I am weary, let me rest

Sometimes, in some ways, I feel like damaged merchandise. 75% off. Everything must go!


All night I dreamed and woke up and dreamed and woke up because of my Feeds and Nutrition. I dreamed I was studying. It wasn't terrible or stressful, just funny and odd. Then I dreamed that there was a ward party, and Andrew was going to be there, with some old lady. I searched and searched, anxious, and then found her. Just as I was about to find out where he was, my roommate's alarm went off. It was six am. The half-awake me was furious, then was crying.

I almost found him.

I think that I am not going to get over this as easily as I thought I would. I wrote the letter because I felt prompted to. Twice. In religious meetings, the places that one would receive inspirations. Twice. I wasn't going to rationalize my way out of that twice.

Then, I realized that I wasn't doing what I needed to in order to forgive. I knew I needed to forgive. I realized that I needed to pray for him in order to forgive, and I had been refusing to pray for him because you love those whom you pray for, and I refusedrefusedrefused to love him again. I refused to love him or think kind things about him. But that isn't the point. I have to love him as a child of God. I need to have faith that this love will not hurt me or make me vulnerable.

So I prayed for him.

I think this is going to be a really long process. I realize more and more about what I am feeling though, with each and every day. Tyrell said that when two people have such a deep emotional connection that their looks don't matter. He said that he honestly believed there was no way Andrew was not attracted to me when we were so close. I felt the truth of that, and then felt the truth of this meaning that he had made a distinct choice to not have me.

What a silly boy. Triple sad face. This is really going to take a while. I feel somewhat sensitive ans susceptible to thoughts of him, angry, loathing, longing, disgust. They waft around in the air I breathe, almost literally.

It's a bit rough to feel so absolutely prime and appealing and lovely and intense and deep and sexy and worthy and clean and hard-working and loving. It's hard to feel these things and have to set them gently in the attic so I can focus on the less-loved school, roommates, twin-sized bed, baptisms, preparation/preparation/preparation.

But I can do it. I am doing it. I will do it. Because God knows I can, and He told me that I could even before I was born. And He told me that I could in my patriarchal blessing. And He promised me things that will come to me in my existence, if... when I do what I am supposed to do. I know I can.

Correspondence

ME:

Andrew J. Peterson,
I hand-wrote this letter and asked your apology for my terrible penmanship, poor spelling, and ugly envelope. Then, I made my cousin accompany me to knock on every men’s-housing door at La Jolla at ten o’clock this Saturday night. I suppose I didn’t need to do that. I never found you to deliver this.
I guess I just wanted to thank you. Thank you for being a great pal, and you really were. You were quite tolerant of many things.
Thank you for letting me be myself. I feel as though you and I were tethered by friendship, but I was the one who ran to its fullest length, and you let me have enough room to be myself, the silly, dramatic, sensitive, emotional, wonderful, complex me. I was never afraid of that around you. I don’t know many people with that ability. You have perfected it in your 23 years.
Thank you for teaching me things, though many if not most of the things I learned from you were taught involuntarily. Thank you for teaching me that I have an infinitely-large bundle of love to give. Thank you for showing me how easy it is to be me around many different people. thank you for the confidence you gave me. Thank you.
I’m sorry for those times I didn’t speak to you last semester. I don’t even remember why I did that. All I remember is the sorrow I caused and felt. I’m so sorry that I caused hurt and confusion at those times. I’m so glad that you stuck around after that, despite my lost and juvenile actions.
I’m sorry that I called on your birthday. Yuck, I am so sorry that happened on your day, the one day of the year that ought to be all about ANDREW!!
I hope the world for you. I hope you have 97 more birthdays that are so full of love, encouragement, and pizzazz that you forget birthday 23. I hope everything goes well for you. And, when I say everything, I mean everything. I hope you find Chinese easier to learn. I wish you your twelve Norwegian children. I hope much uplifting words and cheers for you from your fellow game-of-life-ers.
I hope your semester goes well. I hope your roommates are brilliantly terrific. I hope your classes are fun and satisfying. I hope frustration is an infrequent visitor.
You show Luci who’s boss.
I love you. I’m glad we knew each other. Do well. Do well. Thanks for being there. I really wish much for you, old friend.
With all the sincerity that the universe can shove into something,
Victoria Barros
Goodbye.
Ps. You have every reason to be confident. You don’t have to fake it anymore.



