Weddings, Weddings, in the Air

And in 2010... *drumroll*

So far, there are going to be 3 weddings, one friend got engaged at New Years, one other friend got engaged during Christmas break, and my best friend will probably be engaged by the end of the year.

I keep forgetting that this is the time in my life when all the weddings are supposed to begin, so all of these engagements have come as a pleasant surprise. So far, I've been invited to two weddings and, probably, a third, and spoken with a friend about her bachelorette party. And, I'll admit, I'm a little jealous of all those people who getting to start planning their big white wedding.

I wrote, a long time ago, about the fear. Yes, I am still deathly afraid of marriage. I once was the girl who thought that I would have one of those families where the parents stay together (and I wouldn't have to be going to therapy for a second time.) I mean, while the promise is there when you get married, it no longer seems to be a guarantee in America. And divorce is just horrible. My parents got divorced two years ago and things still aren't over. So why get married when there's that possibilty, right?

And yet...

It's not just the big white wedding (or, in my financial case, what will someday be a very small white wedding) or the planning or the parties. It's more of the theory that even though marriage could turn into divorce, everyone is taking that chance. And, literally, everything with a chance has the possibility of going the way you didn't want it to. Applying to college? I might not have gotten in. Taking classes? I might have failed them. Working at the student newspaper? I could have gotten fired. Or something more basic: driving a car. I could get into an accident.

I guess the real reason why I'm jealous and desire what so many of my friends are doing right now is because of the chance. They all get to take that chance, that wonderful chance, that they are putting so much effort into being good but could potentially turn out badly. I would like to take that chance. I would like to put in the effort and know what I'm going for and heading towards. I would like to someday say, "hey, I took that chance, and now, 30 years of marriage later, here we still are!"

I would like to be the exception. The good of the chance. The marriage that didn't fail.

Help

I've been keeping most of this inside because I've been a bit embarressed and a little unready to tell everyone my big emotional flaws. But, when I broke down today and told my mom the truth, I decided that I better let the cat out of the bag and break it to the world. Because, really, I shouldn't be ashamed.

I'm getting therapy.

I am one messed up "young adult," if you can't already tell. I'm not quite sure who reads this besides my grandparents and maybe an uncle or aunt, but I really am one messed up person. Because when I was a teen, my dad began his tirade of emotional abuse. Because when I was a teen, I figured out that the only way I could solve things (due to my father) was to get angry. Because when I was a teen, I jumped in the middle of countless arguments, received endless griping about how horrible my mother and sister were, and cried in the corner of my bedroom, hoping that no one would find me there. Because when I was a teen, I discovered that the only way to relieve stress, anger, or any sort of emotion was to cry.

I know this sounds weird and, if you know me in person, you might think I'm a really strong personality and that I have it all together. However, that's my game face. That's what I want to be, what I spend every second trying to be.

The truth is that I am on big ball of salty wet tears. And I can't seem to turn off the hose whatever I do or try. I don't just cry when I'm sad or angry. I cry when I'm scared. I cry when I'm nervous. I cry when there is a situation that I can't control. I cry when I can't figure out my statistics homework the first time. I cry when any sort of emotion beyond happiness gets beyond the level of basic function. And, like I said, I can't turn it off. So imagine being me, going in to my boss' office to ask for a raise, and crying because I'm a little nervous about asking him...

Yea. Pretty pathetic.

But, of course, that's not the reason why I'm going into therapy. The crying is the relief, the break in the dam that helps the pressure to subside. What creates the pressure is the hatred, the pure black blinding hatred for my father and myself that I have built up inside of me that leaks through little cracks, without the crying, effecting my every day life. Making me angry in situations where I shouldn't be angry. Making me depressed when nothing is wrong. The hatred that I have for my father that I can control, which only causes me to hate myself more because I feel like I'm turning into him. The hatred that I have for myself when I look in the mirror and see something different that the person other people tell me that they see.

People tell me not to think badly of myself. They tell me just to take a deep breath and to just calm down. But that's what they don't understand. I don't know how to calm down. And since I don't know how to calm down (except to cry), I can only see myself as this angry, pitiful creature. And it makes me suffer, it makes me depressed. It makes me miserable.

