"Still deciding me" and "Kind of a mess"

At age 22, Steve and I broke up and I was left reeling in the following days.

January 18, 2015: "I tried not to think today about how I could have saved our relationship. Things like not bringing up how much marriage scares me or my feelings about gay marriage [namely I supported it and Steve did not] or my plans to go to grad school. But I think to not have talked about those things would have been to hide/sacrifice a part of myself. So I think I did a good job being me--even if I'm still deciding me--and I don't think I should regret that."

I'm sad I felt the need to hide myself to accepted in that relationship. I'm proud of myself for recognizing my own malleability--that I was a person in the making instead of a finished product--while also knowing what was already important to me.

Some of the following days were good, some were hard.

January 25, 2015: "I'm kind of a mess right now. Like I don't know how to spend my time in order to get closer to whatever sort of fuzzy vision I have of the future. So I just clean hard core or bake pumpkin cookies or work out. Normal things, right? But I feel like this whole breaking up with Steve thing has made me stop to try to figure out what's really important to me in life and maybe in the end, I don't even know. There seems to be more things every day that I don't know and I don't even know how to know something. Even things I thought I knew and the Gospel seem to be drowning in ambiguity and the only things that seem to be certain are a.) my family's love for me, b.) the reality and love of my God, and c.) that my literacy skills will last forever. I'm trying not to get caught up in doubt, but even this week I've felt myself pulling away from things...not in a huge way, but it's like I think I want a breathing break, but that's when Satan gets to you--when you pull away for a break. I feel so unstable, but I don't a.) know how to stabilize or b.)if I even want to stabilize. And then I think I'm a bad person and wonder if I can even be good while still retaining the essence of me. And right now=a mess."

This breakup was a powerful impetus for me to reevaluate my beliefs and the direction of my life. I've learned so many healthy things about destruction since this point and think I was fighting some of my intuitions to get some space. I gave the concept of Satan a lot more power than I do now as well. While I resisted "taking a formal break" in 2015,  I did drop a religion class about marriage and family, which maybe wasn't a huge deal in the world of BYU where the church was everywhere anyways, but I think it was good for me. And in 2021, I definitely think breaks can be good. It's also been comforting to learn that you can make a choice and change your mind about that choice literally any day. There is something so powerful to me knowing that choices about my faith and my relationship with the church are not static. 

January 27, 2015: "Yesterday I woke up and felt like darkness. Like Satan was in my head and I didn't want to get up, pray, or read the scriptures. I tried, but just fell back to sleep. It was really strange and unpleasant. I didn't even want to go running and I pretty much always want to go running. I managed to pull myself out of bed and go running somehow, and I did feel a bit better after that, but still...weighed down. I manage school and work just fine--it's just when I have to deal with real life that things get tricky. It's like I'm in a dreamlike state where I don't have to really think about my life when I'm in class or at work. But then I come home and reality hits. I don't actually know how to be a decent human being during my 'real-person time.' I don't actually know how to talk to/hang out with boys. Apparently I didn't know how to keep relationship going. I don't know how to make decisions about my future. I don't know to separate the grays in my life and the Gospel. I don't know how to deal with the ambiguity in my life and in my faith, even though I dedicate a lot of brainpower to thinking about it and trying to solve my problems. Because it seems like the more I think, the worse it all gets. But I don't want to be an unthinking, unfeeling, numb and blind robot."

I honestly think I have some degree of seasonal affective disorder. I didn't know that at the time and so I blamed Satan, but January is always always the hardest month of the year for me. I am not paralyzed by it, but it definitely feels like an extra weight. I also think I didn't know what "real life" was. I thought it was all about social relationships, that everything else was supplementary. I definitely include work and school in my "real life" now and think it's important not to put all of your value for life on one aspect.