Reminiscence

I have a two-shelf bookcase that, for the past few years, has housed my journals and some of my old school papers. It has been tucked into a corner behind a recliner for the past year in my current apartment. I don't get into it very often, cause I can spend hours and hours going through stuff. Tonight I packed up the contents of the bookcase, and wouldn't let myself crack open any of the journals, but in the process of trying to sort out junk from the good stuff, I've gone through much of the other items, and been amused by much of it and spent most of the evening waxing nostalgic :)

I found 4 "peer evaluation" sticky notes in an old folder from either Mrs. Baker's English class or Ms. Bagwell's Speech class at Wilburton High that read:

*Good - Good job of using your own ideas!
*Bad - a little long.

*Good - Nothing. Just kiddin'. very descriptive.
*Bad - Mispronounced picture, talk louder. Jumbled. It wasn't a rabid dog. He was a beagle. Quit copying off of me. Too many reasons. Dill was dumb. How can you like him? Too L O N G.

The last set made me grin. I and four guys in my class had four classes together that year (we made up the AP/Honors group of our tiny senior class), and the guys loved to pick on me. Later, I found my little photo album of senior pictures with name cards, and Jonathan, the same guy who wrote the second set of critiques, wrote on the back of his:

"Eve, Hello Little One. I'm sorry I picked on you so much. It was just because I like you. I hope you succeed in OU, and have a great life. Try to marry into money. You will be a great wife. I'll miss you."

I looked for him on Facebook and Myspace, but to no avail.

I think memories like this are what make me like Facebook so much! I love re-connecting with people who have shared my life in some way in the past, and being remembered of the little experiences we shared that make life such a personalized experience.

I have another sticky note that Matt wrote during an Academic team trip. It says "Eve likes guys". So random. But it makes me laugh every time I see it.

I also found a tourist book about Chicago that I bought when I went there for an FBLA trip my junior year. I fell in love with the "Corn cob" towers and bought the book just so I could show my family where I was going to live some day.

As difficult as life has been over the last several years, I absolutely love breaking out my old stuff from high school and the first few years of college & finding sweet notes, or mean notes written with a facetious tone, or the crepe paper jewelry that Greg decorated me with in his cute, awkward efforts to cheer me up the day my grandfather passed away.

I found a piece of paper that several girls at the Institute in Norman wrote to me when I returned after a semester at home, with sweet notes and expressions of friendly encouragement.

I found a set of "love notes" from the Memphis Relief Society spanning about a year when we sent around pieces of blank paper for sisters to write compliments and thoughts about one another during classes.

I know I have loved and been loved by many, and I have been blessed to have good people cross my path in every place I have been in. Evenings like this are good for the soul. :D

The Pursuit of Happiness

Here's what I've realized lately: Happiness is kind of the opposite of money in the way that it functions in our lives. Money is given, received, exchanged, and stolen between two or more parties. If one person generates money on their own, it's not legitimate; a counterfeit. Happiness, on the other hand, is best cultivated and grown in a personal garden. If the main source of happiness for a person is other people who give or take it from that person, THAT is a counterfeit happiness.

Lately I've been pretty taken aback when I see people who post their status as being "SO incredibly happy!!!!!" in the first stages of a relationship. NOW WAIT! Don't get me wrong! This is not a 'stupid lovebirds gross me out' jealousy post! I love being in a relationship just as much as the next person. I like watching new relationships develop in the people around me. And I understand the giddiness, the excitement, and the funness of a new relationship. But I also have come to understand that as fun and exciting, and great as all that is, neither a relationship, nor another person can "MAKE" me happy! That all depends on how I develop my own relationship with myself, and what I consistently rely on for reassurance when I doubt myself. Happiness is a choice, and if I give the rights of that choice to someone else, I'm betraying my own self. I've learned to appreciate the various things that I can find happiness in, and that I can CHOOSE (and not a gritmyteethimgonnabehappytoday,goshdarnit! kind of choice, either) to find happiness in people and events in my life, regardless of other things going on. I can also CHOOSE to have a grumpy day, regardless of other things and people. It's all about agency and what I want my focus to be.

