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SpaceTravelIs_Boring
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Name: Siobhan
Birthday: 6/22/1986
Gender: Female
Interests: Doing good, literature, human sexuality, swing dancing, Iceland, Mormon church history, felines, vintage bathing suits, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, enlightenment.
Expertise: Teaching what I need to learn, saying what I need to hear.
Occupation: Part-time cubicle bum.
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/15/2007
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| Today I realized that a large part of my identity has come from being raised by hippies. It's kind of something I'll never be able to escape from, and frankly, I don't want to. I love my hippie parents. I remember one day on my mission when a woman was speaking and said that her parents really taught her how to love... my parents taught me that, too. I love them for that.
I'm in my best friend's basement. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time in this basement in the past eleven years.
I remember their old 70s recliner that she and I would fling ourselves back in until it hit the floor (I think we would do that now if her parents hadn't gotten rid of it).
I remember filming a TV show on her video camera... I filmed her upside-down with a blanket over her face and drew eyes on her chin... (Come on, someone else has done that.)
I remember giggling sleepovers and her dad marching down the stairs and we'd slump down wherever we were on the couch, pretending to have been asleep the whole time.
Really, honestly, nothing much has changed in eleven years. It's nice to have someone like that, where you never really have to change. Thanks, Keri. *grin*
(Right now there's a statue of Father Christmas in the corner of the room staring at me. I don't like him.)
I feel very content today. It's a relief from feeling sad. There is really so much to be happy and sad about in life and sometimes the sadness is crushing and overwhelming but maybe the joy is, too.
Like, for example, the Book of Mormon. The last time I read it through, I sat back after the last page, last sentence, last word and murmured, "This is the saddest book ever written."
Now, THAT attitude has been my problem since I was baptized Mormon three years ago. Sherry Dew or someone like that said, "We understand the gospel enough to feel guilt but not enough to feel joy."
The truth is, and this truth is piercing my haze of silliness more every day, that the Book of Mormon is the brightest beacon of hope and beauty and optimism and opportunity. With every defeat and death and loss and moment of pain is the promise of utter and complete compensation. Everything will be (and is being) made right. It's because of Christ: a being I've felt alienated from my whole life, who I've never understood, who I have this almost desperate desire to be close to.
Another relevant quote, no clue who said this one: "Enlightenment is simply remembering what always was." Everything we do in this life is with the motive of feeling the love of God again because some part of us remembers it from before. Who was it who said that the greatest surprise, when we see His face again, will be how familiar He is to us?
What He means to me now is so personal. I'm almost protective about it, I don't want it tarnished. I grew up with people telling me and my family, in His name, that we were going to hell. Now I know how loving the Holy One is. That knowledge protects me.
I guess some things have changed. :) | | |
| Of course, life never is what you expect it to be. I tried to be prepared for this, probably one of the greatest transitions ever, but have been utterly unsuccessful.
Try to stay positive, Coman. (That's my mantra.) You have a billion beautiful memories to recreate in your head and the promise of a glorious future, whenever that happens.
The saddest thing is, what I can't control means so much more to me now. An impossible relationship with a dead father. A possible but still unlikely relationship with a living father. The inability to feel like every facet of who I am is equally represented before a single human being, nothing hidden-- the feeling of being completely comprehended. I kind of miss being a dumb kid when things like that didn't matter at all.
Certain circumstances don't help. A car inexplicably broken, leaving me marooned in this strange town thirty minutes away from familiarity and friendliness and escape... March snow storms don't help either.
I'm not depressed; I'm sad. There's a difference. I also feel like I'm fading away. Six weeks of not being able to honestly express yourself, of feeling like you aren't helping a living soul when you spent the previous eighteen months focusing on nothing but doing just that... well, I'm forgetting who I've become. All I have left is this town, with the faint shadow of what happened before, things I never want to think of again.
