Pretty Hurts

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Hurts_(song)

 

Conform. Sit still and look pretty. You must be pretty if you want to be loved. If you're not pretty, you can't even love yourself.

 

Well, you know what? Pretty hurts. I'm not talking about being beautiful. I'm talking about being forced into a box of how to feel and be. Of resenting people who are free, because of course we would all like to be like that, but you can't be free if you're trying to be pretty all the time.

Women (and men) are literally broken down into checklists and numbers. 5.0 or 9.5. Graded on our worthiness based on being pretty. Yes, a lot of it is looks. Industrialized looks. But a lot of it is deeper. What if thin lips could be beautiful? What if uneven skin could be beautiful? "No!" they say. It's all science. We aren't intelligent beings, we're animals. We can't help what we like. If you don't conform to what homo sapiens like, you will be unacceptable, unlovable and alone.

 

It comes almost true.

 

You fall for someone. You think they're great. But do you know what they think of you? They think your hair is the wrong color. So it doesn't work out.

 

It's heartbreaking.
You don't know yet that it will go deeper.

 

You fall for someone. You think they're great. This time, your hair is the right color. But do you know what they think of you? They think you're not entertaining enough. So it doesn't work out.

 

You start googling what you're doing wrong. There are plenty of people happy to tell you.

 

You fall for someone. You think they're great. This time, your hair is right. You work hard to be fun and spontaneous for them. You know they like this. But you didn't know that they like you to tell them that they are always right. So it doesn't work out.

 

You stop falling for people.

 

You start falling for the lies.

 

You study and shape yourself. You say it's self-improvement. It works.

 

But it makes you cry that it works.

 

You hear a song from years back every once in a while, or run into an old friend. It makes you nostalgic for yourself, before you knew what people liked.

 

It's hard to reconcile the likeable person you can be if you try and the unlikeable person you can be if you don't. We should try. We should be kind. We should have courage. We should be pretty.

 

You meet someone, but you don't fall.

 

You study. You feel something, so you calculate. You think.

 

You don't say too much or too little. You look good but hide the appearance of maintenance. You laugh but hide the frowns. You're pretty.

 

It works.

 

You keep them at arms distance but get terrified when they move farther away than your arm can reach. You are cool and unreachable, then you're desperate and irrational. You don't know why.

 

They stick around though. After a while, your arm gets tired of holding them at a distance. They're pretty cute, too, you want to be a little closer.

 

But what if they see? What if they start seeing the frowns? Or the pores? Or the moodiness? What if they see, Heaven Forbid, the dance moves???

 

Then one day it happens. They see something. Maybe it's a frown, or a rude remark. Maybe it's eyelashes with no mascara or a stretch mark. You freak out. Because you know what that will mean. That it won't work out.

 

Your knowledge comes from experience. It's not book knowledge, it's wisdom. It's truth. It's reality. We can't control what we like.

 

But then they don't go. It's confusing.
It's scary.
Because you know they will just see more. Then they will go, and you don't want them to. You never wanted them to.

 

They'll start saying things. Like that they don't care that you're not pretty. You never realized that that was what you wanted to hear all along.

 

Not that, "You are pretty."

That they don't care that you're not.

 

They think you're beautiful. They think your smiles and your frowns are beautiful. They think you're beautiful when you've shaved and when you are paying homage to your cold climate ancestors. They think your cuteness and your independence are beautiful.

 

You'll remember how it felt before you judged yourself. Before you decided only certain qualities could stay. Before something like the color of your hair could make you cry. You'll remember fearlessness. You'll remember confidence. You'll remember yourself like an old friend. You'll remember strength, not prettiness.

 

You'll still cry sometimes. You'll still get scared and crawl into your "pretty" box for protection. It's hard to believe, but you will see it with your own eyes. Your knowledge will come from experience. It won't be book knowledge, it will be wisdom. It will be truth. It will be reality. We can choose what we love.

 

Pretty girls make me cry. Because pretty hurts. Deeply. It doesn't hurt to put on mascara. But "pretty" girls put on mascara to cover up the pain of when someone said their eyelashes were short and it didn't work out. It doesn't hurt to exercise. But "pretty" girls run to run away from the pain of when someone said they were too fat and it didn't work out. Plastic surgery hurts. But not as much as the pain of someone not loving you because you're not "pretty."

 

Pretty is a mask that hides deep wounds of not being loved. But if we can be brave enough to put down the mask, someday we will discover that we're worth more than pretty. We're actually beautiful.

