My Best Friend

BE FOREWARNED: This post is a bummer. I have wanted to steer towards positive, funny, or inspiring topics, but this is what came to mind. It's true, I lived it, I hope you like it, but happy it's not.


She was the most beautiful girl that most people had ever seen, if I hadn't loved her so much I would have resented always feeling like the fat, unattractive, brown haired friend. The Teresa to her Barbie. She had long blond hair and was cool in ways I was never going to be cool. and she was my best friend.

I met her in eighth grade. She had moved to our small town in Washington from Fresno, I don't know personally but as an adult I have had a few friends tell me that Fresno is kind of a dump, but as a thirteen year old all I heard was California and began to mentally trace the letters in glitter - Fresno.

She was the only girl I knew who was as skinny as I was. Both of us were embarrassed to show our bird legs in swim suits and neither of us wore short skirts for the next three years. I actually don't remember Jessica ever wearing a short skirt. I got over it when I turned 16 and gained an extra twenty pounds, but I'm not sure she ever did.

We were also both existing on the fringes. Growing up in the Mormon tradition, I visited her as part of the beehive presidency. We walked into her room and saw a pack of cigarettes on her floor, I told her that I had smoked too and we were friends. I had a project. I didn't realize she had one too.

My family hated her, other parents in the ward forbade their kids from playing with her. I got my first taste of what I took to be complete hypocrisy. Weren't we christian? Why wasn't everyone being her friend? They didn't bother to know that she had had a pretty crappy time of it. So many people in this world like to forget that before you become the perpetrator of anything nefarious you have typically been the victim hundreds of times. There was kindness in her that seemed to have grown in an unlikely environment, and a pettiness in so many others around me who had no excuse. I turned my back to hollow concern and decided to live in a different world for a while.

We were joined at the hip, it was, in many ways, some of the most important times of my life and a complete disaster at once. I lost a year and a half and still pay consequences like that student loan that only charges the interest. I began to see at the lower points of the ride I was on that those forbidding parents might have just had the experience and sense to see something coming up the road and to get out of the way. But even at my most clear headed, I still would have killed for her.

My sister took a class in which they talked about the symbolism in dreams. She asked me to give her some dreams to interpret, so I told her about how I often dreamt that I was saving my friend from drowning, no one would help me, so I would dive into the sea and find her under the water and I would pull her up, but even as I was saving her I knew someone would have to stay . I knew I was drowning but before her head hit the surface or my eyes stopped seeing I would wake up.

One day I came up for air and I knew that if I swam in the deep end anymore I would drowned. So I left. I left her, my beautiful friend, there in the deep end.

Am I a racist? Short answer? No. Long answer? Probably.

I once had a friend in junior high whose most embarrassing moment was screaming He's got a gun! and dropping to the floor when a black guy reached for his wallet at a restaurant. That was the moment I knew that wetting your pants is NOT the most humiliating thing you can do and went home content.

I think I have tried to live my life in such a way as to avoid that kind of scenario at all costs. No one wants to be a jerk. And if you were born not in the South and/or after the civil rights movement than you really don't want to be a racist jerk.

I've actually felt a little called out though recently, and I'm beginning to realize that I can do a lot better than I have been.

My sister in law turned me on to this sight that deals primarily with race relations, and at first I've got to say I felt a little ugg, can we let it die already? Can we all just try to get along and live our lives?

Then I made a comment about white girl butt, to which I got the response there are a lot of black girls that don't have butts and you know what? that's true, I know a couple. Whitney Houston is an excellent example. I read a post talking about black history month that essentially gave a short quiz on black history, you know how much I knew about black history? Eli Whitney and Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman and Malcom X, that's about the extent of my knowledge, and I began to think that these people who harp about latent racism might be on to something, because I can plead ignorance, but the truth is I have often chosen not to know.


Don't get me wrong, I think black people are as cool as the next white person does. I really enjoy the music, the seemingly more embracing culture, how darker complexioned women can rock the colors yellow and purple in ways that I will never be able to. And I strive to be cool, I try like only white people can to do that hey, this is so natural, man. I am so at ease with your culture that I know very little about and I feel so at ease immediately, so I am for sure not racist.


