Nobody ever even reads blogs anymore, so I think it's okay to just be real here.


I had to write that down so I could feel braver.

This year has been hard and terrible and heavy. Heavier than most in ways I didn't anticipate. And in ways I don't know what to make of just yet.
I don't feel smart enough or kind enough or old enough or young enough or loved enough or loving enough. I don't have any answers, only so many many questions that nobody will ever answer. This got real emo, haha!

Anyways.

My mom gave me a big pep talk today, and I wanted to remember some of the things she said, but I don't know where else to put them, so here they are. She told me to stay the course and to build a sandcastle with individual grains of sand. She told me that I'm mean, but important. I almost cried six times, but I wanted to be tough, and frankly, I don't have the time to cry. I only have time to work and write and think and watch all of the television (seriously all of it).

I really only have one friend here. I have more enemies than I knew were possible. I didn't believe the people who told me that this place is charged, but they are right. I was depressed in California and Utah and Nebraska, but Oklahoma is so much darker. I feel lighter, but it seems like the elements of this place are much sharper than anywhere else. The history of here is buried so close to the surface, but everyone keeps pretending that there's nothing but what you can see. I don't understand how to be, and I can't figure out how to stop thinking about what's hidden/ what I can't know. I wonder about who is buried under my house and whose graves are under the lake where the tap water comes from.

I think there's a ghost in the upstairs part because I saw too many orbs in a photo, and sometimes it smells like faintly dead things. I spend so much time scared of spiders and tornadoes and dead Kiowas and sounding crazy and being mean and not knowing enough, and not trying hard enough to mend things, and wondering if anyone is proud enough of me and if I can ever escape here, and if I am quiet enough or far too quiet and and and and and

And I miss my grandma.

I'm trying to figure out how to actually be a whole person instead of some fraction of something, and that's an impossible task when I'm constantly dissecting and being dissected. People keep asking me how much X I am. How can a person be only so much?

How can we live?

Does anyone even read this any more??

The last month, I know, has been gut wrenching to watch. From all vantages. I'm so sorry that we have borne this trial, and I sincerely hope that you have found someone to bear it deeply with you.

In my academic life, I study how minority groups are visually depicted and represented. I find a fascinating application for my training in looking towards my own self, and the groups with whom I am family. Right now, I want to turn my attention to us; to Mormons. Specifically, to Mormon women.

I was  struck when the church decided (whether autonomously or not) to FINALLY display a photograph of the highest female authorities of our organization in the conference center this year. I wondered, when that happened, why it was happening just now, and I was intrigued that there was only minimal precedent for such a display in such a public place in the church. Almost every Relief Society room I've been in has little oval portraits of the presidents of that organization hanging on its walls. I hadn't really ever considered that such a view wasn't displayed for everyone. When those sisters showed up in the conference center, with their pastel blazers and heavenly puffed hair helmets, I was moved to finally see my sisters taking their place.

Being represented on a wall with a portrait in a public place has a long tradition in western culture. A portrait conveys a message of importance, of belonging and sometimes of wealth or great knowledge. Historically, portraits were reserved for kings and queens, emperors and pharaohs , members of royal courts and heroic dynasties. I saw these sisters taking their place in line with a long tradition.

But the fact that it took them until 2014 to finally be put up on the wall told me a different story.
In art history (my area of academic interest and practice), there is a great array of means to approach visual representation. In my particular area of study, the mechanism of the "post memory" has been useful. The post memory, essentially, is the means by which the struggles and hardships of our predecessors are imbued with meaning. It is the means by which latter generations inherit these struggles as a part of their identity, their narrative, their truth. I posit that Mormon women today are inheritors of the minimal visibility of our faithful sisters before us, and the deep capacity to remain faithful regardless. I would like to further suggest that that specific struggle has a great deal of significance and meaning.

A dear friend KB recently expressed to me the frustration that she feels compelled to "bask in the history of my foremothers. But it is too deeply overshadowed by [our] forefathers." KB isn't one to be lost on sentiment where it isn't due, and I want to tell her, to tell all of us, that there is meaning in joining the struggle to be seen, to be heard, to matter, and to make the story of the gospel whole.

I think often about when Eliza Snow was writing the words to O My Father. She was discussing the theology and nature of Godliness with her husband Joseph Smith, when he told her that we have a Mother in Heaven just as much as we have a Father there. She excitedly added that verse to her poem and encased our deep revealed doctrine of feminine potential in its lines. Eliza helped to usher forth the truth of the gospel, providing a projected potentiality for the women of the church. Why, then, have we taken to being so quiet about her, then? Do we have an obligation to honor her thorough silence? Does a half of the God of the universe speak in a primary voice? Does She speak at all?

And why, until Mormon revelation was the overriding Christian belief that Eve ruined all of existence for humanity?

It has been tempting for me to believe that the real truth is what I hear so very very often, even from people in the church; I'm tempted to believe that maybe God really doesn't value me as a whole being because I am a daughter. It's heartbreaking for me to even write this down. I am tempted to buy the line that I was made with the wrong parts to be a full participant in Zion. I'm really really tempted to believe it when people tell me (so often) that women are silent and invisible because that's how God wants it. It seems to make so much sense- all of my foremothers, all of the heroines and prophetesses of scripture are muzzled in light of their male counterparts. I am bereft at the fact that I don't miss their voice more, that we don't long more wholly for our Mother. There is no song we teach our young about the presidents of the Relief Society.

