How I Grew to Love Everyone Unconditionally

One year ago today, my father passed away. It was one of the roughest days of my life. But ever since that day, I've lived my life how I know my dad wanted me to live it - happy. Through this, I realized how similar to my dad that I really am.

I got my personality, my sense of humor, my kindness to strangers, my thoughtfulness - everything good about me, I got from him. From seeing him doing anything he could to help someone, even if it stressed him out to no end. I know that when he helped someone and saw their face light up because of something he did, it was all worth it. Can you even think of a better role model to grow up with? 

People always tell me that I make them happy or they feel at peace or they can finally relax with me around. I don't think I really ever understood what people meant - I was just being me! But looking into myself, I realized that that is exactly how my dad made people feel, myself included. My dad gave me something that I didn't even know he had until after he passed away - the innate ability to just love people, no matter what. People will still come up to me and tell me about "this one time my dad noticed them when no one else did" or "that one time he did something without them even asking." He is and always will be my biggest inspiration. 

Dad, I hope you know that everything I ever do, I do because of you. You showed me how to be a decent human being, despite my being a brat for most of my life :) You were the most loving individual that most people had ever met in their lives and I count my blessings everyday that I got you as my dad. I love you! You will always be the most super dad ever.

Your self-worth isn't determined by your relationship status.

Recently, I've been meeting a lot of people who have the mindset that if they aren't dating someone, then they aren't happy and they look down on who they are. I was reading an article the other day that said, "If you are single and feel like you need a significant other to be happy, I am going to be blunt, YOU ARE WRONG. You can't be in a healthy relationship until you are happy independently. Using somebody else as a crutch for your happiness is a one way trip to an unhealthy relationship." This is exactly my thoughts on relationships that I would want to have in my life.

Growing up, I would get down that I didn't date a lot in high school because when you're young and stupid like I very much was, my self-worth was 100% about if someone was interested in me and if there wasn't, I would just be mad about my life and basically just be a drama queen. I just kept thinking, "When I get to college, it won't be long until I get married and THEN I'll be happy." I kept holding out hope that I would be married quickly and that's how I would finally be happy. Oh, how wrong I was indeed.

I've talked about this in past blog posts, but I was not even prepared for what would happen in college. I came here and felt very similar to how I had felt in high school. There weren't boys fighting over me or just randomly coming up to talk to me or walking me to class (yes, those were literally day dreams I had about college and they are very embarrassing to think about in retrospect). And like in high school, I thought that this meant I wasn't pretty or fun or worth it. How sad is that? Just because a random boy didn't ask me out and immediately fall in love with me, I was sad.

After about a year of this way of thinking, I finally realized that I didn't care. Who cares if I'm not dating somebody? I'm freaking AWESOME. I'm loyal, caring, generous, loving, and friendly. I could still be those things without a boyfriend. I found an amazing quote that really said how I feel about all this!
"It's all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate of a self love deficit." - Eartha Kitt

I love this so much. I always believed that love should be two independent people falling in love instead of being dependent on the other.

Find out who YOU are alone than who you are with someone. Develop your own skills and hobbies and find what you love about who you are. When the time is right, someone will come into your life and will recognize in you what you love about yourself. I personally cannot wait for the time to come.

<3

Birthday voicemails from my dad.

Crazy how times flies, right? I've been busy having fun here at college, not thinking about things too deeply for fear that I would fall face first into the grieving process - I don't truly think I would be strong enough to get back out if I did. I saw how all of my family was right after my dad died in October but I decided subconsciously to be the strong one. I think I knew that eventually, it'd be impossible for it not to come out, but I've been trying to preoccupy myself with other things so as not to think of it. I got through Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year without completely falling apart so I thought I could escape grief's seemingly inevitable grasp. But there was one thing that I never thought about - my birthday.

I turn 21 in a week. Super exciting, am I right? Now I've never been one for birthdays because I always seemed to build up how it would be in my naive head and then when it didn't reach my impossible standards, I was disappointed with the outcome. In spite of all of that, the one thing I could count on was a phone call from my parents singing me "Happy Birthday" and the promise that we would go to Red Robin when I came home from college.

As I was laying in bed tonight, sincerely attempting to fall asleep, I had a vague memory of a saved voicemail on my phone from my last birthday. Sure enough, I had saved the voicemail that was left on my phone a year ago, pretty late on the night before my birthday. My parents are both groggily singing "Happy Birthday" to me with my dad improvising "it's 1 in the morning and we're wishing you a happy birthday" at the end. Hearing his voice end the call with "I love you, byeeeee!" totally did it to the wall I had put up to defend myself from grief and I just started crying (and here I am, writing this sad blog post at 4 AM).

Before all of this, I had just finished rereading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I read TFIOS once right after I bought it last summer. I loved it and it was sad, but I didn't fully understand a lot of it until I reread it today. One of my favorite lines in the book is,
"Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you."