Also, I can't talk. When my mouth is open and there's a human ear to absorb what can come out of it, suddenly everything is awkward and jumbled. I feel like a nervous fourteen-year-old again. It's only here, when I can pause and reflect and mentally edit before my fingertips hit the keys, that I feel safe. I think I'm echoing the sentiments of millions of computer geeks (which, I am not. I know nothing about computers, ask anyone).
Everyone says this will pass. I guess we just have to wait. It's uncharted territory; it's a vast black sea and if we ever do reach land, will it be a land good enough to live on? Should we just take what we can get? Or is the promise real: that life will be blessed and full of joy and all good things for that sacrifice? Maybe I didn't sacrifice enough. Maybe this is punishment!
Oh, Siobhan, you know your God isn't the God of the Puritans. He could never punish you for your inadequacies. No one is good enough for this work, but He lets us try.
And now I'm remembering a particularly painful moment, on my knees against a small cheap bed, crying bitterly into the quilt my mother was kind enough to send me. "I'm scared," I sent out in a whisper.
And then this was sent back:
"And no one can assist in this work
except [she] shall be humble and full of love,
having faith, hope, and charity;
being temperate in all things,
whatsoever shall be entrusted to [her] care." | | |
| I'm back! ... That was anticlimatic. I have a million things to say-- eighteen months worth, to be precise-- and who knows how to will all get out of my brain and into this blog... but I am determined. In short, it was the best thing I've ever done. I got home on Friday and it feels like it was a dream, but that this is a dream, too... I want to go back. BUT being with my family is amazing! Someone must have prepped them on how to deal with a return missionary because they should have no idea. But they've been great: supportive, loving, they let me cling to them and give me space... it's great. GWYDION has a girlfriend! I don't know how that happened. Apparently he doesn't either; he was beguiled into a double date and it's just gone on from there. I can't believe he's almost 16. Anyway. More to come. *grin* Love, Siobhan | | |
| I leave in the morning. I feel peaceful and ready for adventure. I know that we are all part of a plan bigger and more marvelous than we could ever dream. Love, Siobhan | | |
| All I really wanted from this day was to bake a fabulous cake.
I've never baked a cake before. My vision was to have a double-layered round cake. Yellow with mini semi-sweet chocolate chips. Homemade cream cheese frosting dyed light green with purple decorative frosting.
What I got was this:
How this happened:
1. I forgot to add water to the cake mix. As I tried to get the gluey substance into the pans, I glanced at the box.
"Dammit."
2. After cleaning up the mess and going to the grocery store for the second time, I managed to make a reasonably delicious cake batter. Or so I thought. I sat the cakes on a rack to cool and noticed that all of the chocolate chips (I poured the entire bag in) had sifted to the bottoms.
"Oh, no..."
3. Instead of trying to get them out of the pans myself, I waited for my Mormon Mom to come home and help me. She surveyed the damage and tried to get the cakes out of the pans. They crumbled.
"It's the chips," her elderly mother offered. "They've all sunk to the bottom. Impossible to get the cakes out in one piece."
"Dammit!" (Me again.)
"I'll glue it together with frosting. Go get more cream cheese, we'll make more frosting."
4. I go to the grocery store for the third time. When I get home, they've put the cakes together in a crumbly lump that is not round at all but rather mound-shaped and have been spreading my dear frosting all over it.
"It won't stick because of the cream cheese."
"But I LOVE the cream cheese! Normal frosting is so groooosss."
"Too bad. It won't hold together without it."
5. We make normal frosting, which encases the cake-lump in a firm, lopsided mound.
Although, everyone's really excited to sample it, and when we do we find that while extremely ugly, it's actually quite a delicious cake. The chips formed a thick layer of chocolate and the cream cheese frosting sort of seeped into the cake when forced in by the plain frosting.
After much lip-smacking, I commenced a game of Liverpool Rummy with three people over the age of fifty, and considered it a marvelous birthday.
The end. | | |
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