Drunk

A drunk woman rubbed my face with a wet balloon on Fremont Street tonight. I don't want to speculate about why it was wet. It was that moment that was the culmination of my realization that Vegas is not my town. Everything feels slightly off and forced. I went to the top of the fake eiffel tower (which was awesome don't get me wrong) and saw a fake volcano erupt. I saw Mickey Mouse's long lost heroin addict brother.  I spent seven dollars on a small bag of m&m's.  I even watched an Elvis impersonator get in a fight with a homeless man.

I don't drink, but I realized why virtually everyone else on the Las Vegas Strip does-- to numb the disappointment that they are actually not having any fun and that they aren't in Disneyland. Because Disneyland really is the happiest place on earth.  But do you ever do things because everyone else thinks they are "fun"  or is that just me? Like concerts, sometimes I go and stand forever until my feet hurt and get knocked around by sweaty people and the music is so loud my ears are bleeding (basically) but then I forget later how much I hated it and I'm like, "HELL YEAH I LOVE CONCERTS LET'S DO IT AGAIN" 
I thought about this while I walked the strip for miles and how maybe a little bit that's what childbirth is like, except worse obviously. Especially because you poop in front of everyone who's watching you give birth (LIAM NEESON! - - surprise! had to reference that again. Always.) 

Speaking of homeless people, I always try to smile at them, which is hard for me because I have major unhappy resting face. So when I say I try to smile, it probably is more like an awkward wincing face as I'm thinking 'look pleasant. Don't be creepy. Is this happy?'  There were a lot of homeless people on the strip and one large man with no shirt and a sign that read "bringing sexy back" but nothing will top the time I genuinely frightened someone asking me for some change. He probably thought I was on bath salts or dying of ebola... Too soon? I was working at Sunflower Farmer's Market as a cashier and lived about 2 miles away probably. On this day however, it felt like ten. I had just recovered from an epic bout of the Swine Flu of '09 so I still didn't have my voice back all the way. It was the middle of summer and my shift started at 1pm. It was 100 degrees.  For some unknown reason I decided to ride my bike to work. The second I got onto the main road from my neighborhood both tires went flat. It was too late to go back so I decided to walk my bike the rest of the way.  'hey grandkids, your grandmother walked her bike uphill both ways to work in 100 degree heat and made a homeless man poop his pants with fright so quit complaining about your hovercraft'  okay sorry, spoilers...  Basically I regretted this decision the whole way.  The trax station was on the way and by this point I was starting to hallucinate. My face was bright red and I was wheezing and sputtering like an old truck running out of gas. This was when the homeless man started to approach me to ask for some change to ride the bus, but one look at my tomato face invoked a look of sheer terror on his face. I tried to smile and was about to apologize for not having any change but then the residual illness struck me and was compounded by the heat and my apparent lack of physical fitness; my stomach began to combust and the fake volcano erupted like glorious fireworks and I started laughing at myself because I totally freaked this guy out and when I looked in the bathroom mirror at work I even scared myself. It was like that game people would play as kids in a dark bathroom, 'bloody Mary.'  Every time I tried to make an announcement over the loud speaker I sounded like a dying chain smoker and my face didn't lose its red hue until the end of my shift. So as it turns out, you really can experience Vegas wherever you are, you just have to believe, and walk your bike two miles under the blistering sun. And if that doesn't sound like fun, then I don't know what fun is. Let's all go to Disneyland!

Salt and vinegar

Right now I'm sitting in the back seat of a car on my way to Las Vegas. I ate probably way too many chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels from trader joes.  I wish that wasn't possible, but as I stare out the window and see nothing for miles, I am reminded of a time when I was much younger and in a similar situation; no trees from behind which I can exclaim "Liam Neeson!"  (see previous post... She's doing another bathroom humor story? Really?) 

Some relatives of mine live on a ranch/former pony express stop in the middle of nowhere Utah. In the West desert is this place called Callao. (pronounced Call-ee-oh)  I was riding with my cousin's family to go camping there when I was probably 8 or 9 if my memory serves correct. My cousin who I've always been close to is 3 years older than me. I always had to do everything she did. If she got a purse, I got a purse. She got a marionette puppet; so did I. She is like the older sister I never had.  I was always a little jealous that I was the younger cousin and I just felt like I could never catch up to her in levels of coolness, even though I'm sure she has never felt that way.

