Short Story: "Dreams"

My Dear Reader,

It's been a while since I've posted fiction on here, so here's a little something for you.

"Dreams"

By Cecily Jane

And that is when I realize that they don't love me.

Maybe they never have. Maybe what they love is this life they've made, complete with a house, two cars, and a respectable amount of children. They love their American Dream, and I'm only a part of it. An appendage to it.

I am an expendable part of their life.

That's why they're doing this. No one who loved me would do this. No one who loved me would make me put these chemicals inside me. No one who loved me would let these pills play with my brain and diminish me. They look at me, and they see only the darkness. They do not see the loneliness that feeds it. They do not see the child behind it. They only see a dark spot on their perfect life, and they want to bleach it out of existence. Never mind that I will be corroded, along with my pain. Never mind that I will fade into nothing. In their eyes, it will be a pleasant nothing. An empty shell that will smile vaguely on command and look good in pictures. That's all they want. They have no use for me.

I am a torrent of raging emotions. I am lost in the storm. I am reaching out to for something to hold onto, but they don't reach back. They just glare at me in disapproval.

And so they send me away to the cold professionals who will scoop out my insides.

This can't be love.

Love is what I hold onto, even if I've never seen it. Even if it's only a hope in my heart. If they love me then I have nothing left.

They can't love me.

They can't.

**************

We just don't know our baby anymore.

Neither of us know when it all started to change. There used to be laughter in our house. We took it for granted back then.

If only we could go back to how it used to be.

We are doing the best that we can. It's not enough to simply say that we are struggling. Each member of our family has problems, and with each passing day, those problems get harder to solve. This is not a band aid over a skinned knee. This is our last chance to bring our child back before we reach the point of no return. That's why we rely on those who know how to fix these problems. We put our baby in their hands in the hopes that we will have a future. It's a little scary when the bills come, and sometimes we're not sure where the money is going to come from. But they tell us that it's helping. They tell us that if we just pull through, there is a chance. So we do.

We are overwhelmed and exhausted. But it's not hard to see where this behavior will lead. We've read the articles. We go to seminars during lunch hour, holding hands as we are confronted yet again with symptoms and statistics. The future we have been shown is frightening.

We have to trust the people who understand what is happening to our child.

This is a problem we have to solve.

We do all of this so that one day, we can hear that laughter again. That's the hope we hold onto, even if it seems we may never hear it again. Our baby is everything.

We can't lose our baby.

We can't.

Regards, best wishes, and understanding,

-Cecily Jane

Prayers, Phones, and Self-limitations

My Dear Reader,

As a lifelong Mormon, I have often been encouraged to seek for spiritual guidance on a daily basis, in even the most trivial matters. These spiritual experiences are the foundation of our faith, and we build it scripture by scripture, prayer by prayer.
Even for the little stuff.

Stuff that isn't necessarily in the spiritual category. Stuff, for example, like when things go missing. Even then, I have always been encouraged to get on my knees and pray about it. God knows everything, right? So he knows where I left my keys, or my wallet, or that thing I was supposed to bring to the party. And as Mormons, this is something that we regularly do. And I know so many people who have asked this seemingly trivial question in prayer and have received genuine spiritual guidance that led them to find what they were looking for.

But it never happened to me.

And you might think that it's not really a big deal. And it isn't until it's the end of the school year and you have to either return your graphing calculator to your calculus teacher or forfeit one hundred dollars of your hard-earned college fund.

And when you're running out of time, and you've turned everything in your house upside down trying to find it, and you're crying tears of frustration and failure because one hundred dollars is so much money when you earned it working minimum wage and you were so careful to save it, this becomes a pretty big deal to you.

And, yet, I didn't get my answer. Or any answer, really. Let me tell you, I was not happy to write that check.

But, you know, I told myself to get over it. It didn't break the bank or anything, and once high school was over and I moved on to greater things, I realized that it didn't matter much. Losing one graphing calculator, in the grand scheme of things, was such a small thing, right? Talk about your teenage drama.

And it's not like I didn't have more than my fair share of spiritual experiences. I received answers on all kinds of other things. Big, important things that shaped my life. Experiences so powerful that I could never doubt that they were real, even today. So it didn't effect my faith in God or my dedication to my church, or anything like that.

