It's Been a While... But This Makes Up For It!

Alright, so, as ambitious as I was when I started this blog, I have obviously not been as ambitious in updating it. Instead of informing you of all of the crazy shenanigans and adventures I've been on since my last post, can we just pretend like we are ex-lovers who run into each other in a grocery store? Yes? Alright, How have you been? Fine? Cool, me too... alright, looks like we're all caught up, now...

I felt the need to blog about my day today because it was full of adventures and, well... blog-worthy,

My day started with an alarm at 4:00 A.M. in order to commit an act of (slight) civil disobedience. Let me explain: I'm currently taking an 'Art for Elementary Teachers' class (hold the laughter, please). Every week we have an art project to do... usually something simple, like a painting assignment, or come up with a lesson plan that teaches an element of art history. This week's assignment was, well, a little different.

This weeks assignment was to create a work of "guerilla art". For those of you who are not familiar with the genre, "Guerilla art, also referred to as 'street' art' , is a method of art making where the artist leaves anonymous art pieces in public places" (straight from the mouth of Wikipedia itself). The teacher showed us a few examples... mostly "funny" things... like someone changing signs for couches in stores to 'butt shelves' or strange random pieces that felt more like vandalism to me....

However, when I think of guerilla art, I tend to think of something slightly more... well... honorable? Guerilla art has always been a way to make a statement in my mind's eye... Like the Guerilla Girls:

So I decided that I wanted my art project of the week to have a message... no random pinwheels in a field or singing my order at McDonalds... A real message... so people not only just 'know that I'm here', but know that I'm here and want to be heard. Being at BYU and homosexual, it wasn't very hard to think of something to stand for. My mind immediately went to the recent article in the Daily Universe about helping LGBT churchgoes feel more welcome in the LDS church. I reread the article for inspiration and my eyes kept settling on the statistic in the article: 74% of LGBT BYU students have suicidal ideation, and 24% attempt suicide. The statistic is true, it's shocking, and it's personal.... And thus my idea was born.

I wanted to use this statistic and have an art piece that made it real for people... but not too extreme. I went to the dollar store and looked around for ideas. I saw the little children's inflatable arm floaties and decided they would be easy enough to tape together into a person...

After I taped them together into a (roughly) human state, I decided my little guy seemed a bit naked... I still didn't really have a game plan at this point, but I at least decided he needed some clothes. A quick scrounge through our apartments D.I. bag granted a pair of basketball shorts and a plain white tee (hey, there Delilah, right?). But plain white seemed kind of... well.. plain. I drew this year's Provo Pride symbol on the shirt and quickly wrote the statistic from the article on the shirt:

 

I realized then, that I still had to have a place to put this guy that would not be too extreme, and also, reasonable ( I obviously couldn't haul him up to campus without being seen doing it). Being made out of pool toys, I decided on the duck pond. It was not too extreme and I could easily "dump the body" quickly. I also decided to add some balloons to the piece for symbolism, color, and I was worried about the shirt getting wet and blurring and the message getting lost, so the balloons gave me another place to write the statistic. 

The only thing left was to ditch the body and leave it to do it's job. I decided on 4:00 A.M. for the drop time so that it was early enough that I wouldn't get caught and late enough that it wouldn't be discovered before people were coming to school. 

I was way more nervous about leaving this piece in the duck pond than I should have been. There was NO ONE there, and my friend Brecca and I were in and out in under two minutes, including snapping a couple of pictures to have proof of the piece for the assignment in my art class. 

I stressed for the rest of the morning about the survival of my art piece baby.... I drove down 800 North instead of my usual route to check on the little dude... At 8:00 A.M. this morning, the piece was still there with several people checking it out. Sadly, by 10:00 A.M. when I got out of class, the statement piece had already met it's demise via the BYU grounds crew (those jerks...). 

I was pretty depressed about my project's short life after I found it gone. But even as I'm writing this now, I realize that the passion, excitement, rush, and satisfaction of doing this project meant a lot more to me than it making national news. And while all of five people may have seen my statement, I still feel satisfied and liberated by my guerilla art and what it meant to me. 

P.S. OH YES! ... so just as a last-minute side-note.... I also got to put my rusty first-responder training to the test today! A gentlemen in my Philosophy class this morning passed out, and in the midst of the panic and chaos, I sprung to action! Yep, that's right all you Philosophy students who look back in question at the weird, white-haired, tattooed girl that sits in the back row of your class... bet you didn't know I was a superhero! ;) 

Too Late to Drop Out?: My Journey To Here

Today is the first day of my Senior year of College at Brigham Young University.... the end is nigh. And while I'll be leaving this school without the warmest of fuzzies and....ummm, how should I put this?... well... let's just say I won't be buying BYU onesies for my future children... There are many parts of my life and personality that I owe to BYU for helping me discover (even though they might not like some of them...).

My decision to go to BYU was influenced by a lot of different factors including: misinformation, finances, friendships, and hidden prerogatives.

I like to refer to my household growing up as having "hints of Mormon" - my parents' backgrounds in the church led to their parenting having the LDS church's principles as their base... I remember one day having to go talk to a very intimidating guy who asked me if I was good and if I believed in all of these things that I didn't know what they were... 2 days later... I had to step into a "bathtub" and get dunked under water.... That was that...we never re-visited that event...

