So, some brief back story before I jump into the lessons and whatnot.
I began this year, 2014, as a young man recently returned from an LDS mission beginning his freshman year of college at an institution that is 90% LDS. Living the dream. Perfect situation, you'd say if you're LDS. Well, it was for me at first, but eventually the discontent settled in.
More on that later.
I began my semester in January looking for one thing: to move forward with my life the way I knew I was supposed to. "supposed to". And I was going to get going on that as soon as I could. I tried hard to fit right into my church congregation, to do good in my classes and figure out right away what I wanted to study in school. I was on track and I was kicking trash.
Then I met a girl.
It's always a girl.
Emily, her name was Emily.
One of my goals was also to get married, sooner rather than later. So you best believe I got right on it. I dated her hardcore, I was the best gentleman you could find, I said yes to all of her ideas, I brought her gifts and wrote her songs and woo'ed her to the best of my abilities. Within 2 months we were talking about marriage. Within 3 months we were engaged. I threw a lot of time, effort, and money into this relationship and into this girl, and I was certain I had her hook, line, and sinker. Still, I couldn't shake this uncertainty in my gut that maybe it wasn't going to pan out, maybe it all was a little too quick to be real. I didn't pay it any mind, though, because it fit so perfectly into my plans for my life.
To be truthful, I do believe that I loved her. I did. She was beautiful. She taught me how to dance, she taught me that girls can have integrity and you don't have to worry about all of them (there's a back story about a girl I dated for 3 years in high school who, once I broke up with her, became someone else COMPLETELY and basically scarred me for a while). She taught me to put school work first and be disciplined too. She was a well rounded girl, talented, quiet, and cute as a kitten.
Well, kittens grow up and semesters end, and we found ourselves going our separate ways for summer/fall break. I ended up in Arizona working at an Inn by the Grand Canyon, and she went home to California. I spent a week with her and her family at the beach before going to work, and it was there that I felt the biggest resistance. We both felt that it wasn't right, we just weren't meshing, but we were engaged and had committed to this, so you can't call that off, right?
We stuck it out for a long time, but I'm sure you can tell by the tone of this blog that it didn't pan out. Eventually, about a month before the wedding, Emily called me up and basically said she couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't keep saying she had feelings she didn't. She couldn't keep fighting with me, couldn't keep pretending we were a great match when we weren't. It hurt like hell, but I had to grudgingly agree that she was right. So that was it.
I haven't really heard from her since. Sure, we talked here and there to work out kinks in the cancelling of plans, flights, etc. Once that was all straight, though, I haven't heard a peep coming from her side of the world. I think if I dropped off the face of the earth, she probably wouldn't notice or care much.
I don't say this to be bitter (though, admittedly, I was for a while). I just want to make one thing abundantly clear: we rushed this all way too much. We both knew that marriage was the next thing on our agendas, and we conveniently fit that requirement for each other. We had similar interests, we got along fine, and we rushed right into getting engaged before we even had stopped to examine our real feelings or whether or not we were even compatible. By the time we noticed problems, we had gotten too far into it to back out easily. We weren't even that great of friends, as evidenced by how easy it was to completely stop being a part of her life. Within a month she was, as far as I can tell, back to normal. I had made my mark, barely, and it was erased like so many second-guessed answers on a bubble sheet in the testing center.
My struggle was different. I rushed into this and put all my eggs in that one basket. I planned my life around that girl. Since then, I've been defining and re-defining and, frankly, guessing at who I think I am and what I think I want with my life. It's been a long and rough few months since all this went down, and I still don't have answers. But I'm managing to move on, one day and one step at a time. For real, each day I try to take a step away from the past and a step towards what I want to do with my life.
So here's the lesson, the "tl;dr" for those who want it: please, please slow down with life. It's totally okay to not know where you're going, it's completely fine to not fit the image that your peers have set for you, it's completely normal to not know what you want out of life and to be looking. As long as you're moving and not sitting, that's what matters.
Please, keep moving forward.
Just don't catch yourself moving in fast-forward.
Hopefully that was something that you needed to hear today.
Cheers!
Cody
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