Day 4 - Stake Conference and Fake Smiling

I went through my internet history, which is sickeningly full of facebook pages, and found the 30 day challenge I went with. So here is the next one!

Day 4: A picture of where you went today

Salt Lake Institute of Religion

Church! Stake conference, in fact. This week, the Church has reorganized the Salt Lake area's Young Single Adult stakes. Today, we all went to church to hear what new ward we are in. Turns out that I am going to be in the Bonneview YSA Ward, of the Bonneville YSA stake. The student wards and stakes were eliminated in an effort to simplify the Young Single Adult options for church attendance. The whole thing is pretty nifty. And the stake presidency is the same as the old University 6th stake. Which is amazing. I love President Rees.

Anyway, my jury is in the morning. It's finals week, and my eating habits are already taking a beating. Oh well. I could have some very exciting news tomorrow, so be on the look out for that! :)

As a footnote, it is exhausting when your hopes and dreams don't turn out the way you want them to. Sure, my summer plans could be an example of that. But when you have feelings for someone, and all you can do is have all the hope and faith in the world that it's meant to be...it's hard when you realize that you were as crazy as you thought you were. That even after all of the justification (i.e. I must feel this way for a reason. Yeah, it's a crazy long shot, but there's still a chance...) yet still, after comforting yourself to sleep on those sleepless nights, you were crazy. It was, and still is, a long shot. That's hard. 

It's hard to walk away from what has been your motivation to keep going. When nothing else made all the bad things worth it. I'm coming to terms, I guess. Call it growing up. Call it getting real with yourself. Call it whatever you want. No matter the label, it still hurts. And that hurt is exhausting. Because you have a decision to make. Give up now and save yourself more heartache in the end, or keep fighting for what you've hoped and prayed would be your best friend and your everything. Fighting that losing battle takes a lot of energy that I don't think I have. You have to mask the pain and rejection, in the hopes that one day they'll notice you. I think it's time I threw in the towel.

Besides, I'm a terrible fake smiler. 

While boys are gallivanting on missions...

I have 12% battery life. Let's do this.

So being an LDS young woman in a prominently LDS area/school is interesting. I came to college just like any other doe-eyed 18 year old, with dreams of pizza, dating, and extra long twin beds. After a successful year of independence and way too much stress, the summer returns and we all parted ways until the next semester.

At least the female portion of my age group did.

The males, however, had persevered through the tedious process of submitting their mission papers, and receiving their personalized mission calls to faraway (and some not so faraway) lands. During the summer, they each departed for their 2 year adventures one by one. Upon my return, they were (of course) all gone. As I tried to resume my normal college life, it was hard to forget those people with whom I spent every day. To liven up the ordeal, a fresh shipment of newly returned missionaries returned to school to reacquaint themselves with the pizza, dating, and extra long twin beds that they had left behind before I even showed up to campus.

Thus we have the LDS cycle. But what about the girls? We watch them all come and go. We reflect on all those adolescent/teenage young women's lessons about supporting the priesthood, and supporting our peers to serve missions. What are we doing? While I'm stuck (abandoned, really) in school, stressing about ridiculous classes and some ambiguous future that will never happen exactly how I'll ever plan it, they're off on missions in Brazil, New Zealand, France, Costa Rica, and South Korea. A mission is no walk in the park, but come on. I don't think I realized that the 18-19 years are the last years that I'll ever really be on the same level with the opposite gender. By the time they get home, we're such completely different people, and so many have come and gone, that there's a fairly slim chance that we'll return to normality as we knew it.

And what about when you have your heart set on one? In two years, all of my day to day struggles will be laughable. Most of the time, all I want to do is talk to an anonymous person about my dismal lifestyle because I know that he's pretty much the only person that is so removed from the music department and everyone with whom I associate that all he'll be able to do is listen. And that's what I need. Too bad he's in an anonymous place.

But what's worse is that I'm here in Salt Lake City, betting my future on a boy that I've met one time, and who isn't in the frame of mind to understand my intentions. Let alone the fact that I can't just unload my issues on him. So many girls have this conflict. Until some newly returned young man dashes in and sweeps them off their feet.

Listen, young men. There will be no sweeping. I'm committed to living my life from random letter to random letter for the next 19 months.

Lost: Soul mate. Reward: A collection of silly bands?

Fasten your seatbelts. You have a first class ticket to a glimpse of what my life has come to.

This evening, around 5 pm, as I was having an enthralling phone conversation with Alyse, I made my usual journey to the shuttle stop in front of the music building. On the bench, sat one young man whom I had never before seen - let's call him Chandler. Equipped with a grey backpack (a sign of intellect), and sporting a brown hoodie, black track pants, and white athletic sneakers, he glanced in my direction as I approached the stop and sat down on his side of the bench. I would be lying if I said I didn't consciously notice him between every "yeah" and "really?" of my phone call. The shuttle soon came, but not before Alyse and I talked about going to the temple sometime this week, debating which one to choose, and what time they each closed. I couldn't help but notice Chandler's sideways glances when I started to use the Mormon lingo. Yes, he was definitely Mormon as well. (Check mark #1) As Alyse and I hung up, the shuttle pulled up to the curb.

We climbed the shuttle steps, (In the brief "after you" moment before getting on, I desperately searched for a visual on the coveted left ring finger. The mission was a failure. Potential check mark #2) and I headed to the back where there were several open seats. After sitting down, I looked back towards the front. Unfortunately Chandler hadn't followed me, and chose the one open seat I had passed. Between text messages to Blythe, I continued to glance in Chandler's direction - mostly trying to make the final judgement call. Was he cute or not? In what seemed like the same moment that I decided he was, our eyes met. Thus began the awkward eye contact (Check mark #3) across the shuttle.

Approaching the institute, I shot a text message to Blythe: "There's a cute boy on the shuttle. We keep looking at each other. If he gets off at the institute, I'm getting off."

He didn't get off.

At the stop right before the Heritage Center, a large group of people got off. I had my fingers crossed that he would stay...and he did. But then I notice him grab an item from the floor, leaving his backpack behind, and bolts off the shuttle. I quickly look out the window from my terrible angle, and I get a visual of him handing a girl this item that she has apparently left behind. (Check mark #4) Chandler gets back on the shuttle, makes eye contact with me again, and the bus driver takes us on to the Heritage Center.

It's time to exit the bus, and at first I thought Chandler had crossed in front of the bus in direction to Officer's Circle (where I reside). He had gone out the front door, and I the back. Once I got my bearings, I saw him walking towards the HC, and opted to go follow him there for any potential interactions or introductions - rather than go home as planned. I needed to check my mail anyway. To make a long story short, we lost contact as he went upstairs to grab a meal. I wasn't hungry and figured I'd pursued it far enough, so I just checked my mail (Good thing! I got my order of silly bands!!) and headed home.

Which brings me to this: If you run into a clean cut, intelligent-looking, tall and slender Mormon between the shuttle stop in front of Kingsbury Hall and the dorms....I'm offering a reward. One of every kind of silly band that I own. If you know me, you know that's awesome.

I suppose that if this was BYU, our eye contact alone would have been a marriage proposal. Alas, this is what my life has come to. I'm blogging about a boy that makes ambiguous eye contact with me on a moving bus. Obviously, I'm stable.