I absolutely love this quote. Grief isn't a bad thing. I believe that grief is our soul mourning the loss of another soul that touched our lives so deeply. A good friend told me right after my dad's passing, "right now you feel numb. After a couple of months, that will go away and it is then that it will hit you full on." I didn't understand what exactly she meant until today. (Apparently, today was a great to for self-realization)

I could definitely look at his death in a negative light because my father will never get to see me do a lot of things. He'll never get to see me turn 21, 30, 42, etc; he'll never get to see me graduate college, get a job, get married, have kids, follow my dreams, and so much more.

I prefer (and I know that he'd expect nothing less) to look on the positive side. He did get to see my birth, see me grow up from a crazy kid to a moody teenager to a somewhat better young woman; he got to see me graduate high school and attend college, and he's the one who helped me discover my passion in life.

Despite my overall positive way of thinking, it's easy to get caught up in grief on days like my birthday. "Pain demands to be felt" (another awesome TFIOS quote). Some days will be easier than others. I've been pretty good at making sure I don't have any bad days ever since October. It's exhausting pretending you're always totally okay though. Sometimes, pain truly does demand to be felt and it's impossible to not feel it at some point.

While my dad won't be calling me this year (or any other year) to goofily sing me "Happy Birthday," I know that I have such an awesome family that will do it instead. It'll never get easier, just more bearable to move past it and continue living.

Thanks for the call last year, Dad. I'm lucky that I will still get to hear you sing to me every year with your award-winning witty twist to the birthday song forever on my voicemail.

I love you.



***If you haven't read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, I cannot recommend it enough.***

The "Mormon Girl" Syndrome

Speaking as an unmarried, almost 21 year old LDS (also known as Mormon for all you possible non-member readers) girl, there's nothing wrong with me.

Growing up in the church is great. The youth program is amazing, seminary teaches you tons, and the people are just all around some of the best I have ever met. But the one thing that I remember taking away from Young Women's is GET MARRIED and HAVE A FAMILY and BE A GOOD SPOUSE. Now I want all of these things so much, don't get me wrong. But I was in the wrong mindset for a good couple years because I didn't fully realize everything that would happen after I graduated high school.

From the time I entered the Young Women's program at age 12 until about 19 years old, I thought this: I would graduate from high school, go to a BYU school, meet my future husband within my first year, get married, and start having kids. That has become somewhat of a stereotype among the LDS population because yes, it does happen! Quite often in fact. So I was excited to head off to BYU-Idaho and meet my future husband as soon as possible! A lot of the members in my ward joked and would say, "You better not be engaged when you come back!" I would chuckle and agree not to be, secretly hoping that I would. I wanted to be that stereotype because that's what I believed had to happen. That's what I had been expecting the whole time I was in the Young Women's program. I didn't date during high school because there weren't very many LDS options for me. I expected to be "reimbursed" so to speak those years I didn't date and find my husband quickly at college.

After the first year, nothing. I didn't even get asked on a date! After a while, I knew that most of that was my own fault. I didn't get as involved as I could have and I lived in an apartment far away from the social scene on campus. I had thought I would barely have to try and my future husband would just fall into my lap. Obviously, that didn't happen. So I went back for my second year. I dated a little and I met more guys and made more friends, but still not even close to getting married. It was at this point that I thought there was something wrong with me. I kept thinking "I'll never get married" and  "boys don't like me" and "everyone I know is getting married but me" and then not even try. I thought this for almost an entire year of my life and I thought there was something wrong with me, something that other girls I knew wouldn't understand because they weren't me.

I'm not entirely sure what changed, but I realized that I didn't even want to be married right now deep down. I was 19, almost 20, and I wanted to get married?! I was still a kid! I barely knew who I was. Not saying that I had to know who I was, but I thought I should at least more than I did then. I was still having the time of my life: being (somewhat) on my own, being in college, making new friends. I knew that I still had friends to meet that I wouldn't meet if I had been married at that point. I wanted to make a name for myself, follow my passion, and do it on my own for a little bit.

Thinking back to myself fresh out of high school sends chills down my spine. I cannot imagine who I was then to be married now. She was still naive in a lot of ways and I had to do a lot of growing up in the last two years. While yes, I would love to be married, I understand that that is not where I need to be in my life at the moment. It will come when it comes. If it doesn't, I'll deal with it.

Now to the girls in my situation or a situation similar I say this: there is absolutely nothing wrong with you if you're still young and unmarried.  It doesn't matter if you're 18 or 24 or 35, your timetable isn't the same as everyone else's. Be happy for those who do find that person, no matter how old they are. Just look forward to the day that it is you getting married because on that day, it won't matter how old you are. It will only matter that you are truly happy.