But it planted a seed in my brain that started to change my opinion about myself.

And I started to think that I was incapable of receiving answers to certain kinds of prayers.

And if that sounds silly to you, you do not understand how many times I prayed for help finding something, full of faith, and got nothing.

Not to mention the doctrine found in D&C 46:11-12 that offered a reasonable explanation to what was happening to me. God gives people certain gifts, and that was just one that I didn't have. No worries, right? I mean, I don't sit around worrying that I don't have the skills to be an Olympic gymnast. Why should I care if I can't do this?

But I probably should have cared, because I stopped trying. I assumed that I was limited, and that there were some things that I just couldn't talk to God about.

And maybe there was a part of me that thought that I was limited because I just wasn't good enough.

I have so many opportunities to feel inadequate, and you know, I tend to take advantage of them.

But one day, after I graduated college and was in desperate need of a job, I lost my phone. Which, at the time, would not have been a great concern to me except I was waiting to hear back from possible employers. This time, I was in a situation where if I didn't find it, I would break the bank.

I looked everywhere for that phone. Everywhere. I had other people pitch in to help me, and I even asked for them to pray to find it. Because that seemed a lot more productive than praying myself.

After two weeks, things were looking pretty bad. Imagine if you were expecting an important phone call and you had to go without your phone for two whole weeks. I almost tore my hair out.

I got desperate enough, in fact, to pray about it. And man, did I pray with feeling on this one. I'm pretty sure I prayed myself to sleep.

One thing I remember very clearly is that I woke up with this unshakeable compulsion to look under things. I just had to do it, just like I would have to take a drink of water if I was dying of thirst in the desert. I could not stop until I had looked under everything in the house. Could. Not. Stop.

I don't have OCD, so I'm not used to compulsions of that magnitude. There was nothing in the world to me except what I needed to do at that moment. And I kind of felt a little crazy, but I also felt this really amazing spiritual connection that told me where this urge was coming from.

And in just a few minutes, that phone was good and found.

Is that one of the lamest spiritual experiences of all time? Possibly. I won't rule it out.

But it's probably one of the most poignant moments of my whole life, because I had found something a lot more important than my phone. I found a piece of myself that I feared could never exist.

And I think that we are all aware, to some point at least, how much other people try to limit us. There's the bully who said that we were stupid. The coach who cut us off the team. The well-meaning friend who told us to move on long before it was time.

But how often do we become aware of the ways in which we limit ourselves?

Do the names we have been called on the playground or in the office really matter as much as the names we call ourselves?

And how many times do we let a small seed get planted in our brain, like a mold spore that multiplies and grows until it causes the decay of our own self worth?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the things that I think I can't do, that I have no hope of ever being good at. Is it really a fair judgement of myself? Or am I letting myself be limited by the pain of the past and the fear of the future?

Because God can do all things. All things. And I am His daughter.

Doesn't it follow that if I continue to endeavor to be like God, at some point, I will be able to do all things?

And I'm starting to think that prayer is about more than just building our faith. I'm starting to think that through prayer, we are building ourselves. With every spiritual experience, we are not just learning what we need to do; we are getting a glimpse into who we really are.

And this is something I really wonder about: when God makes the acorn, He knows that it will grow into the great oak. So when God made me, what did He intend me to become? How great can I grow?

And, yes, in the great scheme of things, maybe finding my phone really isn't such a big deal. But that part of myself I found? Well, I never intend to let that go.

Regards, best wishes, and shattered boundaries,

-Cecily Jane

This Is the Friend Zone

My Dear Reader,

Lately, I've been hearing the idea of the friend zone and how that term can be misunderstood and used for unfair purposes.

The argument is that the term is manipulative. If you say that you have unrequited love, for example, the implication is that you've had some bad luck. They don't love you back, and that it a sad story, my friend. That's just life, you know? Let me give you a hug and some hot chocolate.

But if you tell me that you've been friend zoned, you're not just saying that your feelings are not returned. There is an accusation hidden in your words, asserting that you have somehow been abused. The object of your affection has inexplicably become the bad guy. How dare they! Don't they know who you are? Something must be seriously wrong with them. Let's sit here and say mean things about them while they don't have the opportunity to respond.

