absorption

I am absorbing so many things right now that I just need a place to keep it all straight:

Hope is the opposite of anxiety. At least for me. We always talk about hope in church and stuff, but no one realizes what a cool and important thing it is. Especially in my fam fam. For me, Hope translates directly into happiness. It's the thing that I live on. Sometimes I think, "If I could just get some HOPE right now I would be totally fine doing the crap I have to do."

Pride (another word for insecurity) absolutely makes every situation 100% more un-solveable. If the whole world was humble (another word for self-confident), you wouldn't believe the problems that WOULDN'T be going on. We're always told to be humble in church, but I don't think anyone actually understands how to BE humble. I've heard some fights/conversations lately that absolutely BLOW MY MIND! I can NOT believe how blatantly prideful certain people are. I sit there and think, "If you, YOU, RIGHT THERE, would just huuummmmbbblllleeee yourself....... don't you understand that if you humbled down a bit right now you could save this from being a screaming session? Or you could keep your spouse from silently resenting something about you, that you don't even know about, that they thought they forgave, until one day all hell brakes loose?! It's amazing to me the things people didn't learn while growing up. One of the most important things I am going to look for in a husband is humility. I just want a humble guy. Some time my passion for hating pride gets out of hand and I actually say something out loud. I hope I'm not making people resent me.

I don't know why, but sometimes I'm the biggest jerk you ever knew. I think it has to do with my lack of patience. Also my hyper focus thing that I do. Especially during movies. I've decided that I am absolutely the worst person to watch a movie with (other than..... dad) because I get so involved in the movie that if you talk I'm ready to slit your throat! Other than movies and books though, my hyper focus thing is kinda nice. If I decide to focus on something, I can do it better than anyone. Like the bop it game. I WILL beat you at bop it. I beat the game easily. I will beat you at guitar hero. I also WILL beat you at a hula hoop contest.

Music again

I've been thinking about music again. I've been wondering why I can listen to Tori Amos and literally, i'm not exaggerating, nothing else and I don't get sick of it. Instead I keep hungering for it over and over and over again. I believe this is because something in her music resonates in me. There is a gaping hole in all teenagers and her music resonates within it. Like when you are humming in the shower and you hit a certain note that makes the whole shower buzz. It's almost like the shape of the hole changes throughout teenagehood and when you hit a certain age, around 16, (Me, Laura, Wendy) or if you have the maturity level of this age (Brian), for some reason or another Tori amos fits with your pain, your hole in your chest, and while you're listening to it you feel like you're full, like you're actually whole again.

I'm sure that it's pretty rare to find an artist or genre of music that resonates so perfectly, but once you find it, listening to any other music is a flat experience. You almost don't hear it, because it bounces off you. There was a time when Incubus filled in the whole in my chest that was shaped like anxiety. Then after that bands like deftones and tool filled in the hole that had shifted into a cold, dead, passive, apathetic sphere. I tried listened to Incubus the other day. It was as flat as the mormon music I described in my last post. And that's when I thought something that had never occurred to me before in my obtusity: There probably comes a time in your life, when your brain is freed from the bonds of it's previous teenage stupidity, when the gaping hole shrinks, and changes its shape so that church music is exactly what you need, and why should I force those adults around me to listen to something that fills me up but not them. That's why parents hear our music as loud, irritating, noise. Because that is literally what they hear. Just like Incubus sounded like irritating noise to me.

When does the hole open up? As soon as you start feeling pain, I'm talkin emotional pain, it starts to eat its way from the inside out. Some get in while they're still children. Most get it when they hit teenagehood. There's probably the few exceptions who never get rejected, who never feel lonely, who never want someone out of their reach, who never fight with anyone, and always have a good relationship with God. Those people might go through life and never feel the emptiness. I'm hoping that eventually as time goes on mine will close in on itself and leave nothing but a scar.

All of this is metaphorical of course, but sometimes it feels strangely literal. When I have to dance with Steve Gashler and watch a boy that I'm in love with flirt relentlessly right in front of my face with another girl, knowing that it could have been me he was touching if i hadn't been such an idiot, it takes all that I have not to grab my chest in agony right in the middle of class. And when I'm at home thinking about it I actually do it. I moan and hold my chest because it hurts so bad. I do wonder if other people feel feelings as strong as me sometimes. Does it hurt so bad for other people? Probably not. I'm a Lowe.
The strange thing is, is that though all this, I don't wish it would go away, because i'm finally feeling SOMETHING. I finally know something, someone that I want, instead of being passive and cold. And I think I've been passive and cold for a while. The pain almost feels good. It's like sweet pain. I must be really sick or something. But sometimes the hole gets too large and it's not sweet anymore, and I really need people, a lot of people, and I need to be close to them. My best friend has always needed me but I didn't need anyone so I didn't understand it, and now i'm as needy as anyone. I've never had to lean on anyone till now and I'm grateful this is happening to me because I have compassion now, and I desperately need it, being by nature the least compassionate little ENTJ you will ever know.
I'm so thankful that I have such a huge tightknit family because I think I'll need all of them to keep me afloat before I can built a boat for myself.