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HE:

Sorry that you looked everywhere for me! I actually moved into La Jolla lived there for two days and it didn't feel right so after some long think I moved back to Cottonwood, same apt as last semester.

THANK YOU!! I honestly have been thinking what I would say to you if I saw you on campus if I would say/do something mean, say nothing at all, or just have a really awkward encounter...Now I'm not worried about it at all.

So there are a couple things I wanted to tell you: After our last conversation, I was kind of upset...so I decided to talk to my Momzi about the whole situation...I love her...funnily enough though after telling her the story she took your side haha I guess it takes a Woman to understand a woman. I was slightly taken aback by said position and wanted an explanation. So in her motherly wisdom she explained the whole thing to me so that I could understand...I'm SORRY that I was so insensitive to your feelings and that I sucked at trying to understand, I guess I am maybe a little stubborn.

Thank you for the things that you have taught me...some of them I just realized recently actually, for example: I love how confidant you are in your divine worth and potential I look up to you for how no matter what people say or think your still YOU pure unadulterated Tori..and lets be honest you're a rockstar!! Just the other day I realized "That is how God wants us to be, how he created us. And there is no reason to be ashamed of any part of us even our imperfections because they allow us to rely on the Lord" It gave me an explosion of confidence in myself as a Child of God with incredible limitless potential. THANK YOU, because you taught me that! along with many other things you were an example to me

You helped me through one of the hardest times I have had thus far in my adult life, and I know that God put us in each others paths to help one another thank you for being in my path. You really will never know the ways in which you helped me. I decided the other day if people were like fruits I would be like a peach...soft and vulnerable, open and trusting to everyone, but in the middle I have a hard pit that I keep guarded and it takes a lot to get it open...I always felt safe sharing thing with you totally and completely and you helped me to see that I could just be ME!!

Thank you for teaching me I really know nothing about women...guess I am going to have read a little more Jane Austen!

I hope that you can forget the "tough" times we've had and remember the good, I am glad that our goodbye is this instead of what it was. Now when I see you I will greet you as a friend who taught me much and changed my life. You are an incredible, trustworthy, loving, intelligent, fun and beautiful person and you help others recognize their worth.
Thank you for being YOU!
Andrew
p.s. I am not going to china anymore, I got internship in London!! I start in January! You never know what the Lord has in store

Lesson Learn(ed/ing)

I have this favorite dream. There are only two characters in this dream: me, and a person of the male persuasion. All that happens in this dream is a whole lot of eye contact, and forward body language. That's it. Once the dream extended to conversation, and then embarrassed blushing due to the seeming reality of the dream, but that is all. My favorite dreams, the wishes my heart makes, are when a boy looks at me, and wants me to look at him.

Last night, my roommate invited a guy from her mission over to play cards. He and his roommate came over. And, oh goodness, the roommates and I played cards with these boys. Soon, we were all laughing (hard) and snatching cards from people, or, ripping spoons out of other people's hands.

Josiah and Keith. Those were their names. Josiah is the old mission buddy, and Keith the roommate. Well, there seemed to be a lot of eye contact amongst the laughing and card-playing. This boy, Josiah, was really easy to look at, meaning I wasn't afraid to. Maybe he wasn't afraid to either, because he would be looking at me while I reciprocated. These weren't glances, either... Oh, I'm getting embarrassed.

But, I need to tell you, so I don't have to talk about it on the phone with you. I was on a really good funny roll. I was funny last night. Josiah laughs kinda quietly. It got to the point that I knew when he was laughing hard because his eyes would close, and he would lean forward, and you couldn't hear him anymore. And, when he left, he leaned around the door to look at me and say goodbye.

There are a couple of cautions to this tale: I am totally on my period. I am sensitive, moody, sad, anxious, man-hungry, impatient, and without hope. Also, when the boys left, another roommate started telling us about her night, and at a pause, I said/exclaimed, "Josiah is so great."

Shouldn'a done this. Kelli later turned to Dawn, my RM roommate, and said, Josiah was cute. Do you think so Dawn?" Dawn said that yes, she did think he was attractive. I felt myself swallow something. Something that had not been in my mouth. I turned to Dawn, smiled, and said, "you should go for that." And then proceeded to convince her that I fall for three guys a week, it didn't matter that I thought he was a little cute.