I personally don't often use the term to describe my own relationships. I generally feel like it only applies when the guy is really laying it on thick long after I've gotten the message. If I say you've friend zoned me, I mean that I complimented your tie and you replied by telling me how you reeeeeeally looooove your girlfriend, nudge nudge wink wink slap in the face. Then I usually laugh about it and move on, because really, I don't care. If I was attracted to you, I certainly am not any more.

Not that guys don't reject me on a daily/hourly basis. They apparently find me repulsive or something. It's just that I don't feel that I have a right to demonize someone based on whether they like me or not. When it comes to dating, I have two rules:*

Rule #1

• No one is obligated to be attracted to me.

Rule #2

• No one should have to explain why they're not attracted to me, because they don't need a reason to find me unattractive.

This is crucial, because a misunderstanding of this basic principle is, in my opinion, the foundation of a lot of unfair and cruel behaviors. These behaviors can range from harmless grumbling to backbiting to destruction of personal property. Not good.

In extreme cases, it can even lead to rape. Don't you roll your eyes at me. Most women are raped by men that they know.** A man who respects a woman's right to refusal would just leave her alone instead of taking what he wants by force through scarring physical and psychological violence. 

Because it all boils down to this: when any person believes that they have the right to tell another person how to feel or act towards them, they have denied that person their God-given agency. That's extremely objectifying, and objectifying anyone is wrong. People deserve better than that. They have a right to lead their own lives, even if you don't like their choices.

And yeah, it sucks to have unrequited feelings. It really, really sucks. But, you know, try not to take it personally. Attraction is hard to explain and even harder to control. It's possible that they don't have a conscious reason, and that is allowed. Just think of all of the people that you've found unattractive for a reason you can't name. It happens.

It's also possible that they do have a reason, and that it's a valid one. But that's a post for another day.

Either way, it's really important to be respectful of others' feelings, whether you like them or not.

And let me be clear: if you don't respect other people's feelings, you are not allowed to label yourself and a nice guy or a nice girl. If you think people are obligated to be attracted to you, you are at best a gigantic jerk.

Actually, I have stronger words for you, but I choose not to use them at this time.

Do you know what nice guys/girls do when they discover that their feelings are unrequited? They often feel sad. They might even go home and treat themselves to some ice cream and a comforting movie. But what they most certainly do is back off. They will either move on or try to present themselves in a different way. But they will undoubtedly respect the right of refusal.

Because if you really care about someone, their happiness is more important than what you want.

And, you know, if you really are a catch, then someone else will realize it. Don't waste your time grumbling! Go out and find that person!

All in all, I really hope that you can find the one who's right for you. Someone who will requite your love and treat you well. Just remember that genuine respect for others is a super attractive quality, wink wink.


Regards, best wishes, and lots of love,

-Cecily Jane

*Those aren't my only dating rules; they're just the only ones that happen to be relevant.

** Source: U.S. Department of Justice. 2005 National Crime Victimization Study. 2005.***

***I would say that this applies to both men and women, but men are exclusively raped by strangers. But I'm not singling out men as evil here; women can be extremely cruel when rejected.

Holden Caulfield and Banning Books

My Dear Reader,

As I mentioned previously, one of the books I read for my Ten Classics in 2013 challenge was Catcher in the Rye. Since it's one of the most banned books of all time, and since I read it right after reading Fahrenheit 451, I've been thinking a lot about censorship and age-appropriate material.

Really, I can see both sides of this issue.

On one side, you have the obvious truth that children react badly when exposed to things too young. Sometimes, it can be really traumatizing. When I was seven, one of my friend's parents let us watch Chucky, and let me tell you, I had nightmares for years. To this day, coming across a screenshot gives me shivers.

There's also the truth that children are constantly mimicking the behavior of whoever or whatever happens to be around them. That's the only thing that explains the explosion of over-dramatic, ineffective attempts at violence that exploded in my neighborhood after Power Rangers became popular.

So with those concerns in mind, a book like Catcher in the Rye can be pretty threatening. Holden Caulfield, the "protagonist," has little regard for rules. Though underage, he drinks and smokes. He is sent to private school after private school because he doesn't take his academic responsibilities seriously. Actually, he doesn't take any responsibilities seriously. And when he knows that he is going to get kicked out of yet another school, he skips town rather than deal with any negative consequences of his own failure. Really, Holden isn't much of a role model. And since he spends most of the book doing the exact things that parents tend to forbid their kids from doing, along with the brief instances of foul language and other controversial items, I can see why a lot of parents don't like it.

