Not that I'm surprised - Utah isn't much of a landmark (despite its National Parks, obi), but as a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old riding on what seems like an eternal Provo trajectory, it was maybe the tiniest bit unsettling.
Like, my universe doesn't exist in someone else's??? Um okay wtvr but like actually, yikes.
All of the sudden Provo feels like some weird crater-struck iceberg floating in the middle of nowhere; in a place no one even cussing thought about
and here we all are, freezing to death.
Ok pause. I'm really not gonna be antagonistic - at least I'll try because Provo is in my blood & bones, man, it's given me opportunities Charlotte Brontë would cry to think of and taught me viola and provided me with neighbors, which is an actual huge thing,
when you think about it.
Just the overarching identity crises that seem to hit all these eighteen-and-something-year-olds time and again while they stumble around those padded-down HBLL stairs and stare at themselves in those smudged-up HFAC practice room mirrors seems maybe a little too timeless.
You're suffocating in the feeling that your holistic society is leaving you behind, that the cookie cutter somehow broke on you and you're burnt and useless because for whatever reason you can't conform
and that, that is terrifying.
It's kind of like an
kind of situation, and you think "but do you?! do you?" And tbh I really don't know what they want from us.
I think we sometimes feel like Provo is eating us alive; that the iceberg is turning us to ice and we start running like mad because the bigotry and perfectionism just doesn't jive with these preconceived life notions, it's a broken record repeating what they taught us in Sunday School while we stared at the carpet creeping up the walls, sound-proofing the room and doubt-proofing our minds
but hey, sometimes doubt really is the best thing.
DON'T BE SCARED, LOVE
I look at those sweater-clad kids with "freshmen" etched into their faces and high school backpacks hanging off their shoulders and I just want to say
"It's okay, babe."
It's okay that you don't know everything; it's okay that you can't hit that shift ten times out of ten because Christ is not Provo, Christ isn't gonna demand perfect arm vibrato and a 4.0 right now, even though that's the machine you're putting yourself through, the pain of perfectionism and the sickening feeling of responsibility just to not fail.
He wants you to keep going. I want you to keep going. You are an incredible source of power in this fading world; you are color, you are vibrant.
People talk about Free BYU, but I can't stop thinking about Free All of Us - from this mess of mistaken identity and this misconstrued mob psychology city. We need to free us from ourselves because we are not, we are not the byproduct of a shapeless society; we are not the cultural result of something conspiratorially bigger,
we are the something bigger.
I guess what we need to do now is figure out how to jive with what to do with all of that
and I don't really know how to start, tbh, but I think we're gonna get there.
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