To eat or not to eat

As a dancer I spend the majority of my day staring at myself in the mirror.
Making sure that my movements look the same as others.
Unfortunately, most of that time I am criticizing the way I look.
Not just the way my body moves, but the way my body is.
Comparing myself to the other bodies I see in the mirrors.

Wow, I wish my body was more like hers.

Eating disorders are serious, but they are not easily defined.
I never force myself to throw up, or intentionally skip meals for days on end.
But I will eat less, or convince myself that whatever I ate made me feel funny.
Space out meals, eat foods with less calories.
Go to more yoga classes, take a few extra bike rides.

Just a couple more days.

An obsession with having a "perfect body."
Does it ever end?

Thoughts for now

Hi Friends!
It's been a while.
I've been having a hard time these past couple of weeks. . .

The best word I can think of to describe how I feel: Lost.

Suddenly I am not required to spend hours a day at school, but somehow I'm supposed to already be working on my career path towards excellence. How is it possible to have a "career" straight out of college?

"Idle hands are the devil's playthings."
If that's true, then I'm in trouble. I have way too much free time on my hands. How do I fill my days with meaningful activities? I try to read but cannot concentrate for long, distracted by nothingness.

I wish I could go back to school, or rather I wish I could dance all day like we did in school. I wish I was rich enough to travel to L.A. and New York City every couple of weekends for auditions, so that I could get a job dancing.

I feel inadequate at life. No direction.

I am stuck at home when I'm not working. I can sometimes pay for the bus, but not having a car makes it hard to do just about anything. It's the feeling of being stuck that makes it worse. I hate calling around asking for a ride too, I feel like I'm intruding on people's lives.

I also feel very scattered, can you tell?
Short thoughts that keep trailing away, almost incomplete.
What is my purpose?

How do you love?

Sometimes I worry that I don't know how to be in a relationship, and I don't necessarily just mean a romantic relationship. But I sometimes feel like I need to be doing more to maintain any kind of friendship, or that I'm doing it wrong. I worry that because I didn't have a good relationship with my family growing up, that it affects the way that I relate to people now.

 I felt like I was a burden to my mother, which she often validated. Somehow I was responsible for "ruining her life", I was the constant reminder of her relationship with my father. I don't know much about their relationship, in fact you could probably say that I don't know anything about it. I know that they were married at the end of May in the Los Angeles temple. I don't know how they met, how long they dated for, or even why they broke up.

I never really felt like someone was taking care of me. Which translated to me having to take care of myself. Since I have had to be responsible for myself, I have a hard time trusting other people to care for me. I don't trust that someone is actually going to be there when I need them.

I wish that I knew how to communicate what I need/want in a way that makes sense to others. I also wish that I could understand how to help others in a way that makes sense to them.

I have a fear of being close to people. I'm scared that they're just going to leave me. I have had a really hard time learning to love myself and allowing others to love me, because I always felt that if my own mother couldn't love me then why would anyone else...

I've learned to think that that her opinion of me is just that, an opinion. I had been validating that opinion by allowing it to have an affect on my life and thoughts about myself.

I want to be able to feel comfortable with who I am, and I think that as we go along we eventually find someone who makes us happy to be ourselves. I grew up feeling like I wasn't supposed to be here, and so I acted that way. And I find that the less I concern myself with what other people are thinking of me, the more fun I have. The more I feel like I can be me.

Dessa's Dance

I started dancing when I was about 4 years old. I had dance classes for a couple years and then switched to musical theater/acting classes for a year, but then things started to get expensive. So I had to quit.

A few years later one of my friends took me with her to a dance class. This teacher had her own dance studio in the basement of her huge house. At that time it seemed like the classes wouldn't cost too much, so I signed up. Once it came around to buying costumes for the recital, I was forced to quit. My mom just refused to take me to class after she saw how much it was.

The next year I went with a different friend who happened to have the same dance teacher. When I came back, I talked with her about why I had suddenly quit the pervious year. She told me that she wished we would have come and talked with her so we could have worked something out.

We made a deal, I would come help her clean her house and I would get dance lessons. One saturday a month, I spent the whole day with her helping her clean out various parts of the house. I had so much fun earning my own dance classes. I learned to appreciate the value of hard work.

Nothing is going to just be handed to us, we've got to go out there and get what we want. Even if it takes us a little bit longer to get there. I'm so happy that I am finally getting my degree. I've been working towards this for a long time. I really hope that I am going to be able to get to perform, and use my degree. Wish me luck :)

Fifteen to Twenty-three

Hi Friends! Sorry I've been a little absent these past couple of weeks. I started my LAST semester of college! I cannot tell you how excited I am!
I am so happy to finally be done with my degree, and finally be able to start living my life. I have no idea what I am doing after graduation. Which both terrifies and excites me, I have the potential to do whatever wherever I want to.
Who knows whats gonna happen. I'd like to travel though, maybe even move out of the country. We'll see! I'd love to dance but it may take me a little while to get onto a company. I've got some auditions coming up for some summer intensives, I'll be sure to let you cats know how they go.
Funny little story: Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet is one of my most favorite dance companies. This summer they are having a condensed version of their summer intensive (they used to only do an intensive every other summer, so now they do a short version in the other years). For this intensive the age limit is 15 to 23. Guess what day the audition in Utah is? February 27th. The day before my birthday. The day before I turn 24, the day before I would have been too old to audition. I am going to this audition, and I plan on kicking ass. I kind of can't help but feel like this is MY audition.
Well, I've gotta go do some homework now. I'll try to keep writing more often. :)

"All men are created equal"

This last weekend was a big weekend here in Utah! Same-sex marriage is legal!