But, on the other hand, there is a reason why Catcher in the Rye is a classic.

This reason is not immediately apparent. For the first three quarters of the book, I was both bored and annoyed at Holden, because Holden is a loser. He sucks at pretty much everything, and to make it worse, he also complains about everything. I'm not even sure that he tries. Halfway through the book, I almost stopped reading because I was sick of waiting for something to happen. Spoiler alert: nothing does, really. This book is basically a few days in the odd life of a high school dropout.

But I'm really glad that I stuck with it, because in the last quarter of the book, things start to make sense. You start to see that Holden is not meant to be some kind of hero, as much as he wants to be. The story of Holden is a story of a broken kid, trapped between childhood and adulthood, who does not know how to find his place in the world. Of course I wanted to give up on Holden. Holden has given up on himself long before the novel began. Holden's life is one of profound disappointment in both himself and those around him.

And, you know, there is probably more than one teenager who can relate to that.

Catcher in the Rye is a classic because, like many classics, it expertly captures a piece of truth that resonates. Granted, that truth is not always pretty, but it's real. And sometimes I think that this is the whole reason that we read books. We read in order to get out of our own heads and see if we can find a part of ourselves in someone else's. And as much as I want to roll my eyes at Holden Caulfield, I have to admit that he is very real. While I've never done pretty much anything he does in the book, I can relate to him on a pretty profound level. At some point or another, it's possible that we are Holden Caulfield.

Yes, Holden does some bad things. Leaving school and holing up in some skeevy hotel in the city in order to annoy everyone around him is probably not the best idea. But Holden's bad choices lead him to bad consequences. No one can read this book and come away with the idea that smoking, drinking, and complaining paves the road to happiness.

And just as Holden is confused as to whether he is a child or an adult, it's hard to tell when a kid is adult enough to handle the kind of truth that is presented in Catcher in the Rye. There is a real danger in letting your kid grow up too fast or too slowly. On one extreme, you've got eight-year-old kings, and on the other, you've got thirty-five-year-old basement dwellers. Most parents are shooting for the center of that spectrum.

How do you get to the center? I have no idea.

But realistically speaking, while Catcher in the Rye does have some undesirable content, it's a whole lot cleaner than a lot of the literature out there, which will be required reading in college. Even in one of the most conservative schools in the country, like the one I attended. When kids finish high school, they are expected to magically become adults. Maybe tagging along on Holden's journey will help them get there.

Either way, Catcher in the Rye is an excellent book. The best way to figure out if it's appropriate is to read it for yourself and make your own conclusions. Just make sure you make it all the way to the end.

Regards, best wishes, and I'm not telling you how to raise your kids,

-Cecily Jane

Ignorance and Fire

My Dear Reader,

Last week I talked to you about my self-imposed challenge of reading ten classics in 2013.

I'm pleased to say that as of March, I've read The Hobbit, Fahrenheit 451, and Catcher in the Rye. Not bad, if I say so myself.

These three books were each important to me because, for various reasons, they were books I'd given up on as a teenager. I feel especially bad about Fahrenheit 451 because it's a dystopian novel, my absolute favorite genre. I tried reading it in high school and quit about two chapters in, probably because I didn't get Ray Bradbury's style. I also tried reading some of his other works (I was determined to be a fan of his at that age), and it just didn't appeal to me. I don't know what's changed between then and now, but I just loved reading it this time around.

Fahrenheit 451 is about a dark future in which all books are banned. Firemen, instead of putting fires out, are now in charge of burning books.

So it's pretty natural to think that the book is about censorship, and on a surface level, it is. But the deeper I went, the more I started to realize that it's not really about censorship as much as it's about how intellectual laziness leads to anti-intellectualism. That's a pretty powerful subject.

As I read, I came across this quote: "If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn."

And I thought that quote pretty much sums up my high school experience.

The teenage years are pretty confusing for everybody, mostly because your intelligence has finally risen to a level where you start to realize that the world around you isn't as perfect as you once thought it was. At the same time, however, you are not yet intelligent or experienced enough to know what to do about it. In most cases, this creates a lot of angsty whining. I wish I could say that I was above all of that, but then my pants might combust. 