After we had been driving for what felt like days, though I'm sure it was a mere couple of hours, I looked out the window; as the barren desert wasteland blurred past, the pain of a full bladder struck with extreme force. My brain was screaming "WHY AMANDA WHY??? THINK OF THE CHILDREN! My cousin's bladder echoed back a reply around the same time, and of course there was nowhere to pull over.

Rather than panic, I wanted to seize this as an opportunity to finally prove my usefulness and maybe for once show that I was more than just the annoying younger cousin.  It was then that I spied the huge bag of salt and vinegar chips.

This was my moment! All of my Bill Nye the science guy knowledge was finally going to pay off because salt absorbs water... Obviously!

I authoritatively told my cousin that if we consumed the whole bag of salt and vinegar chips we would soon be home free and the lack of trees on the horizon would no longer be a taunting sight. I had to make sure that we ate the whole bag to ensure that my theory would work. My taste buds protested a little more with each chip as I coached like a rowing captain, "More!... (ow)... More!... (ach)... More!... (eungh)"

Well....  It was a good idea to be sure.  My brilliant theory didn't work exactly though. But by some miracle we made it to Callao and then were able to relieve ourselves. Such sweet relief it was. My tongue still hurts just thinking about those salt and vinegar chips.

Watch out for my body rolls

That's a disturbing title. But if you've seen the music video you'll know.
It reminded me of a time when I was in Korea. (like how war vets say, "when I was in Korea")
Just kidding.  I just don't have a good segue. Those mall cops look silly anyway.
This is a story about poop, why I'm secretly an old war vet from another life, and my mission.

They say you're not a "true" missionary unless you poop your pants.
That's what I was told anyway.  (Is this really a thing?)
I served my mission in Seoul South Korea. Before I got there I was in the MTC for 3 months. That's when it began.
I would later learn that "food baby"  is one of those terms that just doesn't translate.
After this whole experience I should be able to say I have no shame anymore. Is that true? Probably not.

Anywho, Korea is amazing and I love it, but simply put, the food did not love me. Garlic and cabbage among other things just decided to put a kibosh on the whole "amanda's stomach functioning properly" endeavor.

Without too much detail (your mind can do the dirty work), I will give you some perspective. When I was in the hospital they asked me every morning when my last bowel movement was; if it wasn't the day before, measures were enacted by the nurse to remedy the situation (milk of magnesia I will never forget you... ). In Korea however, it was more than a mere day or two, it was months. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. I didn't really notice at first because I was so busy all the time and there wasn't someone asking me every morning when my last BM was...
I finally realized there was a problem when people started giving up their seats for me on the bus and one of our investigators sincerely thought I was pregnant. (nope! Just constipated).  In my weekly email home I told my problem to my mom and begged her to send me something with fiber.  I also implored her not to forward that email to anybody, but alas, I shortly got an email from my sweet grandmother asking me if I had tried prunes. (yes a whole box!). So now I'm telling the world in my blog naturally...

About a week later I got a package from my mom containing fiber bars, fiber cereal, and something called an Acai Berry Cleanse. After trying it, I now refer to it as Acai Berry Revenge. (I almost became a "true" missionary that day, but the Revenge was enacted whilst still in the apartment so disaster was averted).

I was still eating because a) food delicous and b) ward members heard I was sick and the solution was to feed me as much as humanly possible. We also ate at a meat buffet. Somehow I ended up getting acupuncture during all of this and they put a container of flaming coals on my stomach and told me "fire too hot; ring bell". Fire was much hot and no help.

Finally my companion and I went to a pharmacy.  How do you ask for laxatives in Korean? Well we didn't know so we called a Korean sister and she laughed and I heard her exclaim "sister Myrick can't poop?!" the pharmacist explained that it would be "gentle" and "overnight" but as said in the Princess Bride, "I don't think that word means what you think it means."  Everyone talks about how awful the prep for a colonoscopy is, but having later experienced one of those, I can assure you this. was. worse. A colonoscopy is like watching a Nicolas Cage movie in comparison to what that Korean laxative did to me; slightly annoying and uncomfortable, but still somewhat funny. At one point I think I even asked God to just put me out of my misery. I am pretty sure I read 12 Ensigns (church magazines). My companion probably read the whole Book of Mormon because she is awesome like that. I didn't actually poop my pants but I'm calling it,  and dubbing myself a true porcelain assassin... Ahem....  I mean missionary.
Amen.

