one eye on the sequel of my best-selling feminist YA fantasy novel. I dunno. I would also like to learn how to drive a car at some point and someday own an Audi because they are small and pretty and run well and I would like to have a gray or yellow house with a porch swing and a rocking chair and a million billion trillion books.

But since there are dreams that cannot be, and since I am not likely to do any of those things except probably get married and maybe learn how to drive a car (haha who am I kidding, I'll never learn how to drive a car), I need backup plans. I know that I am only twenty years old and therefore cannot measure the success of my life by what has already happened because 1) nothing has happened to me yet and 2) I can't wait for some of those things to happen to me or I will be a destitute wreck sharing a room with the Beauty at the age of thirty, which is a thing I ARDENTLY DO NOT WANT to happen. I mean, in ten years the Prodigy will be in college, and the Beast will be home from his mission and probably married or something, and the Beauty might even have found herself a rich trophy husband as she makes her living on the stages of Broadway, but in all probability, I will be living at home because I am kind of uninteresting. The only reason my life seems interesting is because I have a knack for dramatizing the unimportant. All writers are drama queens. It's how we get by.

So I need backup plans. There is one thing I desperately DO NOT want to do with my English degree, and that is:

1) Teach.
2) Teach.
3) Teach.
4) Educate.
5) Instruct.
6) Lecture.
7) Teach. 8) Teach. 9) Teach. 10.) Guess... you're right! Teach.

This is not because teaching is a thankless job, or even because I find a majority of people between the ages of six and sixteen who are not related to me kind of annoying. (Count yourself lucky if you're in that demographic and I still like you.) It's mostly because I am the last person who should be teaching anyone anything. I am afraid of people I don't know, including small children and teenagers, and I like sitting more than standing, and I can't make eye contact with people I don't know. I would make a terrible teacher because I would never be able to look at the kids and I would start mumbling and they wouldn't understand me and I would either make people cry or start crying myself and it would just be messy, man. It would be terrifying, like one of those nightmares where you go to school in your underwear, except every day for a hundred and eighty-two days a year.

This leaves several options: I can go into publishing (editing), I can go on to grad school and postpone my eventual decision about what I will do with my life, or I can become a copy writer/tech writer/translator for hire, that kind of deal. None of these sound particularly appealing to me. I would like to do editing, but I would have had to take more editing classes by now to do that. Grad school costs money, which I don't have and don't currently have the grades to obtain for free. (I do not want lectures about what I should have done it was in the past and you cannot change the past it is over and done it is in the past thank you very much) And copy writer/tech writer/translator is doable, but it also sounds really, really boring. However, it's really the only career option I have at this point, so I am taking a technical writing class to figure it out.

"But what about internships?" you cry. That would be nice, but if it's not paid I can't do it because I sort of need money to, you know, sustain my incredibly poor lifestyle.

And I could, of course, go on a mission- but the thing is, I am not yet ready to go on a mission. I know this, and the Lord knows this, and it's between us. If you really want to know, then too bad, it's none of your business because you don't have stewardship over me. But because I try to be at least a decent and polite person ninety-five percent of the time (the other five percent being when I become HULK SMASH on everything you love because of reasons), I will provide you with the explanation that it has to do with the fact that I am taking pills to help myself get by on a daily basis. And while I kind of maybe think that missionaries are allowed to serve while taking anti-depressants, I don't want to become one of those missionaries who ended up going home because they were pressured by those around them into not taking their medicine. If I do not take my medicine, I will become very sad and tired and I will gradually descend into a fog of nothingness that may or may not result in wanting not to exist. Additionally, people kind of freak me out sometimes and I get panicky about stupid little things and some less stupid big things like the fact that I can't say my own name sometimes without my mouth tripping on itself and how I don't have basic conversational skills and how I don't know what to do with my life. And sometimes this makes me hyperventilate and have to find a small, dark space to curl up into and cry. Yeah, a mission is kind of out of the question for me right now. I know that God can get rid of all of these problems, and I have the faith that he would do so should I decide to turn in my papers, but I, like my brother, want to go in to serve a mission in as good health as possible- physical and mental.

This past year has been the hardest one of my life- and yet, one of the most rewarding. 2013, you saw me through stupidity and extreme heartbreak, depression and anxiety, a gradual descent into apathy over the past semester, and a lot of lessons learned about feminism, rape culture, and some really important stuff that I wish I could raise awareness about without offending people like I inadvertently seem to do every time I open my mouth. But mostly, I learned some amazing things about my self worth, and I learned that I have a loving Heavenly Father who loves me because I am his daughter, one hundred percent, no matter what mistakes I make. I have learned that I am beautiful and infinitely precious, and I have learned that I am brilliant and dangerous. And all of these have combined to give me a fuller understanding about who I am and what I one day hope to become. I mean, I have to figure out what will happen to my life in the short-term first... but in the long-term, I think I'm pretty set on one destination, and I'm doing all I can to get there.