to be thought of

What's it like to be thought of?

I know in my daydreams I imagine conversations, moments in time and how I want them to go.

Other daydreams involve more intimate moments, hands touching. Kissing.

When someone says they've been thinking of me, do they mean the same thing?

Do they daydream of future days spent in bed together?

Or adventures, hiking boots strapped tight, soaking wet from rain. Miserable together?

Are they good thoughts? Indiscreet? Warm?

Is there love and respect somewhere lost in the folds?

this is not one to trifle with

It's been a rough couple of days.

A song line keeps playing over and over again in my head, "when you think of love do you think of pain."

I openly admit to the fact that I am not perfect.

This weekend I realized how disgustingly bossy I can be, especially when frustrated. I can be snide and quick to anger at times; sarcasm flowing from me like a molten river of destruction.

There are times when I am not kind, when I am too stubborn and proud to admit my mistake or own ignorance.

Other times when I am so blindly selfish I do not realize the hurt or pain I cause to those around me, most especially the ones I love and the ones I am meant to help.

Jacob and I had an interesting conversation the other night, in which these two thoughts came to me:

1. I am tired of being selfish. I want someone else's problems to deal with and I want someone to help me deal with my problems.
2. We date to fall in love.

I've grown weary of friends calling to update on life and their first question always posed to me: "Are you dating anyone?" When do they start asking me about my writing, or my babies? Oh duh, I don't have any babies.

I don't date to get married. I'm looking to fall in love, marriage tends to just follow...

Marmee and I spoke last week. She told me my brother's concern was that I was desperate to be married and that because of that I was driving the men away.

I wrote to my sweet younger sister, serving a religious mission in California following that conversation and I write here some thoughts I shared with her. Please bear with me, it's the most exposed I have been:

"Marmee and I spoke the other day. She mentioned my brother's worry about my need for the next guy I date to be the one, but how can they worry about that and then turn around and stress the importance of marriage and its influence in our faith?

I have such a lovely belief that in the end it is only the two of you: your children will have their own spouses, and their children will have their own, and so on.

No, you cannot take the search for an eternal partner lightly, and no marriage does not solve any problems. It is only a new set, and I may one day miss having the struggles of single-hood. But how often I feel such a strong desire to be in love and to give of all this love I have.

I think loving someone is one of the most sacred, beautiful things - the ability to love unconditionally  might be one of the rare times we come to being Godlike.

So then why am I judged for wanting to fall in love? Why am I looked at as a crazy heathen for it? For speaking of it so often?

My patience is wearing thin. I feel my prayers becoming more and more shallow and small. I know that I will find someone I love and who loves me, but when? Why have I not been blessed with something I so righteously desire? What more can I possibly learn?

I hear the voice inside my head tell me the cure for my loneliness: service. Yet sometimes I do feel that there is a tiny little hole that can only be cured by the loving touch of someone you love embracing you. And I am ok with that thought."

I finally called Sol.

I told myself back in May that I would give him the summer.

As of today, summer is over.

He wasn't sure how he felt about meeting up, so he will be dropping my things off later this week.

I expect the worst, yet I'm not sure I would even want the best at this point.

My fight was ignored.

All those small feelings that could have been something so much more never had a chance to grow.

I was never acknowledged.

No thank you was ever given for the small tokens I gave.

I deserve more, do I not?

I want to believe that I only seek closure. An explanation, even a bogus one might sate my need.

I think I just need to hear it. To hear that there is no chance fall from his lips and allow me to completely and finally walk away.

And no longer feel the need to hope or even want it anymore.

But if that is so, why do I still dream of him kissing me so firmly and intentionally?

I do not know where to begin or end. So many tiny thoughts are erupting inside of me.

Words dance about in my head as I think about love and the future.

Where has this excited wonderment approached from? Such tender feelings toward someone I hardly know make me wonder how desperately determined my heart is to fall in love.

But is that aching desire something to be so ashamed of?

Oh no! Love is all inspiring. Should we not be praised for our wish to give all to another human being? Does not loving another soul bring us closer to being godlike?

Seeing past all imperfection, loving unconditionally despite sins and mistakes? Taking someone for all that they are: the rashness, innocence, folly and insecurity, passion and forgetfulness.

It cannot be a dreadful thing to want love so fiercely. And it must be accepted that love truly is the way to happiness.

Oh even just the idea of it makes me feel as if my body does float above the ground. Tingling with such ardor.

Is not loving someone a way of giving them wings? To know you are loved, that someone has so severely and wonderfully latched themselves to you forever gives one such a feeling of security and vigor. That anything is possible, even the chance to defy gravity and all laws of physics and soar above the earth.

What delight there is to know of a force so perfect in the world that it not only grounds us with sturdy foundation but also opens the heavens of flight for our souls.

What silliness, I know, but never have I been so eager as to say those three words to someone (when all the timing is right) and put their heart at ease as I confirm to them my ever-present desire to be theirs and have none else, as they so earnestly feel for me.

Oh what exuberance, what youthful folly has slipped into my blood. Such excitement for thoughts and feelings unknown, so premature in nature yet so intentional in purpose.

Though such tiny seeds have been planted, I yet find myself embraced in excitement. The same kind I feel as I get to that part in a book where one must flip through to the end, begging for a glimpse of a word or sentence that confirms that all hope is won and love has conquered all.

But oh the journey there is just as delicious and I find myself longing to be in the middle of it, rather than the beginning. To be past the divide between the sure unknown and the birth of emotion and love.

Oh that I could jump that chasm and fall into the arms of assurance and routine. To find my hand constantly lost in his. My name breathless on his sleepy lips, our lives so clumped together that to unwind ourselves would create a mess and be foolhardy.