I think our society has confused the way happiness works with the way the economy works, and has consequently come to believe that in order to really be happy, we have to have to rely on other people to 'stimulate' happiness in our lives!

(btw, I'm so tired of hearing the word "stimulus" in every other commercial, but that's a topic for another day!)


That being said, I'm SO incredibly happy!!!!!


EDIT: I think what takes me aback so much is the responses to such statuses...other people's assumptions that if someone is SO HAPPY! it's because of some outside source. THAT's what bothers me. I do it myself. I try to figure out what/who is going on in someone's life that would make them SO HAPPY!...And so I'm doing my own little social experiment to see if that's just my OWN sick thinking that I'm starting to see from a more objective view point, or if other people around me are also guilty of this mindset! :)

Gravity

Watch this

and this!

Love it, Love it, Love it!

So You Think You Can Dance is my new favorite tv show. I've decided I'm a "social watcher"...like some people can be 'social drinkers'. I only really watch tv when someone convinces me that I'll REALLY love it, and so I usually start a show after it's been running for 3 or 4 seasons...5 in this case! My first favorite was from one of the first weeks, set to "Falling Slowly by The Frames, and is about two strangers meeting falling in love. Last night one of the dances was my very favorite so far, and I had to share it (the second link)! The song is "Gravity" by Sara Barrielles, and is, according to the choreographer, "about addiction".

I'm officially hooked to SYTYCD :)

(video of the dances tends to be taken down pretty quickly, but hopefully this will stick around for a while.)

Pushing Pause

My friend Maunderer wrote a post the other day that got me thinking. I've been MIA in the blogging world for a while...I feel like I haven't had much to say lately, in person or on here, but this was a place to start writing again. He was talking about suicide, which reminded me of something I hadn't thought about in a while. About 6 years ago, I started thinking frequently about being in a bad car accident. Not so bad that it would kill me, but bad enough to put me in the hospital for a while...Maybe even a coma. There were several months there where I thought about this every day, frequently multiple times a day. It seemed to be a solution to a lot of things that were going on with me and in my life at that point. I didn't want to die, but it would sure be nice to hit the Pause button on my life for a bit.

Many things that I needed to change seemed to have a solution in this scenario. I needed people to reassure me of my importance to them. I needed to get out of the job I was in because it was depressing me. I was in an abusive relationship that I couldn't stay out of, and had tried many other ways to stop the madness there but hadn't found a solution that lasted more than a few days. My family was falling to pieces as well, with all the dysfunction we'd kept bundled up tight starting to oooze out & stink, and I didn't want to deal with all that lay under that set of problems either. And in general, I was just worn down to the point of exhaustion. So a few weeks' stint in the hospital seemed a great solution! People would get their perspectives straight, I'd know who really cared about me, and I'd be released from the responsibilities that I felt were pressing down on me...win, win, win, right? I knew it wasn't healthy thinking, but my rationale was "At least I'm not suicidal".

I told people around me, too, thinking that that was the 'good' thing to do, but never let on how frequently or seriously I thought about it. And as much as I wanted to be involved in a car crash, I couldn't bring myself to initiate it, for fear I'd not be hurt enough, or that I'd end up killing myself. I wanted God to orchestrate it for me so I'd be out of commission for a bit but not be liable for it, and started almost asking for that.

A few months went by like this, and I gradually made some progress around my issues with a fresh-out-of-grad-school LDS Family Services therapist. A couple of months of no contact with my 'boyfriend' had me feeling pretty strong, and then I caved in at one of his attempts to talk & spiraled back to where we'd been in a matter of days.