The thing is, that's a bunch of whooie, if you walk into a room of sneeches with no stars upon thars, but there are stars upon yars, I don't care how cool you are, it's going to take a second to find your way into feeling cool with that. Period.

And you know, in my unfortunate friend's defence, she was a pretty nice person in general, and living in a rural town in Washington State, she only seen three black people in person in her entire life. I feel like I can defend her a little bit because I grew up in that same town and while I like to think that I am not an idiot, I had seen the same three black people, and it did not really prepare me to be the super cool person that I wish I was.

But I think it's time to get out there and try, and it's probably past time to make the choice to know something outside of my own experience. And hopefully, at some point, I'll be for sure not racist, and maybe a little bit cool.

Love dosen't come from daisies, it comes from foxholes...

Remember that time that was awful? Some people would say we shouldn't but I think we should. Remember those times when no one was happy in our home, and we knew all too well the reality of a Telestial life. The reality of a group of satellites drifting further and further outward with nothing left to orbit?

Remember when in all that darkness every now and then we would grab on and pull each other back with some weak and feeble gesture that even now means more to me than almost anything I've experienced since? When sometimes all you had to give was barely anything at all. I still treasure those barely anythings the most. I hold onto those barely anythings like dog tags from a foxhole that was covered over decades ago and now grows daisies. But I still like to remember, I hope you still remember too because those days were the days that made me love you.

I remember when all I could do was cry and you just stood there and let me, and then you laughed and I laughed and it wasn't OK, but really it was.

I remember being so lonely and rejected and then one of you would do something funny and Dad would laugh so hard great tears would stream down his red cheeks and it was like Christmas! or the Forth of July! Did you see Dad's face? that was priceless...

Do you remember that time when we sat in a hospital waiting room laughing like a couple of idiots?

I love you because we've been through hell and back and I'd turn around and do it again just to know such damn fine people.

Do you remember when our life became a kaleidoscope and all of the pain and sickness and betrayal caught the light and bent and refracted into hope and acceptance and pride for all that we have survived together? I don't remember when, but I know it happened, and I know it goes on happening...

and I still keep it in my heart.

Ahhh Potential...

A friend called me about three or four weeks ago and was very complimentary. I would pretend that I'm not the type of person to repeat a compliment but I am that type of person, I am exactly that type of person. I jump around and make people guess why I'm so happy and then when they are annoyed and refuse to guess I yell that someone said I looked pretty today, or that they liked my picture, or they think I'm cool. Um, someone thinks I'M COOL! I can't keep that to myself! Are you kidding me?!? That doesn't happen all the time, and even if it did happen all the time how could anyone ever get so many compliments that they can be modest and reserved about it? Doesn't everyone know that it's the best thing in the world?

Anyways, my friend was very complimentary.

She said I had a talent for writing and to keep it up. I took that to mean that I have potential.

And that's why four or five weeks ago I quit.

I have been told I have potential in lots of things, braggy, but true. And that is just were I like to stay, cozy in my little nest of potential because, when you have potential, you have not disappointed anyone yet, you have not proven them wrong, you have yet to suck.

But I turned 29 last month, and I've begun to realize that potential only looks good on ingenues. Once you hit a certain point it stops being potential and starts being a little tragic. All that potential devolves into all the things you could've done but never did. I'm a juicy translucent peach devolving into a black sack of mush in your refrigerator and I'm beginning to stink and it's time for a wake up call.

I don't want to be a black bag of mush. I'm a juicy peach damnit!

So here it goes world, life, imagination audience! I'm going to start doing, and being and living! I'm going to start sounding like Liza Minelli a lot more (see previous sentence)! I'm going to draw you pretty pictures and learn how to scan them on my computer! I'm going to continue tap dancing until I'm really good and I am going to be an ariel contortionist! I spelled that wrong, it was supposed to be aerial contortionist but I like that better anyways because then I am also a mermaid!

So look out world! I am going to be A LOT more frequent with my blogging!