 

<3<3<3 

Goodbye for Now, Grandma

Grandma in her stylin' shades and rose carved coral necklace.

I went to our ward talent show tonight.  I performed a bluegrass number with a bunch of friends.  I came home and had pizza with my roommies.  They went to the hot tub, and now I'm alone in my apartment.

Today was a Friday.  It was a lot like many other Fridays I've lived.  Except today my grandma died.  

I'm not even sure what I'm feeling.  Listening to Bon Iver is good for times like that, when you want to listen to silence.  

My grandma, or Gaga as we used to call her when we were little (yes, before Lady Gaga made it cool;) played a large role in my life, probably larger than most Grandmas.  I said goodbye to her just a few days ago for the last time in this life.

She was almost 70 when I was born.  She came to Tennessee to see me.  She would tell me about when I was born.  The nurse didn't know she was my grandma, and she wouldn't let her see me!  But she was my grandma alright, no one could doubt that in years to come.

We moved to Salt Lake to live with her when I was about 4.  I remember being a little shy of her and asking my mom why we were coming here and she told me that Grandma was lonely.  I remember walking down the hall of our little house and looking at the paintings on display like a museum, painted by her sister. I remember seeing the gold thread in the curtains and wondering how it was made into thread.  

She explained it to me.  She explained a lot of things to me.  Grandma and I were thick as thieves.  We had our own little world that nobody else really got.  Most of that world happened in the early morning.  She would wake me up early to garden.  She was a wonderful gardener.  She could cultivate and prune anything.  I took it for granted that everyone's gardens were just as beautiful and successful.:)  

She taught me how to put my thumb over the hose to get a good spray.  Sometimes she would make "rainbows" for me to run under when the sun came up over the mountains.  She taught me how to fertilize, keep away aphids, and prune roses.  I don't have any pictures of those mornings.  It wasn't for anyone.  It was just for us.

She was the president of the Salt Lake Garden Club.  She had awards for beautiful and innovative arrangements she created.  There's a tree in a park downtown that has a plaque with her name on it.  When my Dad was little, he tied a knot in one of the saplings there, thinking someone would undo his prank.  Instead, you can still see that tree, now much bigger than him, with a beautiful, twisted knot right in the middle of the trunk:)

Grandma would tell me the names of the plants and flowers we saw when we went for walks.  She would explain nature and science to me.  She fed my curiosity for the way things work. She never got tired of answering and asking questions. When she was first out of school, she was a lab technician, in a time when women didn't work, let alone in the field of science.  I think she is the one who first introduced me to my love of science.  She had an encyclopedia collection (before Google:)  If I had a question about something and she didn't know, she'd have me pick out the right encyclopedia and bring it over to her bed and we'd look it up.  I loved those encyclopedias, probably a little outdated even then, with their black and white pictures and explanations of the world and the way things worked. 

She would play word games and "I Spy" with me and, at the time, two other sisters.  We'd lie in her bed.  It would smell like summer.  I would always pick something on the cuckoo clock to spy.  That clock was a little annoying, but I loved it.  She hung it crooked so it wouldn't tick and cuckoo, but if I asked, she'd straighten it up and play with the hands so it would cuckoo for the hour.  The little bird would come out and chirp.  A song would play and little dutch dancers would move around in a circle and the weights shaped like pine cones would move up and down.  

She was tender.  She would help me fill up every square of my waffle with syrup, because she knew I liked it.  She would just rest her hand on my shoulder when she stood behind me.  She would let me watch her put on her makeup and take out her curlers and let me try on her old-fashioned gloves and jewelry. 

Her two sons and their families at a reunion.  I'm in front.

About when I was in middle school, we started noticing some changes in Grandma.  By the time I hit high school, it was clear that she was having some mental health problems.  She was always healthy and very smart and loving, but she started getting very strange ideas and doing strange things.  It got stressful for our family.  She would get very paranoid and yell.  She quietly and slowly asked Leslie and I one time in the beginning, "I'm going crazy, aren't I?"  Eventually, she was diagnosed with psychosis and later dementia.  It was hard for me to understand how the grandma I loved so much was becoming my largest source of stress and worry. It got worse until about my senior year in high school she was no longer there.  She could talk, but she didn't know what she was saying.  She didn't remember who we were.  She grew helpless over the next few years and my family took more and more care of her.