Oh to have that all again - dreams that we've painted together with the hope of our words. A future built with sacrifice and frustration and the knowledge that without one another we would cease to exist.

"May you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days

And out of that love, remake a world."

~Ray Bradbury

because i wasn't being honest

I wasn't being honest with you or with myself, and it wasn't until yesterday that I admitted that maybe this has meant more to me than I have let on. Maybe I fell a little bit harder than I expected to. Maybe I opened my heart up a little too quickly. Maybe I did daydream a little too much, wished a little too hard, ached a little too tenderly.

But where is the error in that?

Everyone is always told over and over and over and over again to live. Live. Live. Take risks, go and do, just do it, believe, reach for the stars. How many slogans tell us to take life by the horns, get back on the saddle, jump in head first, go for the high dive? So where was my error?

I spoke earlier about how I wasn't going to listen to all those other voices, how I was going to accept the bumpy road that I chose. And yesterday as I sat in a room full of friends and strangers I admitted to myself that part of this struggle has been the fact that I wasn't being honest. I wasn't being honest with anyone about just why this has all mattered.

So let me be honest.

Let me tell you why I'm fighting for me, for him, for a chance.

I'm fighting because there was something in the way he sang. In the way he expressed his dreams in song. The ones he wrote and the ones he just played. We sat forever on his bed thumbing through the whole Beatles Collection, picking song after song after song just for him to play and sing to me with his raspy voice that scratched from a weekend cold. And then he would play a song that he had wrote for someone in his future and I caught a glimpse of the man he is, and the man he some day will be.

I'm fighting because it only took him 5 days to tell me how he felt. Not 5 months. And after a long time of not having someone in his life, I felt pretty special that I was the one he picked. That from that first night of just taking me to dinner we moved through months of silence to end up in my hallway scrubbing floorboards after a night of him going out of his way to just be there for me (someone he barely knew), during a time of transitions and endings.

I'm waiting because of all the little things he did. The drives home, the hand always on my knee, the wait before I let him kiss me, the late nights of just holding me, the reservations at restaurants, the defending me to his best friends, the reading books out loud as I fell asleep on his chest, the crazy stories, the silence as we laid there - a mess of limbs and blankets.

I'm waiting because of all the things he said. And I won't say all the things he didn't say, because he said everything. He was honest, he was open, he was unabashedly exposed during it all. And I guess it's my turn to finally be exposed too.

I'm waiting and I'm fighting because I saw something that could be. Because I saw a chance to do something good, to make something good of me and someone I cared about. I'm fighting because I kind of wanted to tell people I was his and he was mine. Because I wanted to see if I could maybe, actually, possibly, fall in love with him. And see if maybe he could love me too. Because I saw someone who wanted what I wanted. Someone who treasures family and love and life as I do. I saw someone who struggled, who felt pain, who felt joy, who felt frustration, who felt ecstasy. I saw someone I wanted to make smile. Someone I wanted to bug, to be bored with, to be angry with, to cry with, to kiss. Someone who could understand me better than I did.


I saw something.

I guess that's why I'm here. Still wondering, still waiting.

So please tell me where my error is. "Where was my fault in [wanting to love] you with all my heart?"

dream life

A week ago yesterday, Em and I were headed home from beautiful San Diego. As the conversations of a 22-year-old friendship and roadtrip music had died down and as we drove through sleepy Utah, she asked me what my dream life would be.

When my sisters and I were younger and we played The Game of Life, I always wanted to have the Country Cottage with its white picket fence and two cars full of kids. I was going to be an artist with a paycheck of $100,000. I had a great imagination then.

Over the years that dream has been reshaped often. In the beginning years of college it was often formed and carved upon by whoever I was dating, with a few small parts of what I had wanted as a kid. I was easily swayed by what they wanted. Maybe not swayed. I formed who I was based on them. I hadn't really found myself yet. All I knew was that I wanted someone. And a family. And a house. I didn't really care about the details.

But as I've gotten older and found my own footing. As I've discovered all the parts of me that have been hiding, the parts that will be forever here to stay, the parts I love, I've started to recognize the value in having some insistence on the details.

I don't think I'm picky, most importantly I want to marry and start a family with someone who loves me and if what comes with it isn't exactly how I had imagined, I don't care. As long as I'm happy and he's happy and our children are happy.

But as Em and I drove through the soft light of dusk, the green hills of central Utah twinkling with farm light, I told her what I wanted my dream life to be, because I finally really knew what I wanted. I finally knew the lifestyle I desired and hoped to create...

I'll marry someone who's fitfully, patiently, warmly in love with me, and I him. We'll have kids, four or five. Though maybe we'll give ourselves a year to travel and just be the two of us taking on the world.

We'll have a house with a big porch and a bit of land some place green. There will be a garden, maybe a barn, but definitely a shed with a worn down old VW bug for the kids. A pair of dogs and maybe chickens.

We'll have a studio split in two with one side for my writing table and another side for his desk for whatever he does. My heart still yearns for a creative soul, but if he's an accountant I'm sure I'll manage.

We'll go on adventures as often as possible. We'll conquer mountains and explore the deep waters. And every now and then we'll go live some place exotic for a year while I research and write a book.

We'll raise our children to love God and the earth and all that is in it. We'll nurture, guide, and protect them to the best of our abilities. We'll start our own family traditions and give them some place safe and cozy to always come home to.

And we'll continue loving each other and doing good in the world. Kissing the scrapes and bruises, wiping the dripping ice cream from our chins, and forever holding hands. Fingers intertwined.