And that's when I decided I'd had enough & something really, REALLY had to change...so I moved to Memphis. It's been a tough five years here, but I think I really got a pause on some things that helped make a difference in my life. I found a great therapist who knows his stuff, and who wasn't afraid to challenge me on my issues & was able to give me the tools I needed to deal with them effectively. I spent 10 weeks at a treatment center where I began picking up the pieces of my Self, whom I had lost to codependency, and I started to regain my self-esteem. I found EDA and SLAA, 12-step programs that supported my recovery around my eating disorder and my relationship issues. As a result of all this I came to understand the Atonement of Christ in a way that being raised in the LDS church for two decades had never been able to communicate to me. And I was incredibly blessed to have a mother who pioneered the way and took great strides to look at the dysfunction she contributed to our family, improve herself, and work her own recovery process.

I've had a good life here in Memphis, but I'm ready to move forward. I've had relationships that were healthier than the ones before, both romantic and otherwise; I've felt the pain of having to say goodbye because I know I deserve to be treated better; and I've been told goodbye by others. It has definitely been a learning process these past 5 years, with, as Alma the Younger said, "exquisite pain" as well as "exquisite joy". I learned here in Memphis that I can get through whatever life throws at me, and I don't have to medicate myself through food or people (or the lack thereof), or by any other means, to be able to experience the lows and highs of life.

And I'm ready for a new change. My moving date to Phoenix will be exactly 5 years from when I arrived in Memphis. I'm ready to carry my recovery into my experiences of a new place and new people. I'll hopefully be working at a wilderness therapy program for troubled teens, and am eager to give back and help those who are travelling along a path similar to the one I've been on. I'm not finished improving, but I am definitely living a more whole, choiceful, overall peace-filled life than my 22-year-old self knew how to do when I left Norman, Ok on August 13, 2004. In some ways, Memphis WAS my "Pause" button that I prayed so hard for in Norman, and now I'm ready to hit "Play" in the HD version of my life!

Milestones

I graduated with my B.A. in Spanish two weeks ago! It's a great feeling to know I don't have tuition, exams, or 15-minute cross-campus speed walks between classes for a while (or for EVER if I decide not to go to grad school after taking a year off)!
My whole family came for the weekend, with the exception of Austin & his wife, and Katie & her fiance. It was great to see everyone and spend time together!

After everyone had left, I got a call on Wednesday morning, May 13th, from Courtney with the news that Becky had passed away about an hour earlier. She had finished all the treatment that her doctors had for her back in August, and had been hanging in there for the last several months, though the cancer was continuing to take over her body and make things increasingly more painful for her.

I was able to drive out to Oklahoma on Friday & spent the weekend with Courtney. On Saturday, Courtney graduated from OU with her Bachelor's in Psychology, and I was really happy to be able to be there for that. Monday was Becky's funeral. It was a beautiful service, most of which Becky had planned herself beforehand. Her family put several sweet touches in it, too, and the whole event really honored the beautiful, loving, and dynamic person that Becky was to all of us in this life. It was a tough day for Courtney and me, saying goodbye to such a dear friend and former roommate. During the times that we all three lived in Norman, we spent a large portion of our time together, and Courtney & I each had our own unique individual friendships with Becky, as well. I'm grateful to have been able to spend four days with Courtney, and to mourn the loss of our close mutual friend together. We spent a good part of the weekend sharing little stories and memories of Becky as they came to our minds, and it would have been very difficult to not have had the support of each other and mutual love for Becky that we share.

It was really meaningful to me that we each had a milestone that week; though Becky's "graduation" from this mortal life on Wednesday looked different from Courtney's & my graduating from universities on the Saturdays immediately before and after her death, we each completed a phase of our lives and are continuing in our individual journeys...each accompanied and supported, in my opinion, by the other two friends.