So yeah, I was a pretty annoying teenager. And I was also pretty vocal.

Did you want to know any of my ideas on culture, religion, or politics? You barely had to ask. Did you want to know what was wrong with anything within my field of vision? You probably didn't, but I told you anyway. I usually managed to be nicer about it than I felt like being, but let's just say that it was easy to lose patience with me in a very short amount of time.

And you know what? A lot of people were pretty honest right back. A lot of people challenged everything I thought and believed. And they weren't always nice about it. And at a very vulnerable and confusing time in my life, it really, really hurt.

But the more I was challenged, the more I had to find a way to counter their arguments.

And the more I had to counter an argument, the more I had to think.

And the more I thought, the more I learned (by trial and error) how to separate what was actually true from what I wanted to be true.

And the more I figured out what was actually true, the more I learned that even though the world was imperfect, I had the opportunity to become a better person and make my world at least bearable.

So, to summarize: I showed my ignorance, I got hit, and I learned.

And what's so great about Fahrenheit 451 is that it shows you what happens when people hide their ignorance. It shows a culture where people want to look intelligent instead of be intelligent. So they read the CliffsNotes and say they read the whole thing. And then they get this weird but common idea that there is too much to read and learn, and it's not worth the trouble. They don't want to be challenged. They want to be entertained.

So they dumb down everything in their life until they are living on an intellectual diet analogous to Twinkies and Oreos.

And when everyone is like that, you know who the greatest threat is? Someone who reads.

That's why they have to burn the books. The best way to hide your ignorance is to surround yourself with people as ignorant as you are.

The really scary thing about all of this is how true it is, and how much I see it around me. What's terrifying is how much I see it in myself. There are days and sometimes weeks when all I ask of the world is to distract me enough so I don't have to think. Maybe it's not so bad once in a while. But on a regular basis? Well, then, it seems to me like I have a choice between burning my ignorance or burning my chance at becoming better.

Either way, there is going to be fire. I just have to choose where to direct it.

So yes, I did give up on reading a book at the same time in which I was essentially living its main conflict. Irony gets you every time. In the end, though, I'm not sure if Teenage Cecily would have benefited as much from the ideas in Fahrenheit 451 as much as I (Present Cecily) did. I think that as an adult, when it is a lot easier to hide my ignorance if I so choose, it is all the more important for me to remember the danger of intellectual laziness.

Of course, I have seven more classics to read, so my brain doesn't really have time for loafing.


Regards, best wishes, and the courage to be ignorant,

-Cecily Jane

Books, Books, and more Books

My Dear Reader,

As one of my 2013 New Year resolutions, I decided to read ten classic novels within the course of the year.

It's actually not as challenging as you think, though, because a while ago I started a habit of putting a classic into my shopping cart whenever I found one at a decent price, and now I own somewhere around thirty-five classics that I've never read.

So, you know, creating a habit of reading those classics is probably a good idea.*

And it's not that I don't enjoy classic stories. I really do. I have seen almost every BBC period adaptation that presently exists.

Yes. That many of them.

I even read a lot of classics as a child. Or at least, I thought I did. I had a lot of those children's editions that had a lot of pictures, and it took me way, way too long to realize that they made room for the pictures by taking out all of the depth. I'm still not over the betrayal.

And I do read classics now, just not on a regular basis. As an adult who has finished(?) her schooling, the vast array of books that are considered classics can be a little daunting. Sometimes it's hard to know where to begin. And since reading is a skill that requires practice, and classic books tend to require more skill than others, sometimes it's hard to know which books you're ready for and which ones you need to work up to.

And some of them are just long. Long stories are a challenge all their own.

But life is about challenges, right? Besides, thirty-five unread books on your shelf is a bit embarrassing for a girl like me. I don't keep them around for decoration.

And beyond that, I know from experience that there's a reason that classics are classics. These books get put in this category because one way or another, they're the stories that changed the world. And that means that there's a good chance that they can change me.