I know what I have to do.

Music gives the illusion that you're full.
Relationships allow you to use other people's fullness to fill in yourself, and so you are emotionally draining on other people.
Where can I turn for peace? Where is my solace?

This is what Christ came for. God is infinite and can fill us all up. This is why I have to believe. This is why I have to gain a relationship with him. It's the only way out.

funny how my thoughts always end up in the same place...

no matter where I start from.


I wrote another thing in seminary. They gave me a paper that started out asking, "what's the worst thing you can imagine Christ saying to you?":



The worst thing I can imagine christ say to me is that he doesn't know me. I thought that even before I read matthew 7:21-23. It would be devastating because in the back of my mind I have always believed and hoped that there is at least one person in the universe who knows me and actually understands me.

Nicolaitan: Church members who maintain their church standing while still living in the world.

I'm pretty sure I'm guilty of this, except I wish they would be more specific about what living in the world actually means, so I know if I'm doing it!! Am I supposed to stop listening to anything but church music which is hollow and flat when sometimes hard rock is the only think that quenches my need for expressing my anger toward the world?! It doesn't even have to be hard rock. Just something with some PASSION like Tori Amos. I'm listening to church music in seminary as I write this. It doesn't do a thing for me. And I've figured it out. The reason most mormon music is so hollow, and only a select few songs have anything that touches me, is because real music is written in pain, or joy from someone who was once in pain and is free of it now. I'm not saying there can't be happy music, but you can only be as happy as you've been sad, and as a general rule, mormons aren't quite as sad as the rest of the world. Now, I know this is a sickeningly huge generalization, but do you see what I'm thinking? Maybe that's an irrational connection, but remember, I am only 16. My logic centers haven't milianated yet. So where was I? Oh yeah. Mormon music blows because the people writing it don't know anything about pain or the joy of finally being free of it, so they have no feelings strong enough to inspire their genius, and the result is that their music is flat. You may notice that I'm speaking of the mormons as "they" and "them". But I'm not excluding myself from this. If I tried to write music it would probably suck too. I even have musical gifts and it would still suck. Now think about the best, most meaningful music you've ever written. You were going through something hard right? My point exactly.

Now back to my original question: What the poo do they mean, "living in the world" when they're talking to a bunch of mormons who don't smoke, drink, or have sex with everyone, which in my mind is what that phrase means? All I can think of is media. Oh Ok. So this means shun media that comes from anywhere but the mormon community! Easy! I can do that! Oh wait I forgot one thing. I HATE mormon media. Nothing has ever been so lame as the puke spewing forth from the mormon community that we call "mormon media". There is no way this is what they mean. So, I suppose they mean that the Nicolaitans are the ones in the church who don't love going to church, who aren't religious when nobody's looking, who don't smile when the get a calling, who hesitate when they fill out their tithing settlement, who don't hold on to the church and defend it till the death.
The one's who don't love the church in their hearts. Love the church? Love what about the church? The young women's program? Sacrament meeting talks? Home teachers buggin you every month?
I know this isn't what they mean. Unfortunately, some probably think this is exactly what they mean, because they never stopped and wondered if there might be a slight difference between the church and the gospel.
Holy monkey that is ironic. The ones who hold to the church like its christ itself are being the Nicolaitans. They are keeping their standing with the church while living in the world because their hearts are not in christ. You're not supposed to love church, you're supposed to love Christ. We might all be surprised who Christ says, "I never knew you" too.

A Poem about music

Glory be for a beautiful harmony
That fills you in a place that didn't before exist.

The power that it holds is
As the strength of our star
That sinks warmth in our skin,
Or the sight of lightning from a far off.

The pulse of the tone makes the heart stop it's beat,
And no breath do we take--
For the notes linger, long in dissonant ways.
But, when the beauty beheld by resolution envelops us,
There is a need to gasp
As if the lungs have been
Held deep down in warm water,
Or you've stopped all your crying
And you long for a breath of undespaired air.

All containment is opened to let
A divine light show through, and
We squint for being in dark for so long.