Me and Gaga

And today she passed.  She got what she's been asking for for the last five years over and over, "I want to go home."  And now she is:)  She'll be watching over us, I know that for sure.  She'll be our guardian angel. 

I know I don't remember everything exactly the way it was.  I know I was little when I got to see the real her.  I can't wait until the time comes that I get to see her again.  What will we talk about?  I don't know.  Maybe I'll ask her if she can help me thread a needle or teach me a new knot.  Maybe we'll talk about photosynthesis, or turgor pressure.  We might talk about optical nerves, or I'll ask her to play the left hand of my piano music.  We might cook something.  Although, this time one of us will have a little more expertise;)  I loved my grandma to death.  She was a quiet woman, with an inner world that was fascinating, but not everyone got to see it.  Full of dawn and dew, pine sap and creativity.  Maybe I'm just a little like her.:) Maybe that's why I love her so much.  

Grandma with Uncle Sam

I love you grandma.  Until we meet again:)

What is Water???

I love this video.  It's so true.  I can't remember who, but someone said, "what screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it's supposed to be."


Life can be very boring and frustrating.  It's not supposed to be fun and exciting all the time. It's not supposed to be easy.  You give life meaning yourself.  You choose to make it fulfilling. It's all about how you think and process the world.  You do need to get away from the negative default setting.  Thinking positively is not something you're born with, it's something you learn.  Noticing those around you isn't a natural skill, it's acquired. 

One thing this video left out, is that there are things that add meaning, passion and purpose to life.  Family, friends, service, religion, hobbies. These things make the drudgery worthwhile:)  It gives you a reason to come home. And to go back to work.  And still be able to enjoy life.:)I'm going to try to be more conscious of my own thoughts and more aware of those around me.  I invite you to do the same.

Break Ups Take A Toll

Break ups suck. I do not care who you are or which end of the break up you were on.  I don't care how much more happiness you found post break up, or how liberated you felt after it was over.  They still suck.  You will still wake up in the middle of the night and remember you broke up.  You will have that feeling in your stomach even when you're not thinking about it.  Isn't it funny how the body remembers what the mind chooses to forget?

I was sitting on the grass a few nights ago with a bunch of my girlfriends.  One of them was telling us her drama, and I was looking around at all the girls realizing we had all gone through a rough patch in the dating world lately.  Were the stars just misaligned? I don't know.:)  Maybe you just notice it more when it's happening to you and your friends.  There's so much pain in the world.  But there's so much goodness, too.  I can't get on Facebook without hearing beautiful news that someone's engaged or having a baby or budding a new relationship.

I like to focus on the positive.  But I also am a believer in feeling what you need to feel and not bottling your emotions.  I commented to one of my friends the other day that breakups in general just suck.  He said, "not ALL breakups suck..."  He's been fortunate to stay friends with those he's broken up with.  I wonder if his girls would agree that breakups don't all suck?  Maybe my language was too strong, so I toned it down with, "Yes, but all breakups take a toll." He looked at me like he'd never considered it before.


They do.  It's not the end of the world, but they take a toll.  They are emotionally exhausting.  They take a lot of energy and thought and emotion.  There are a lot of repercussions.  Personal repercussions are obvious.  But you also have to deal with the rest of the world and reassure them while you're vulnerable.  If you were the one broken up with, you're obviously vulnerable.  If you were the one who broke it off, you're still vulnerable.  If it was a good relationship at all, you're questioning your decision and feeling pressure that you're setting your sights too high.  Dealing with people while you're in that vulnerable state is hard.

Your mutual friends are hard. It's awkward.  You don't know how much you should say and if you're a good person, you probably don't want to say too much and taint their opinion/relationship with your ex. You have to learn how to interact with your ex in a normal way when you hang out with mutual friends.

Your exclusive friends are hard. Dealing with awkward, ill-timed questions. Because you play it off as no big deal.  You're glad there's less to explain, but you also maybe wish they understood more.

Your family is hard.  My family falls in love with my boys faster than I do:)  After my family meets them it's hopeless.  Facebook has not helped this phenomenon.  It's hard to tell your family. They offer you comfort, but you know they are disappointed on your behalf, as well as there own.  After all, they want you to be happy.  And they want gradkids and nieces and nephews.

Your coworkers.  Also hard.  Because they likely don't know much.  But they find out if you start crying at work or your job performance is just lower than usual.  It's hard to hide your feelings from people you are around for eight hours a day.