I googled euphemisms for going poop. Here are just a few (your welcome):

Harry Plopper
Hungry Hungry Hippos
Inagurate Barack Obama to the White House
Inserting a SEAL Team
Kurt Bevacqua
Launching torpedoes
Laying dumplings
Laying a brick
Laying some wolf bait
Letting the toilet know who's boss
Letting the dogs out
"Liam Neeson!" a satisfying phrase to yell after a good bowel movement. - My favorite.

Wabi - sabi

I hate bandwagons and I especially don't like jumping on them. I always avoid popular dystopian book series' until the last possible minute. I also am pretty stubborn and end up being cold and distrustful of others before I really give them a chance probably because throughout most of my life I have not been very accepting of myself. Over the last year I have been through emotional turmoil culminating in the realization that I did not love myself. I wanted to give up.
But here is my journey to loving myself:

5 And it came to pass that the Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind.
6 And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the wind.
-Ether 6

The way I see it, we sometimes go through trials because it is the only way that God can get us to where we need to be: the promised land. In the middle of the worst of it, it often feels like it isn't worth it, like the winds and the waves will tear us to bits. I had the darkest times I had ever felt during the last year. I wanted answers that I wasn't getting.  I wanted to be different. I wanted to feel different. The problem with depression is that you only feel like doing things that will keep you feeling terrible. That's why they call it a spiral.

Satan wants you to believe that you won't feel better. He tries to get you to believe that you don't have to rely on God or the Atonement, or that you shouldn't. I believed it for a minute. I thought I was on my own and then I really felt alone. But Satan is wrong!

I wish I could say there was that moment when the sky brightened and the clouds parted and I suddenly was cured, but it was more like dawn breaking gradually and you don't realize that the dark night has given way to the light of morning until it has already happened. But know this, I could not have seen the light again without God and my Savior Jesus Christ.

I was numb for months. I burned a lot of bridges.  I was aching in every way and wanted it to end. I spent nearly two weeks in the hospital after I admitted myself - that was the first step. There were helpful aspects from being there and then I sunk even lower into depression after I got out of the hospital. On my more comical nights I would challenge myself to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's after a whole box of Mac and Cheese while my inner critic raged on about how much I hated myself. The littlest things would be my undoing. Like discovering cockroaches in my kitchen and being able to hear my upstairs neighbors' conversations.

I guess there were some big moments where I knew I needed to change but I won't go into those too much. It's more about the little things anyway. I read a book about depression in which the author said you have to do things that you don't feel like doing. You have to break the cycle of your broken "feel gooder"  and the only way is to do things that you don't want to do. I ignored that for a while. I didn't want to do it! In the hospital we learned a therapy style that had a similar principle called "opposite action"  which I told myself and others that it worked, but I didn't really commit. There were Ted talks, stacks of self help books that I had purchased, a few choice friends who listened to me patiently, attempts into new age style thinking, etc. I still felt like I was missing something though. I looked back through my journal and found an entry, or rather a list, that I had made of all the things that brought me peace and happiness. I told myself I had to do them, regardless of how I felt. I also had to be kind and gentle to myself when I messed up and started hating on myself. That was the second step.

On the top of the list was reading scriptures and praying. (there is also 'read hyperbole and a half blog, watch scrubs or watch Gordon Ramsay's ultimate cookery course, smell a grapefruit', etc. - lest you think I'm a weirdo) 
So long story short I did little things each day; I told myself I was worth it until (this took lots of practice, setbacks, crying, etc.) I was finally able to smile at myself in the mirror and start to believe again that I am a beautiful daughter of God. In addition to prayer, study, and relying again on the gospel, psychological principles helped me to understand the importance of accepting the good and the bad. To stop judging my negative emotions so harshly. This is also found in  scripture. Moses 5:11 for anyone who is curious, that is a good scripture. Also

2 nephi-

11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.
12 Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.

I slowly but surely have been able to peel off the layers of shame that were weighing me down. And I have also been able to gradually see others in a more favorable light as other parts of myself have become illuminated.
There are seasons for everything and it is my spring again; through the atonement of Christ I am made new again and this process is available to all who will just try.  Everyone has a struggle and a story, and countless trials in their lives, but I promise it is all for your good. If it is your night and winter, the day will come again, the spring will bloom again, and with it will come the light. I promise.

Love, Amanda