So I'm going to therapy.

Budget Sucks Life Out of Education

It has been a ridiculously long week.

The pain finally started to go away Wednesday afternoon and I finally gave in that night and went to my favorite Chinese grill so I could eat food that wasn't saltines, jello, yogurt, and applesauce. It hasn't gone away completely (the pain) but, as I munch on a bowl of Frosted Flakes, I don't feel guilty for giving in and not giving my stomach an extra day of soft food.

Pain aside, school has been incredibly insane. On Wednesday, I went to my Computer Applications in Health class and found out the my teacher is completely out of his mind. He's forcing us to write a book in about 4 weeks, a collaborative book, about a little wooden boy named PinoChico who attends Chico State as a freshmen and is trying to find the head fairy so he can become a "real boy." And we, the brilliant class who have no idea of what we are doing, have to punch out a chapter with our groups by next Wednesday and come up with freshman boy experiences for little PinoChico to have. Except I went to a community college with all the boys from my high school so I have no idea what freshman boys are like. They seem exactly like high school boys to me!

Also, currently, the state is doing this thing with big universities called Furlough Days. It is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. If you haven't heard of it, it's where the state issues a certain # of days off of the school year and requires that the professor choose 2 or 3 more (I'm not sure how many they have to take), and, on those days, the teacher cannot sent a student an email, work on school work, or set foot on campus or they will be penalized. For the teacher, it just means that they have 3 or 4 days in the semester that they don't get paid for when they would normally have class and get paid. For the students (and especially for me, because I have a different 3 hour class every day, Monday-Thursday, instead of taking my classes twice a week for 1 1/2 hours), this means that we have to miss class, we miss out on getting material that we would otherwise get in a full semester, and we are left unready for jobs and our masters/doctorate degrees. In my case, if I have a Furlough Day (and I think I have about 10), my professor is stuck with trying to teach us 6 hours worth of material in about 3 hours in order to catch us up, or just cut part of the information out of the curriculum entirely.

If I wasn't already frustrated by the budget cuts, I'm very frustrated now. Cutting education is the WORST idea that our idiot governor has ever had, if he ever had an idea in the first place besides lift weights and shoot down the bad guys. Not only am I affected by these Furlough Days, but my statistics class is basically taught online (and I don't have the choice to take one in a classroom because they are all like this) and I come in, once a week, to talk to a professor who helps us confused people out with the online material that we don't understand. What if I want to sit in a classroom and let the teacher lecture at me so I can learn it that way, huh? Some of us can't learn things online like that! They tell you in high school that college is full of opportunity and they have things for everyone, so you can learn in all kinds of ways, and then they cut the budget, decide on one way, and then it's either "my way or the highway, buddy!"

At the community college that my sister is going to, they cut 168 classes and basically fired all the part time professors, just so they could make do. And they canceled a lot of classes the WEEK before school started, or even 2 or 3 DAYS before, so students were scrambling to find classes and many couldn't be full time students even though they had originally signed up to be full time and paid all of their fees.

You know what could save money for the state? If they turned down the amount of AC in the classrooms. It was about 90 degrees outside on Wednesday and, when we went inside, it was about 60 degrees in our classroom. That's a huge difference! And who, honestly, brings a jacket with them in 90 degree weather? I bet if they kept the temperature between 75-80 degrees in classrooms, they would save a TON of money. If we're already wearing shorts and tank tops, who cares if the classrooms are a little warm? It's better than getting frostbite from the temperature change!

I am ready to take this to the governor himself, since I live about 1 1/2 hours away from the state capital. Because this is absolutely ridiculous. He's giving my state a bad rep, to the point where I am strongly convince that I am going to move out of state for my Master's degree, even if it means more fees. At least I will get a decent education that way.

What do you think?

Standards

I've been trying to figure out how to phrase this. I suppose I'll just start from the beginning.

I remember going to church as a kid where you wore your church dress and there was a choir and church was church. You went there to learn, be fed with the Word of God, and filled with the joy of being in Christ.

