Joy

I was originally going to preface this post by saying, "I read a lot," but I feel that it would kind of be an understatement. I read EVERYTHING. As a child, I started by reading every book bought for me and my siblings, including the baby books, and all of the books that I'm sure my parents bought at yard sales because they were older than Noah. After I had finished reading all of our books, I moved on to the shelf of parenting books sitting in my family's music room, and the party planning books, and the Asterix and Obelix comics that my dad had bought in Austria on his mission to improve his German. The comics were in German. I do not and have never spoken German. I read them anyway. I read all of the cookbooks with pictures. I read a bunch of my mother's books. Heck, I've even sat down and read a few dictionaries. I own an Italian-to-English dictionary, a Spanish-to-English dictionary, and a Russian-to-English dictionary. My parents have a bunch of German-to-English dictionaries because they both speak German. I've read a bunch of my dad's books. Except not the math books, because I was intimidated by math as a high-schooler and I haven't done any math more complicated than multiplying something in the last four years.
So yes, I read a lot.

One of the things I love about reading is that there are people, like me, who think of different people who don't even exist, and they take these people and put them together as a million tiny puzzle pieces of people who are real, people whom they know exist. Writers do not create wholly original characters. Case in point: John Green based the experiences of Hazel Grace Lancaster, of The Fault In Our Stars, on his friend, Esther Earl. Hazel is not Esther, and Esther is not Hazel. Nobody is Hazel, except for Hazel. Another example: Christopher Paolini based the character Angela on his own sister, Angela. Christopher Paolini's sister Angela is not an awesomely eccentric witch; nor does she keep company with a werecat, nor does she tell fortunes. But they share the same name, and as Paolini mentioned in the thank-you sections of his books, the two Angelas do have fairly similar personalities.

And yet another example: I finished writing the rough draft of a novel on Tuesday. I started writing this novel in March-ish. It wasn't the half-finished one that I wrote for Brandon Sanderson's class. It's a completely different one. However, I have a great fondness for writing child characters, even for stories I don't intend to be for children. My protagonist in this book is a child mage who has suffered from birth due to the fact that one of her feet is twisted and another is only half there, kind of like a clubfoot. I don't know any crippled children personally; my only reason for writing her disabled is because she is a mage and she is unnaturally intelligent, and in order to reflect that, I needed something that would prevent her from interacting normally with other children and that would cause her to keep company with adults, specifically her father, more often than others. However, I did base this character off people I know. She's got long dark hair like her mother, and more specifically like my sister, the Beauty. She also has a habit of surprising people in a good way, like the Beauty. Her intelligence and much of her personality can be attributed to my younger brother, the Prodigy. And her relative innocence, different ways of thinking, and capabilities despite her disability are all entirely stolen from my middle brother, the Angel. I base a lot of characters on my siblings, because my siblings are the most wonderfully human people I know. And I get a lot of good reactions when I do that, because despite whatever good qualities I want to heap onto my characters, the basis for their personalities come from real, lovely people with beautiful flaws. My protagonist, despite being an extraordinarily patient young girl, also has flaws. She's impatient, she often acts without thinking, and she makes a lot of mistakes. Sometimes she's rude and tactless. And she's important to me, because she is not a flawless character.

People are human. People make mistakes. And the fact that people choose to write about human characters who also make mistakes brings me so much joy. If everyone wrote about perfect characters, life would be boring to read about. But the world is full of flaws, and I rejoice in flaws. They are chances for characters to react or to act, to grow and change, to stumble and then pick themselves up again. They are chances for people to redeem themselves, to learn something new. Everything that happens, whether real or fictional, is an opportunity worth taking.

These last two years, I have found it very difficult to find joy. Sometimes, there would be a strange burst of happiness over some small thing, but largely my life has become long months of dullness interspersed with a few exciting things. I don't mind that, really. Because writing has become a way for me to fill the void. It's not always a happy place, being alone. Sometimes I'm very lonely and very boy-thirsty, as many of my earlier posts attest. Sometimes I'm extraordinarily selfish, whining about my problems as though nobody has any. Sometimes I focus excessively on the terrible gray loneliness that hovers over my every action, just waiting to let fall insecurities and sorrow like little drops of rain. But I have slowly learned, over the course of writing this blog and through trying to understand my life and what has happened to me with depression, anxiety, heartbreak, and stress, that I am allowed to be less than perfect. I hold high standards for myself, because I have always done so. I'm not sure how to do it differently. But it is okay for me to have days where I just say, "Nope," and spend it playing Pokemon and eating cold pizza. That might sound childish, but the liberty of being an adult is that you are allowed to be childish occasionally. I fill my days with getting up at nine, going to class when I have it, and putting on a smile and a chirpy face for the customers at the bookstore, even when I don't feel like it. And the rest of the time is mine, to do with as I please.