During one of the last real conversations that Becky & I had on the phone, we talked about our friendship, and emphasized to each other that although it was likely we would not be spending the next 50 or so years seeing one another and talking on the phone in this life, that after we had both made it to the other side, we would most definitely still have a very strong friendship, and made plans to "live in the same neighborhood", however that turns out to be in the next life! I am so grateful to have had Becky Marie in my life for the past seven years! She taught me some things that I don't think I would have been able to learn in any other way during our friendship, especially during the two years that we lived together, as well as the past 18 months of this battle with cancer that she fought so valiantly. I am so honored that she shared a small portion of her experience by asking me to shave my head in support of her. The lessons I learned about Christ's atonement as a result of that experience will be invaluable in my journey here on this earth, and her example of faith during all of her trials that I witnessed, not just cancer, will continue to point the way back to Christ and our Heavenly Father during my life!



I wrote several posts about my experiences shortly after Becky's diagnosis, but a few of them I had never published on this blog. I have posted them in their original dates and labeled each one under the tag "Becky". It is really important to me to preserve the memories that I have of this precious friend and amazing woman. If you have any memories to share of her, I would love to hear/read them!

Summertime = Reading...right??

I'm not ready to write about what's really been going on in my life and the lives of those around me...so I'm "checking out" of reality with one of my favorite subjects. Books!

It really bothers me that my virtual bookshelf over there on the right side of my blog has had the same books on it for months and months now. They're all large and/or dense (subject matter-wise) books, and I have been inching my way through them...though it doesn't help that I don't read any of them with any kind of regularity lately. When I took Evan to the airport last week after my graduation weekend, one of my friends rode up and back with me, and introduced me to McKay Used Books in Nashville! Picture this: An old K*Mart-sized building with aisles and aisles and AISLES of used books...It was heavenly! I bought 4 books for $20. And one was a photoessay book that retails for $40. I got it for 8. Woot! But it doesn't help in the accomplishment of my goal to finish the books I've started by the end of this year. One of the books I bought was Eat Pray Love. I'm about 3/5 of the way through, and let me just say that it is one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in a while! I love stories of imperfect people searching for self-discovery and improvement, and what that process looks like. I read it non-stop last week til I left for Oklahoma on Friday, and haven't had a chance to read more than about a page since. But I am anticipating it like a bullfrog watching a fly :)

I also ordered a few books recommended by the Anasazi Foundation for prospective Trailwalkers to read in preparation for the program. Bonds that Make Us Free, The Anatomy of Peace, and Leadership & Self-Deception (whch I listened to on audiobook a while ago, but went ahead & bought the hardcopy). I started Bonds That Make us Free the week of finals, so now I'm 'reading' six books, counting this, Eat Pray Love, and the four on my virtual bookshelf. But not reading any of them.

AND...Mike just loaned me the latest Fablehaven book, which I've been eagerly awaiting for several months! My sister let me take it the night of my graduation while they were here to try to read it into the night and finish it before they left the next morning...that didn't turn out to be such a good plan! I kept falling asleep and waking back up after such a busy day, and when I finally gave up and turned out my light around 1:15, I'd made it all of 11 pages into the book!

So many words, so little time...

It has Begun

I made a photoblog! And it is base, corrupt, depraved, vile, wicked and wrong. Despite my hesitations, I finally went with Eve Illuminates. I had to...I liked it too much!

I already have a follower, AND she left a comment! woot!

So, go and partake, "for ye shall surely not die." ;-P

3/5

I just finished my Arab-Israeli Conflict final! Yesterday I gave my final presentation in my Gender and Language class, and a few weeks ago my Scuba class ended. Which means I have an Arabic language final Friday morning, and a Spanish Grammar final next Thursday, and then I'm FINISHED!!! (...still haven't sent out my graduation announcements...)

I think I kicked butt on my A/I Conflict exam. Not a huge butt, but probably medium- to large-sized. And considering that last December, I really probably couldn't have pointed out to you on a map where exactly the Gaza Strip is, I'm pretty dang happy with what I accomplished in that class this semester!

I'm pretty sure that my Arabic final is going to kick MY butt, though, so I'll be spending the next 40 hours bracing myself for that! It's been fun, but I really don't know what possessed me to try to learn this language! Actually...learning it hasn't been too bad, and I can hold my own in class really well; it's just the testing part that I have such a hard time with! ;)