I was a kid, though, and that memory is a stale 10 years old. Today you find more bands than choirs and I'm thrilled when I can wear a pair of jeans on a Sunday instead of scrounging around for a nice skirt (I wouldn't normally mind wearing a skirt but I have something along the lines of folliculitis and my legs look a mess). Never-the-less, despite the changes, I still go to church on Sundays to be fed. Finding a church up here was a bit easier for Jo and I because my pastor's older brother teaches up here, so we switch off with his church (non-denominational) and an episcopal church (for Jo) every other week. So far, I've been fairly cool with going to his church because he was very nice to us when we introduced ourselves and he's had a few good talks with Jo, who likes to discuss religion much more than I do. Also, this church is relaxed, just like my pastor's from home, so I felt like the transition went fairly smoothly. However, today kind of threw me off guard.

For a moment, stop to ponder this: where do you draw the line at how relaxed a church is? I'm not talking beliefs but what specifically is or is not allowed of the congregation.

My pastor's brother's church is housed in an old movie theater and it is what I would call "a mega church." It has a large congregation and I'm not surprised that I hardly recognize any regulars because I A) am there every other week and B) have only been a couple of times due to trips home. When Jo and I walked in today, the worship service had just begun so we searched for seats and other people arrived and sat around us until the whole place was fairly full. Normally, I hardly pay any attention to the people around me because I'm there to learn but, today, the guy sitting on my left definitely caught my eye to the point where I was distracted by him for most of the service.

Let me begin with this by mentioning that this church, like my pastor's, has a coffee shop, so I'm used to seeing at least half of the congregation sitting with hot or cold coffee in the cup holders. The guy sitting on my right had brought his own water bottle and that had no effect on me. What began to irritate me a little was when he decided to pull out a power bar and proceed to ear it fairly loudly, twisting the wrapper down so it made that horrible crinkly sound. I nudged Jo and we both smiled in an agreement of "how weird" and then I went back to listening. 5-10 minutes later, I was distracted again by heavy breathing and, looking to my left, I saw that he had begun to fall asleep. OK, I admit, I will get sleepy in church at times but I have never permitted myself to actually fall asleep because I feel it is very disrespectful to your pastor as well as to God, so I was slightly annoyed by this. Especially by the fact that he woke up, dozed off, woke up, and dozed off again. Sighing to myself, I returned my attention to the pastor.

Then I heard it. The crinkle of light plastic. I looked over to see him reaching into a bag of Jelly Belly's that a girl (daughter/sister?) was holding out for him. At that point, I was done. "What are you doing?" I wanted to say to him. "This isn't a lecture. This is church. You're snacking through church! Did you not eat breakfast or lunch? Excuse me?"

I realize that this may sound a bit harsh (and mom and I have already had this chat so I know exactly how she feels) but this kind of turned me off of the church. I mean, my pastor's church was probably the most relaxed church I've been to but no one snacks in there. And people there stand up and worship without needing the band telling them to. What are these people afraid of? I'm not just talking about a few people, either. I mean BIG theater seating. And, when the band was finished playing a song that seemed to be a local favorite or a hit, half of the congregation clapped. Excuse me? This isn't a concert. This is worship service! This band is playing to lead us in worship, not perform their favorite songs for our enjoyment. This shouldn't bug me but, honestly, I feel that a lot of standards and traditions have gone down the drain. If I didn't disagree so much with most of the Catholic doctrine, I would become Catholic because I feel like basic church standard is gone. Eating during church. Sleeping during church. Next thing you know, people will be texting on their cell phones, bringing their laptops, and answering phone calls.

I realize that the people shouldn't judge a church on it's congregation but doesn't a congregation reflect the church? I pondered this with Jo all the way back to my apartment because this was something that bugged him as well. And we've decided that this church has received a little check in our "black book". If I didn't adore the pastor and his brother so much, I'd be researching new churches before next Sunday to visit. However, due to the beliefs of my mom that, if I feel that I am being fed properly, that I should keep going, I've decided to give it another chance.

I want to throw these thoughts out there to all of you. I'm curious for a response as to what you think about current church standards and whether or not you think I'm out of line. Honestly. Give me your thoughts. Don't hold back. Not today.