But I feel a little sick. Maybe he was looking at me with such ease because he wanted to look at Dawn, but couldn't. Maybe I was just the funny one. Maybe something else. How am I ever going to know? I apologized for flirting so much, and Dawn told me to not worry about it. She is so kind, and good, and nice.

I never knew that I would have to learn this lesson through personal experience: The lesson of falling for the guy that your roommate has prior claim to. I thought I could observe this and get on with life. What now?

Here's what really kills me about dreams. I wake up from the sweetest thing I have ever known, and then am haunted all day by the life I lived in my dreams. The I forget the boy's face, and the feeling fades. But, this really happened. I really spent three hours with this person, staring, glancing, laughing, competing. What now?

Disappointment. Breaking. Resentful. Sad.

Rainy Day

I spent way too much time on my hair this morning. Any time at all spent on my hair would have been a waste, because every time I was outside, the sky poured rain on me.



Figure one: me with frizzy, rainy-ruined hair.

My roommates and I plan on each making dinner for the other roommates one night a week. Aly made vegetarian shepherd's pie. It was pretty good.


I then went for a walk, for the clouds had spread out from dense rain cover to sparce sunset-catchers.



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Today is the birthday of my roommate's friend. Damon. This kid is a total jerk. He brought another girl and flirted with her the whole time, instead of with my roommate, who had made chocolate cupcakes (from scratch) for him, and invited him for a rousing game of Spoons. He found more pleasure in lying to us than telling the truth. He proved himself to be the most completely cocky distasteful attention-whore I have ever encountered. He would silence the room to make us listen to the scathing(pretentious, self-inflating, demeaning) letters he had written to his *always incorrect* teachers. What a hog. But, there was great victory in the night. I got a wonderfully hilarious video of this kid trying to kick the ceiling. Oh my gosh!!!!!! So hilarious. I just watched it three time in a row, and each time started choking because it is so funny.

Artistic Liberalism

I just wrote on the discussion board for my online class. I wrote about myself. Sometimes, summarizing yourself is a very difficult thing to do. What do you say? I'm the girl who used to have a crush on a boy... I'm the girl who doesn't like cowboys, but wants to work with them... I'm the girl who spends days feeling beautiful, but then worries about being ugly, and fat, and never-going-to-be-good-enough. I'm the girl who talks to God like He is right there, listening, and wonders if she is too causal in the things she tells Him... I'm the girl who KNOWS marriage is going to be difficult and taxing, a trial every day, refinement always being asked for, but wants it more than most anything else...

What I did write was that I am a bit complicated, and absolute truth. I wrote that I believe that I balance the country conservatism, simplicity, and tradition with artistic liberalism, free flow, and spontaneous self-discovery. I am that person. I am both things. I am what I want to be. I want to be artistic and liberal, tasting, trying, hearing new things, while being the conservative farmer who really only cares about family, the animals, and relations with Heavenly Father.

I took this photo up in the mountains. This flower is growing in the middle of a granite slab. There was no soil to be seen, only the lightest dusting of sand. If God showed this flower how to grow out of granite, then He will show me how to grow in this marble-hard world. I will form cracks where there was no give before. I will move mountains, because I am one. I have the world at my fingertips. Good thing all I want to do is live, learn, and love.

Back in Black

So I'm back in Rexburg.

My heart hurts. A little bit much.

Prayer= the only escape and complete comprehension. But really, I am in serious pain. I don't regret telling Andrew to leave me alone, that he was being selfish, that he needed to let me grow up so he could grow up, and that he was bringing me down. But I miss him, especially those times that I can't remember his faults. Especially those times that I remember how well he knew me, and admired me for what I was. In thinking about it, there was, among other things, one part of me that he did not want to understand. He did not understand that I want to progress. He doesn't see how much I want to love and give everything to a man. He doesn't see how much I am worth.

There are serious literal cramps between my lungs. I miss the anger, and pity that I had towards him. I miss the beginning of forgiveness. I miss that. I miss him. I miss myself, the one that I knew before he was so important to me.

Prayer. That's all I possess that will lead me to any happiness.



Victoria