I've already read three of my ten required books, so I'm going at a good pace so far. At this point, I need to choose six out of the following:

• The Iliad
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• Treasure Island**
• Black Beauty**
• Peter Pan**
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles
• The Sign of the Four
• The Hound of the Baskervilles
• Ethan Frome
• The Wind in the Willows**
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz**
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• White Fang
• Vanity Fair
• The House of Mirth
• Moll Flanders
• The Moonstone
• Dracula**
• Little Women
• David Copperfield**
• The Three Musketeers**
• Moby-Dick
• Wuthering Heights
• A Tale of Two Cities**
• Anna Karenina
• War and Peace
• Middlemarch**
• Little Dorrit**
• The Rise of Silas Lapham
• Lord Jim
• A Passage to India
• The Pit
• Hard Times
• The Big Sleep
• Bhagavad-Gita 
• And probably more that are in storage somewhere. I really need a new bookcase.

Why only six, you ask? Well, I decided that one of the books has to be Atlas Shrugged. That's why I need the extra two months.

So yeah, I've got my work cut out for me, don't I?

Regards, best wishes and wish me luck,

-Cecily Jane

*Besides, I already read so much dystopian fiction that they can't print books fast enough to keep up with my demand. It's only fair to give the genre a break.

**These are books that I read a watered-down version of, I half-finished, or I read so long ago that I barely remember them. And a lot of them are books that were assigned reading at some point, but let's just skip over that part.

Cecily vs. Girl World

My Dear Reader,

Most girls don't like me.

Mind you, this is not an emotional conclusion; it's a logical one. I have always struggled to have friends of my own gender, but as a kid, being friends with girls means playing Barbies, and Barbies were boring. Climbing on top of the roof and reading the most recent Baby Sitters Club book was, in my young opinion, a much better way to spend an afternoon.

Oh, right. Most girls don't like me because I'm really weird. Darn.

But when you're seven years old, climbing on the roof was the most exciting thing that you could do, so I did it regularly. I also liked climbing really tall trees. Trees were better, actually, because the roof gets really hot in the summer Sacramento sun. Just so you know.

And I liked doing other exciting things, like riding my bike down the steep hill as fast as I could. Or catching bugs.* Or pretending to be a super hero. And while I was occasionally able to find girls who would come with me on my adventures, they usually didn't stick around for very long. So I had a lot of guy friends, and I got labeled a nerd and a tomboy, and it really didn't bother me much. I figured that the girly girls were just missing out.

As an adult, I know that I missed out on things, too. I still know hardly anything about makeup, clothes, or flirting, and I'm just starting to realize how that affects my (lack of) romantic life. Instead of seducing men with feminine wiles(?), I try to be comfortable and honest with them, which is apparently the worst dating strategy there is. There's also the part where I am super awkward and treat the guys I like as if they don't exist. I'm sure that's not helpful. My guy friends definitely failed to prepare me for that aspect of my life.

And while you would think that a life-long study of several prominent areas of geekdom and a long association with male geeks would come handy in the dating department, it does not. Geeky guys, in my experience, do not like geeky girls unless a) the geek girl is so deep in the geek closet that only he knows her level of geekery, or b) there are no other alternatives.** And there comes a point where if they don't want to date you, they don't really care to be friends with you, either.

So yeah. There were some drawbacks there.

It took a long time for me to develop friendships with women that were actually healthy. Like, where I didn't feel like some charity case. I was in my twenties before I was able to find other girls who were as interested in deep conversations and grand adventures as I am. And sure, I'm still weird. I'm the strangest person I know, really. But it turns out that when you grow up, you're able to find people who actually appreciate that. It turns out that every once in a while, you're not on the outside looking in.

And, believe it or not, the older I get, the more I start to think that certain feminine traits aren't really so bad.

Don't get me wrong; I still skip the boring stuff. I've never been the kind of girl who fits easily into any kind of box. And sure, that means that a lot of girls still don't like me. But some of them do, and I am so grateful for that. I'm grateful for the women in my life who understand that I do my own thing. And I'm grateful that I'm able to understand that they do theirs.

Understanding can be its own kind of adventure.

Regards, best wishes, and sappiness,

-Cecily Jane

*I was one of the best bug catchers the second grade has ever seen. Believe it.

**It's a sad reality. All of my fantasies about Star Trek date nights have been dashed to pieces. All of the time I spent watching every single episode and movie has apparently been a huge waste of time.

Wait, no it's not. Star Trek is awesome.