Glory be for a beautiful harmony
That gives the gift of freedom

the stream of my conscious

I wrote this during seminary one day when the lesson was dragging on and I had a lot of thoughts going through my head... (Notice how many sentences there are)




I want to write some poetry now using train of thought writing I don't know what to think or how to get there but I may believe nothing whatsoever in my life I don't no, I can't remember the good so shall I go on dreaming without knowing the outcome or reasons or anything worthwhile I guess I'll just save my thoughts from myself who is not anyone real, but a piece of a dream blown out of proportion while reality lingers just below the surface and so many waves fly in and out that it is completely lost from anyone’s conscious mind who has any importance in the world the lines diverge a million times per second that how could any person or group of people claim they are intelligent enough to find the one line but who cares all we do is sit in classrooms our whole lives nothing ever actually happens but our brain cells have gotten so out of whack big that we can't help but find and search for something that isn't there, but may be there, but our dreams warp anything so intensely that a dog becomes a great and powerful k-9 master of the universe, and the master of the universe is now an anxiety attack that makes my legs move and makes my heart beat and opens my tear ducts and fills my lungs and I want to scream with only good things so stop trying to imagine anything concrete or you'll F it all up and become deceived by your own active mind and forget what your body is doing remember you are sitting in a class room doing nothing nothing is happening nothing is changing anything that matters just sit. Your future is so far away it is lost stop thinking you know it's just a bunch of threads that haven't been tied together yet stop wandering too far ahead, look at where your sitting choose to believe what opens your tears don't harden anything yet just wait something might not be happening now but something will have to happen and then the story will have started and you'll take the role of the main character, because that IS what you are, you’re the protagonist in vetro so even if all others feel like the center you are the center of your center no you are not that feels wrong how can I be the center with everyone else thinking they are the center too there is only one center and none of us are in it there is only one and that is why were so obsessed with religion as human beings cause we feel the need to be the main character or else despair, and the closer you are to the main character the more important of a character you feel like we are all selfish but that is natural and good and right and expected so don't suppress it embrace it.

A poem by Me

Part 1

Oneiric, soft and hazy
My view allows
To the pool in which we dive.
The light diffuses to a faint glow
And is lost in a deep, eternal ocean.
They say there is no wild shift on breaking water.
A place to hold, to wait, to keep.
I say a land of air, a land of sea
Upright on my feet.
Or my head.
Once in the water I would alter, so great.
A changed person, but not myself.

I layed then on my side.
The plate removed from off my sight,
There was but a painful breeze between the ocean and I.
The light collected, the haze focused
And I beheld myself.
I looked at my face and heard my thoughts.
It is so familiar.

Hadn’t it always been like this?


Part 2

Inward- so far-
I found a line, a ring, a sphere
Of mild bliss. Sharpness pulled or dampened,
Color watered down to greys I thought was
Life.

But this was ideal. And I did not wish for more.

As it was, surrounding lines or rings or spheres
of bright magenta, nerves shot with sharp thrills
Gazed upon me with wishful envy.
Flipped, though, there was pity but compassion weak,
for a mind that knows only greys can never see else.
This thought echoing in my head, ashamed, I dared a drop of color
to dissolve around my sphere's surface. I quickly removed the dare in fear.
But the realization still lingered.
I knew there was pain but could not see it.

A day came that the tiniest drop of green touched my sphere.
Immediatly after the shock of color on my skin passed,
the Universe took a shape in which greys were
illuminated by splotches of greens, dark, light, bright and damp.
I was sensitive to those with darker green than I,
and I thanked I had not been given more.

But I knew that colors settled and healed leaving
extreme beauty like nothing I could imagine.
And so I left myself willing from the knowledge
to recieve what drops may come
That someday I may Glow.

problem. trapped.

I have a problem. And it came with the realization that although I love my personal religious beliefs and relationship with God, I don't like the mormon church. I think this is how satan's gunna try to get me.

I need to get out of Utah. I think that if I was away from the masses of mormons my testimony would grow. I'm tired of never having to stand up for what I believe in. How can you really be passionate and really belive in something you never have to stand up for. I think that I would begin to see this religion clearer, and miss it instead of being gosh dang open my throat and puke sick of it.



Wow. I am really trapped. I'm trapped in high school where i'm treated as though I were a 3 year old who is incappable of making decisions. Please. Kill the attendance policy. Let me have a LITTLE dignity.
I'm trapped in a house with everyone is gone but me and the parents, and I can't drive, and I don't have a car, and I have to be towed around by someone else everywhere I go.
I'm trapped in a religion- no, i'm fine with the religion itself- I'm trapped by religious people everywhere around me who don't even try to turn there brains on and think, and they expect me to do the same.
I'm trapped by Parents who suddenly have decided to knuckle down at the WORST possible moment in my life. Parents who shove religion down my throat when I already what to puke it all up. Parents who ground me for a week for skipping one hour of church. They don't understand that to make this religion any more restrictive then it already is, is what is going to push me over the edge. They are deathly afraid that I will go innactive and start acting like Brian. So their brilliant parenting plan is to disciplining me into loving the gospel. "Ground her for a week! that should do the trick! She'll LOVE being a mormon!" I can't describe to you how insulting it is that they thought they had to PUNISH me like a naughty little 8 year old who was burning grass in the backyard. Unlike the 8 year old, I WON'T do it again if you tell me not to.