Beautiful Changes for the Better

My best friend recently posted up a conversation she had with her high school self. It was beautiful and thought provoking. I ended up posting something on her page that was probably long-winded and made little sense, but it was thought provoking.

High school is a picnic for no one. Everyone gets beaten up, chased, crushed, broken, or hurt. If the "high school" experience is anything like mine and my friends' then life became the motto "fake it 'til you make it."

My group of friends suffered through a bus crash and the death of a teacher at the beginning of the year. That left the rest of the year to not mourn, crumble, feel guilty, and fake through it. Yes, yes, the school gave them grief counselors, but I don't think any of my friends actually went to see any of them unless they were told to do so that one time. What high school student wants to talk about feelings other than how cute that boy/girl is? Answer: maybe .001%.

We were all hiding behind masks of desperation for normality. Some might be faking it still. If we faked it well enough we could convince ourselves that we were "fine" just like everyone wanted us to be. All the while inside we wanted to throw up, cut, scream, sleep, and wither away under a rock where no one would find us suffering.

This photo is one I took at the Springville Art Museum at the end of my senior year (that is why the quality is horrendous). It was made by a student in our county who easily portrayed what was going on. Sadly, now I don't know who created it, but it is beautiful.

As I came to realize just how broken my friends had become (they had taken the brunt of damage of senior year while I tried to run back and forth from the front lines to the medic tent--or so I thought), I started to hate the facade. The fakeness of people and how the displayed themselves. Why couldn't they show the one face that they really were? At the time I didn't realize how childish that was. I hadn't realized the scope of the break that had happened in my friends and I also didn't realize how very complicated a person without that type of break can be. Everything had made sense in my innocent little brain so the complications didn't compute.

A few weeks after the art exhibit where I saw the painting above, we went up Provo Canyon just past Sundance where we had our "Senior Sluff Day" (sluff meaning "to cut class," but this was all official and sanctioned by the school so it was really more of a Senior Field Trip). The place where my friends and I hung out most at this giant park that had food, trampolines, giant fields to play sports, etc. was the little, western village. It was large enough for tall boys to barely stand up in. We could climb on top of the sheriff's station, play in the little stagecoach, sway in an ol' timey looking swing, or sit on old chairs and talk. I had gotten my camera a few months before then and had taken too many pictures. So many of them were staged. At one point my friends stood on top of a building and I had them pose, click, pose, click, pose, click, pose... Toward the end of the day, one of my friends, realizing I wasn't in any pictures, slightly on purpose, made me give up my camera so then she could take a picture of me. Like all the rest of them, I posed in my little rocking chair trying to look thoughtful staring off into space at the splintered, yellow door of the replica building we were closest too. So much about this day was brutally false. And we all did our best to ignore the shiny, plastic faces we were all putting on. The smiles, the laughs, the constant talking (though I would hope that some of my favorite times were real to those around me as well) were to hide the panicked, deer-eyed emotions we felt inside.

I honestly thought I could fix everyone. That my presence could mend their hurts from the crash, from the history of violences a friend had gone through, from the ache of breakups, from everything. For a while I thought I could be the mother and fix everyone's booboos with a hug and a kiss (much like I do with my 4-year-old now) then I could send them on their way to play. We could hang out and have everything be like it was the summer before everything got so messed up with boys and bus crashes. The butterfly band-aids I tried to place weren't on skinned knees or a blister. They had tried to cover up severed arteries and third degree burns.

The little I tried to do I hope was helpful instead of causing more of an infection. To one of my friends, because of emotion and compressed anger, I killed our relationship with a dull knife. In what she had thought would have been a moment to band together, it died slowly over the years as we tried to get it back together. But anger infection set in and it festered to other relationships as well.

I am so imperfect, especially when it comes to other people. Complications set in whenever someone else is involved. But as time has passed I've grown and learned that not all complications are bad. Hard, yes. Bad, not all the time.

My friend's posts, mentioned earlier, drew an emphasis of hope. Things got better after high school. The arteries have been cauterized, often by someone outside our original group of friends. Change happens and it is good.

For myself, I've realized that I was hurting too, though at the time I had fooled myself. Not only at the end of school when romances exploded, but at the beginning when I was scrambling to pick up broken friends. I didn't know what to do so I faked it until I made it out of high school and that first term of college. That was a brutal year. We were thrown into situations that we couldn't have expected and changed to survive it. Now that time has passed the fire has died down, though can still flare up, we change to find who this new person is that we've become.

I very much like the movie Inside Out (Pixar, 2015) for many reasons. But at the end (SPOILER ALERT!!!) Riley has lost all of her islands of personality. One by one she loses them and stops being herself. Once Joy and Sadness get back to Headquarters, Riley doesn't get her islands back. She forms a new one taking in that experience and growing from it. Riley isn't quite the goofball she was before and has taken on a little more of a serious tone where she doesn't want her parents showing up to every game. She changed as major events happened and has found a way to be okay with them. As can we.

Over the years new things have happened. I am a wife and a real mom where I can give hugs and kiss booboos and have my son be okay. I have been published twice. I have read more books in the past year and a half than I ever thought I would. I've finished a novella and am working on the second draft. I've realized I get seasonal depression and how important it is to be social. I've gained more friends in my community and church than I thought I would five years ago (mom's stick together like that if you try). I've learned that it's okay to leave the dishes for tomorrow if I have to. Naps are amazing things. I've learned when I get angry I don't scream, but do little things that drive my husband nuts. I've learned that parents need time outs too, again I'll say naps are amazing. I've learned how friends are important and that the people in your group often changes and that old friends can be acquaintances and it's okay.

The most important thing that has changed, but has always actually been a constant, is my love of Jesus Christ. My testimony of Him has become much stronger since becoming married and teaching my son. I've gained more faith because of circumstances and blessings than I had thought I needed. We all need more faith. So many people are scared of what the future holds in politics, world affairs, calamities, and natural disasters. But what we need to remember is that "Faith and fear cannot coexist at the same time" (Elder Neal L. Anderson, "You Know Enough," Oct 2008). Jesus Christ said, "Be not afraid, only believe" (KJV, Mark 5: 36). If we are doing what is right and have faith in Christ, God will always be there to protect us and get us to where we need to be. Many of us have very important things we need to do, many don't realize it, but Father will get us to where we are needed often in miraculous ways.

"Be not afraid, only believe" because Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have our backs through whatever beautiful or agonizing changes we will be going through. Whatever trials we will face, They will be there to help us be better and lift us up.







Inside Out Image: http://screenrant.com/inside-out-movie-reviews-2015/
Christ Photo (Provo Tabernacle Fire 2010): http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=13725181 
Other photos are my own.