I could bemoan the inequities for days. But I will spare you (since you are here, you are probably already acutely aware), and instead offer this thought: I believe that as the women of the church, we link with these women- powerful role models: Heavenly Mother, Eve, Mary, The Other Mary, Emma, Lucy, Deborah, Miriam, Jael, Jezebel, Leah, Dorcas, The Woman Taken In Adultery, Ruth, Bonnie, Carole, Linda, The Other Linda, The Other Carol, Neill, Rosemary, Jean and Cheryl, Margaret, Maxine, Lynne, Lavina,  Kate, and countless others - in seeking to be seen, to be heard, to be faithful to righteousness. We inherit their struggle and their faith also in NOT being seen or heard, but valued abundantly nevertheless.

There is a scripture that I found recently that caught me in a moment of my temptation to believe the lie that women's authority is null: it's aaaaall the way back in Doctrine & Covenants  138. It's embedded in this recounting of Joseph F Smith's vision. He is telling about a vast congregation who await Christ while His body lay in the tomb. Is says that, assembled among Adam and his male cohort, was also "our glorious Mother Eve, with many of her faithful daughters who had lived through the ages and worshiped the true and living God."

-D&C 138:39

I feel dumbfounded that this scripture isn't more well known and beloved and celebrated amongst Mormon feminists. I intend to learn it and use it every time I enter back into temptation to believe the lie that women don't matter or are lesser. It reminds me that daughters have place in the halls of Zion. Even on the walls with the sons!
These daughters' struggle is ours. I in no way praise the institutions of the world nor forgive the mechanisms of almighty history for forgetting these women, I simply ask that we see, as their inheritors, the light of the gospel in them and take them as our mothers. I want to be nourished by them.

And so. 
For those is us who are ready to be done with the church, I stand with you. I want to hug each of you in the lobby on your way out the chapel doors and weep with you. I want to shout out my anger with you, using all of the tones and swears unbefitting the "good girls" we were trained up to be. I want to walk around with you and know where you can still see God and I want to worship with you there. I know why you have to go, and I honor that. I don't blame you, or begrudge your choice in the slightest.

For those of us who can stay a little longer, I hope that you find meaning and a means by which you can honor our women in spite of the temptation to believe that we must be mute and invisible. I hope that we magnify and grow our faith from the realities of our predecessors. If there's one thing we are good at, it's honoring our pioneer ancestors. I believe that it's the thing that Christ would have us do.
I think we have a chance to make this into a blessed time for growth as a sisterhood, as a people, and as humanity.

ghost

I think about maybe being a ghost a lot.
Like in that movie with Nicole Kidman and those little kids who were allergic to light.
Are people really allergic to light?
What if I am haunting someone now?
Do you think they would be scared of what I do? Do you think they would like how I arranged the furniture, and do you think they would also notice that the little guy who lives on top of my fridge spins around so that he's always looking toward the front door? No matter how many times I put him back, he is vigilant.
I hope I don't scare the ghosts who are alive. I hate that part in that movie where you finally see that they are dead. It seems more scary than it needs to. Maybe its okay to be a ghost for a little while. At least they have one another and that beautiful old house to haunt.

I live alone now for the first time in my life.
It has been a month.
I sometimes get nervous that I don't see any person for entire days at a time, and I get scared that nobody sees me either. I'm not really anxious about it, but I notice it. It's like a toothache before it gets serious. Just sort of... there.
Sort of dull.
Sometimes less sharp. Sometimes more.
I take pictures of myself.
Usually they are sort of humiliating, but I like them. I hope I delete them.
There are a few things that I am doing always now. I am taking the pictures, and I am reading again. I hang up all of my clothes and clean my floors, and my dishes are always clean, never left in the sink.
I make my bed every day.
It isn't for someone else.
And it feels good.

I prayed, so far, only once this calendar year.
I have always liked when people say "calendar year."
We are 17 days in. I might do it again. I might not. Someone told me recently that they miss God, and I think that maybe I do too. I try to remember that when I bake the bread every week. I try to make a place for God to come back to me in my heart.

I brush my teeth now better than I ever have in my recollection. My teeth always feel weird.
Maybe things will change.
Change is sometimes the only thing that I think will save us. It's the certain constant in the universe. Nothing else. Not death. Not taxes. That's stupid. Change is the master. Change is hope. Maybe that's what all of that religion has been trying so hard to tell me: become better, become bigger, become more, become stronger, become kinder, become more gentle, become more pliable, become more forgiving. Become, become, become. It's so scary, change, but its the thing that is hopeful. I was caught the other day thinking, "No matter what, someday, all of this will be different."
I just want to be able to allow it.

FOO'ZBALL

I just need to say this.

I really don't care about football.

Just really, no.

There. I did it.

I know I should. I went to two colleges and that are big football schools. It's like a major religion at both of them, and I have been to one game at each. I enjoyed myself, but it's really just whatever. I know that so many people who I love (maybe even you?) care SO much. It's cool. But I really really, sincerely just could not care less. I understand the game, I grew up watching it... I just don't care, and I am incredibly tired of feeling obligated to care.

I just don't.


#rantover

-schlafzeit-

I have gotten bad at sleep again.

It comes in waves.

Sometimes I arrange my pillows in my bed so that they are like another person under the blankets with me. 

I snuggle the crap out of them.

Sometimes I get scared that it will always be pillows and never a person (this is a confession).

Also, there is a cricket who lives a few millimeters away from my window, who likes to watch me sleep and really likes to whisper the sweetest nothings to me all night long. I hope she doesn't die when it gets too cold out there.