I have also found out this weekend that apparently I can't be a supporter of the LGBT community unless I am also gay. Seriously? My inbox was flooded with messages on Facebook after I posted some articles about the ban being lifted on same-sex marriages, with people asking me why I supported the LGBT community. Most of them were "concerned" that I am gay, and then I was encouraged to stop posting things about it.

It doesn't matter that I prefer men over girls. And even though I'm not gay, that doesn't mean that I can't support those who are. I've mentioned before that I have a lot of friends who are, and I honestly don't see anything wrong with it. Let people do what they want to do.

We as people are meant to be different. No two people are the same. It is seriously impossible to find the one thing that everyone in this world is going to like. No one has the same favorite foods, or favorite color. Hell, we can't even agree on how the country is going to be run. But somehow we're all "supposed to" only like boys if we're girls, or vice versa.

That doesn't make any sense to me. Let people like what they want to like, it doesn't impede on your lifestyle at all.

I grew up LDS. So I understand why some churches are freaking out but there's this cool thing where the church and the state are separate. Which means that it doesn't matter what the churches say, they can't sway the government. And the government can do whatever it wants, no bishiop is going to stop them. Also, the whole misconception of "if the government will let them get married then we have to let them get married in the churches" makes me so angry. If a gay person wanted to follow the rules of your religion, then they would do it.

In the Mormon church there are two different kinds of marriage, a civil marriage or a temple marriage. Civil marriages are recognized only by the state, and usually if a couple is only civilly married it's because they can't go to the temple for whatever reasons (new members, unworthy, whatever). The temple marriage is the sacred and holy thing that they're all freaking out about. Hey guess what, if gays wanted to get married in the temple then they would follow YOUR rules. No church is expected to change their rules just because the government does, remember "Church and state are separated".

Same-sex marriages are performed by the state - so all you mormons can calm down, they're civil marriages. You have no problems with a couple of 19 year-olds signing their eternal lives away after knowing each other for two months, but if two men who have been in a committed relationship for 20 years and want to get married, its sinful.

So let them be happy - stop harassing gay people and telling them that they are abominations.  EVERYONE deserves a chance to be happy.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" 

12/19/1997

1997 was a hard year for my family.
I had sprained my ankle pretty bad in a dance class, and was on crutches for a few days. Some how this combined with my little brother's night terrors (he would be running around the cul de sac screaming at the top of his lungs), meant that my mom was abusing us.
We got kicked out of our apartment because of it. We had 30 days to find somewhere new to live. We didn't find a new home, not for about 6 months....
We stayed in hotels, and when we ran out of money we stayed with some friends.

December 19th, 1997
Day after my mom's birthday.
Like I said, we didn't have a lot of money. For breakfast we would go to Great Harvest to get a couple free slices of bread, and then my mom would drop us off at school.
As we pulled out of the parking lot to the light, facing the R.C. Willy's, I remember setting my tomagachi in the cup holder to respond to something my mom had said to me. We sat at the light and through the windshield I watched the lights switch from red to green. We started to turn left, then the windshield was completely cracked, and something smelled like it was burning.
It took me a second to realize we were moving in a different direction but by then the car had stopped. I tried to get out of the car, grabbed my toy out of the cup holder and pushed on my door. The door wouldn't open, this is when I started to panic. There was a speed limit sign stuck to my car door. I looked over at my little brother whose eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head, and I unbuckled him out of his seat belt. As I was reaching to try to open his door, some lady with short blonde hair, had run up to the car and yanked his door open. My brother and I climbed out of the car, and when I turned back to look, I finally saw my mother.
Hunched over the detonated airbag. Not completely passed out, but not all here. Maybe she sensed me but she turned to look at me and told me to get back in the car, confused as to why I was standing next to it. Her driver's side window had exploded onto her. She was bleeding everywhere, I couldn't tell how badly her face was messed up, just that half of it was completely red.
Someone had a small towel in their car and brought it over to my still confused mother, so she could hold it to her face until the paramedics arrived. I didn't get a chance to see my mom for another day. The lady who had helped us out of the car dragged us away so we "wouldn't have to watch" and told us how lucky we were that we didn't get hurt.
We sat in the grass and watched as the firefighters struggled to get our mom out of the car. They brought out a huge piece of machinery and started cutting the car. We panicked, a firefighter who was trying to take us to school told us that they couldn't get our mom out of the car, so they had to cut the car out of the way. The firefighter let us stay and watch as they pulled her out of the car, onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.
Then we got to ride in a firetruck the last few blocks to the school, so we could attend our class Christmas parties. The principal escorted us to class and gave us extra candy because he felt bad for us.

My mom was in the hospital for a couple of days. They had to get glass out of her eye, and put half of her nose back on her face, but she survived.

So at the end of 1997? No home, no car, no money, and new hospital bills. Worst year ever.