"I refuse to feel tragic"

Yesterday, I studied the scriptures with my pandemic bubble on the grass by the duck pond. The past few days it has finally started to settle into fall temperature wise, and it was one of the all-around prettiest days I'd seen in a while. While winters are hard to weather, being that I am still very unaccustomed to the cold, I have to agree that fall is absolutely stunning here. Sometimes it's still weird to me that I am so comfortable with these people that I have essentially tackled life with for the last seven months. There are more and more moments lately where I can speak my mind or be myself and I don't replay the conversations over and over and over again, berating myself for living and taking up space. Of course, I am nowhere near perfect, and still have many moments where I relive too much, but I've made a lot of progress and that's really important to me. Two of us are wearing yellow. I just recently decided that I really loved that color, and I still get very excited when I unintentionally match or coordinate with my friends, just like in middle school. One of my friends gives each of us a knotted blade of grass. I used to braid grass together, try and tie them into as many knots as possible without the blade snapping. There's something very comforting at seeing someone else, someone who is 23, still holding onto things from childhood too. 

Over the last couple of months, I have fallen in love with music and singing all over again. I have always said music was my first love, but as all relationships go, it'd been a bit of a slow spell. At the beginning of this pandemic world, I'd been really good at practicing and working on new songs. However, there were a few months where I couldn't feel the same spark or interest that I've felt at different points throughout my life. In August, I started singing again, and I have found so much peace and joy in it. This is the first time I have fallen in love with music and felt secure in it. While I still get uncomfortable when people are, in my mind, too generous in their compliments, I do know that I have a good voice and can perform well. As small of a step this seems, I would call it a miracle if I weren't intimately aware of how I've gotten here. There's something so different about singing when I'm not constantly worried if someone is going to think I'm "good" or not. It has taken literally over a decade to get here, but it was worth it to get here.

On Thursday, I went to the cutest local art supply store. For years I've said I would start sketching again and actually gain some kind of proficiency in drawing, but it took being in a design class for me to feel the need to actually see that goal through. To be honest, a lot of this drive comes from the fact a decent portion of my grade in this class is dependent on me completing 20 different sketches. Best of intentions or no, I'm grateful that it was enough to get me in my car and over to The Artist Corner. Walking through the narrow aisles, looking at all of the supplies that I definitely can't afford yet, I couldn't stop thinking about art classes in elementary school. I decided by the time I went to middle school that I would focus on performance, but before that, I had artwork on display at the rodeo. There's a chance my mom still has this awful, ridiculous phoenix pencil cup I sculpted for her in fourth grade. I have always been musical and dramatic, but there was a very real love for pencils and pastels and paint and pottery along with the fascination with the spotlight. I'm still timid when it comes to drawing what I see; I've become so reliant on words that I don't quite trust I can replicate it in another medium. But I am getting there, and I am determined to love the process. 

I've found so much happiness in the littlest moments, in being able to drive and listen to music, in making food and sharing it with people I care about. Amidst all of the turmoil and heartache, there is so much beauty that I have been able to find, and I can't explain how grateful for it. These small windows into my life right now don't show the full story: there are still many moments where I am broken by the weight of everything, haunted by memories I would rather give up. I find myself with tears in my eyes more often than I would like to admit. There are hours and days where I want to throw up my hands and give up, where I would rather be angry at the world than look for the good. And that's okay. It's okay to be a complex being, to feel everything and at times be thrown off by the whiplash of it all. We can't always be happy. It isn't realistic to expect ourselves to only see the good in our situations, in others, in ourselves. We're going to hurt and rage and throw things against walls. 

And yet, despite all of the things that have happened, that have gone wrong, I don't see my life as a tragedy. I am determined to make it more than that. I am not great at this yet--I tend to draw more attention than I would like to my stress and my struggles. But within all of that, within everything I am trying to process and overcome, there are so many good things. Right now, I am kind of burned out of looking at the things in my life that are painful. The hurt isn't gone yet. It will be a while yet before I truly stop feeling it. But for now, I have to give myself a break from aching. Life is hard. It is quite literally the hardest thing we will experience. It is going to hit you hard, knock you to your knees and push your face in the mud at moments. That's okay. But when you're pulling yourself to your feet again, take a moment to see how different everything looks down there. Find something beautiful in it, so the next time you find yourself staring at the sky the process of standing up again won't be so terrifying.