Your married friends.  Very hard.  They're disappointed because they want you to be happy, and they want you to be able to socialize with them more.  Of course you can still be friends with married couples, but there are just a lot of activities single people do that are not really that interesting to married people, especially if they have kids.  It's especially annoying when married friends seem exasperated that you just can't get it right and figure it out and join them in the married world. Lol.  Like you really need that chastisement when your hurting.

Your singles ward.  Mmm hmm.  Awkward.  As one of my good friends likes to say, "If you pee in the pool then you have to swim in it." Breakups within a ward are Awk.Ward.

Facebook.  Just don't do it.  Seriously.  Your hundreds of acquaintances don't need to be privy to your dating status.  Wait until your ready to get engaged. Then delete the story if you break up. And the universe apologizes for the awkwardness that will ensue when people find out anyway.

It seems like the solution is just never saying anything to anyone. Keeping strictly mum about your dating life. But that can be the most painful of all.  Because having no one to explain things to also means you have no one to lean on, no one to talk to, and no one there to help you recover.  So what do you do?  Perhaps it's not existentialist to think that all breakups cause emotion; but it is existentialist to acknowledge that the pain and awkwardness are just temporary, they are not bad in and of themselves.  They are just a part of life to be dealt with like every other part of life:) With patience, hope and trust.

The Great Gatsby

Gatsby was awesome.  So awesome that I didn't really cry about it until I was at home. In my bed.  What can I say, I'm a cry baby.

I didn't really appreciate the way they colored the story.  They were pretty heavy handed in guiding the audience's opinion.  I think  what made the book such a classic is that Nick, the narrator, explains in the beginning that he reserves judgement.  In the movie, Nick gives his judgement at the very beginning.  Kind of hard to be open minded after that.  I felt like I was being spoon-fed. He was also super present in the movie.  The movie was about him and his experiences, rather than that of those around him. Still a wonderful movie, but I don't think it's classic status like the book. Best part: when Gatsby first introduces himself to Nick and he warmly raises his glass in the final moment of a symphonic fireworks show. The man's got style. Or, a "perfect, irresistible imagination!"

I also felt like Daisy wasn't hateful enough.  She seems like a total victim here, but in the book, she displays character flaws from the beginning.  Nick's comment that she and Tom are "careless" is kind of the main point, but Daisy doesn't show much carelessness except for when she kills Myrtle.  The whole film, she is endeared to the audience and her love with Gatsby is made noble.  In the book, she is a very attractive, charismatic, careless, almost heartless girl.  She is not endearing.  She does garner sympathy, but she allows herself to play the victim. Not endearing. Her love affair with Gatsby is not as important to her as it is made out to be in the movie.  Yes, he mattered to her, but she never would have chosen him over Tom, even if she had them both side by side.  It can never be the way Gatsby wishes.  Gatsby is not old, comfortable money.  No amount of cash, cars, and mansions can change that.  He will never measure up, he will never be enough. It's not based on personal merit, it's chance of birth. This is shown by the contrast of when Tom is/isn't there.  When he's not around, Daisy loves Jay and wants to be with him and thinks he's perfect.  When Tom's there, everything about Gatsby seems impossible, trashy, silly and small.

The Great Gastby disproves the American Dream.  It says that you can't really rise up to people who will never accept you.  No matter what you do, what you're born with does affect you. That's depressing.  Is it true? Maybe, maybe not.  But studying public health, I know that what you're born into does matter.  I think stories of rags to riches are so inspiring to us because we subconsciously understand how difficult it really is to overcome everything that "rags" entails. I wish people were more conscious of it.

In the book, Gatsby's relationship with his father breaks my heart.  It's so wistfully tender.  Gatsby doesn't bring his father into his new world.  He can't.  His father doesn't belong in the world into which Gatsby is so desperately trying to fit. But he loves his father.  His boyhood list includes that he wants to be better to his parents.  He gives his father money.  But he can't be in both worlds.  To acknowledge his past is to be excluded from the future he desires. I was really disappointed that they cut this aspect out of the movie. It's very telling of the purity of Gatsby's heart and I felt like the audience should have seen it.  And understood more why Gatsby is good.

The casting was phenomenal. Everyone nailed it. What a story. About human nature, privilege and responsibility. Pure, cuttingly raw, innocent, and passionate emotion, masked and confused by fun and excess.  Yes, it resonates with humanity today.

Anyway, those are my brief thoughts:)