For a long time, I felt like my depression, anxiety, heartbreak, and stress were because of something that I did. Stress, certainly, can still be because of the things I do. But deciding whether or not to have depression is out of my control. I cannot choose to wake up and feel that my bones are made of lead and molasses, that my body aches with pain I don't remember feeling, that everything is tired and fuzzy to look at. I cannot choose the way my mind first reacts when I see something that makes me panic. With time, I will be able to control that better, but for now it is not something I have mastered and never truly will. I cannot decide where my heart chooses to make its home, although I can choose to always act dignified, no matter how much it feels like I am splintering. Some things just happen, and they are beyond my control.

I have come to feel free of guilt for things that happen to me, and to take responsibility for things that I cause to happen. If I drink caffeinated soda at midnight, then it's my own fault that I can't sleep for hours. But if I wake up and my mind is convinced that everyone I love actually secretly hates me, then that isn't my fault. It's nobody's fault. It's a chemical inbalance in my brain that causes me to feel irrational fear and anxiety over something that is not true and out of my control even if it were true.

And I have come to recognize that through the power of Heavenly Father's love and Christ's atonement, through the whispers of the Holy Spirit, that no matter what happens, no matter what is my fault and what is not, that I am loved. I have come to see that the work I am able to do is more important than the things I cannot do. I cannot singlehandedly make everyone believe in the gospel. But I can contribute, by teaching those I know and by supporting my brother as he serves the people of Gilbert, Arizona. I can do my part to help people to be safe and comfortable in the world by lending money to third-world entrepreneurs and by donating blood to the Red Cross and by paying my tithing to help the church to help other people. I can listen to the people I love, and I can be there for them. I can take pictures of the blue, blue desert sky over mountains as green and golden as gems and coins and I can share the beauty I see with the world around me. I can take pictures of myself, to document the changes I make, to aid my memory, and to encourage other people that their faces and bodies are nothing to be ashamed of, that they can have confidence in themselves. I can write stories that will help those in need of escape to get away from the loud world for a little while. I can create havens, where people feel loved and where people want to stay with me.

I am not perfect. I am not even that good of a person. But I can do little things that will help other people, and maybe that will count in my favor. I can see joy, and I can spread joy. I can't always feel it, but I can make sure that others get the privilege of joy.

God bless you all, for being people who contribute joy in no small amount into my life. I may not always notice it, but sometimes you say funny things on the internet and sometimes you take beautiful pictures of yourselves and your children and the world and sometimes you post articles that make me laugh or smile and sometimes you just say the kindest, most wonderful things to me. And at times like that, when I see or hear something from you that helps me to feel joy, I want to let everyone have that little sunlight in a gray world that joy so often is to me. Light your candles with my joy and let them guide you in the darkness. I wouldn't want you to be as lost as me. I love you all. Thank you.

Anxiety vs. Beliefs

Whenever I go on a date, I get physically ill. Not because the people in question I have dated are repulsive. It's because there are five million little things nagging at me at once. Do I smell funky? Why am I sweating so much? Is my hair okay? Did I brush my teeth? Oh my gosh, I was so busy worrying I didn't hear his question. Now I have to ask him what he said. I must look like such an awful person.

And so on, and so on. Literally ad nauseam. My mother tells me that one or maybe two of my aunts used to physically throw up before and after dates. I am thankfully not at that point. It could very well happen in the future.

Point being, anxiety is some serious stuff. It's like trying to move through water. You're slowed down considerably and constantly pushing against a force that seems greater than you are.

I've recently made some posts on Facebook related to things I believe. I get angry when I feel that my rights are not respected, and I post about things that piss me off.

I didn't get spoon-fed my opinions. I've come to accept my beliefs on my own. I am a liberal feminist Mormon. I am also a human being who suffers from depression and anxiety.

And whenever I make a post on Facebook, I sit and wait for the backlash. A lot of people I know are neither feminist nor liberal, and everyone's got something to say. And with every comment, I shrink a little further into my seat.

I'm not good at arguing. I am very bad at arguing. I come from a family more prone to forgiveness than to fighting. Even if we disagree, we kind of just let it go, because family is more important than arguing.

Let me be perfectly clear: when I say something on Facebook that everyone seems to feel the need to comment on, I feel threatened. It's not your fault. It's not even my fault. It's the fault of my anxiety, which interprets your comments as saying, "YOU USED TO BE SUCH A SWEET LITTLE NERD GIRL, NOW YOU'VE BECOME A NASTY SOCIALIST PIG, WE ALL HATE YOU."

It also interprets you as saying, "You must be a bad Mormon because you don't agree with me."

To which I answer, "If you're not God or the prophet, I don't have to agree with you."

But that's besides the point. I'm not telling you to do anything you're not comfortable with. I'm not telling you not to comment on anything I post. I'm just explaining the effect your comments have on me.

And yet, I still post things. Because I believe in them. And to me, that's more important than huddling up and waiting for the impact.