Years later in high school, I only had one friend that I clung to; however, our relationship was very unhealthy and estranged. Our friendship was solely based on the fact that I had a car; and whenever she started dating someone, our friendship became nonexistent... We would hang out once a week or so for a month, then she'd start dating someone and not talk to me for a few months or however long her latest relationship lasted. I know what you're thinking... why would you keep being her friend, then, Allie? Well.... She was the only friend I had and... I had a huge crush on her....

In the midst of the flurry of high school seniors announcing what colleges they were applying to, I asked this friend what her after-high-school plans were and BYU was her go-to school. So, of course, I applied "just for the heck of it". I asked many opinions of the school from various sources before I submitted my application. It was my parents' opinions that finalized my decision to hit that 'send' button... They told me that, though BYU was a Mormon school, being LDS was not required (Just like how Baylor is a Baptist college, but you don't have to be Baptist to go there)- there were plenty of nonmembers- and that because I was baptized I would get the super cheap tuition, too....

After being accepted, I still didn't know whether to go to the school or not... but there was something that I used to finalize my decision.... I didn't want to be gay.

I had heard the stories about this college being cupid's secret lair. Like all freshman girls entering BYU... I was under the impression that I would be married by the end of my first year (MRS Degree, here I come!) . Surely with all the RMs running around asking everyone out on a daily basis, I couldn't like girls even if I wanted to... (p.s. that didn't happen).

So here I am entering my senior year at the college I decided to attend, so where am I now? To answer that question, I'd have to tell you a bit about where I've been...

FRESHMAN YEAR:

Well... That high school friend wouldn't allow us to be roommates, but insisted that we would hang out and meet up all the time.... yeah, that never happened.

Instead, my freshman year ended up with me rooming with four completely random girls in an apartment a mile away from campus...Things were awkward at first, but that's to be expected, right? After a couple of months - realizing that I was not on the fast-track to a freshman marriage - I mentioned to one of my roommates that I thought I didn't really like guys... my first verbal attempt at coming out (despite not being able to say the words 'gay', 'lesbian', or anything close to 'I like girls').

Well that half-hearted attempt turned into one of my worst nightmares. The roommate I shared that information with shared with my other three roommates. Those four girls went on to ruin my entire freshman year, and thus, my opinion on being LDS and gay...

During the remainder of my first year at college, I was reported to the all-so-famous Honor Code Office.... six times... by my roommates. Their allegations started out innocently - just reporting me for being gay and that they thought I liked them (that one's a bit arrogant)... However, their later reporting was desperate lies to get rid of me (Such as claiming that I go through their underwear drawers when they're not home...).

I ended up selling my contract, leaving early, and living the rest of the year with my aunt in orem...

However, somehow through the midst of all of that... I made a single friend in my ward... and we were able to be roommates the next year...

SOPHOMORE YEAR: 

My sophomore year was me curled up back in the closet... It was actually going very well at first! 

I was living with that friend I made... and looking back on life... she was the first legitimate friend I ever really had. On top of all of it, the additional roommates we had all knew each other beforehand and we all became really cool friends: sunday-night song jams, random midnight trips for ice cream, movie nights, etc. It was everything that I thought college life was supposed to be like!

Unfortunately, my sophomore year ended with me in deep depression.... At the end of the first semester, my friend had obtained a boyfriend. And while she still made time for us and we still did many things together, I still had an unnatural hatred for the guy she was dating - despite him being an amazing man. It wasn't until they got engaged that I realized why... I was attracted to her.

It was then that I realized that no matter how deeply I closeted myself, no matter how many 'crushes' I made up, no matter how deeply I immersed myself in the gospel I was surrounded by at BYU, and no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise... I, Allie, was gay.... I was gay and the realization made me incredibly, incredibly depressed... skipping classes and church to stay in bed the entire day, leaving the apartment and hiding in drainage ditches or storage sheds I found in Provo every time my friend was home, and self-harm all became frequent habits in my life. In the midst of it all, I had several suicide plans and different scenarios that would launch each one...

JUNIOR YEAR:

My junior year terrified me... All of my roommates and friends from the year before left on missions or graduated or dropped out of school... It was like my freshman year all over again - I was going to be living with complete strangers and their judgments...

I decided to just not interact with my roommates. I never talked to them. The less they knew about me, the less they'd have to judge me about. I never talked to them.  The semester was just school. I got up, went to class, rarely spoke to anyone at school besides that one girl that was in every one of my classes (Carly), went home, did homework, went to bed, repeated.

Then something happened - One day, instead of a regular lecture, there were some guest speakers in my sociology class. Members from an organization called Understanding Same Gender Attraction, or USGA, came and talked to our class about their experience going to BYU and being gay... experiences that weren't good... experiences that sounded like mine... but how their experience changed after finding the organization of USGA... how they found refuge in a group of people with the same experiences as them.

The next week (the last week of the fall semester), I attended the USGA meeting with Carly (which took every ounce of courage in my body to invite her to come with me- and included a mini panic attack before and after said invitation). Just walking into that room in the Provo City Library changed my life... I was immediately welcomed by President of the organization and others in the group. Honestly, today I can not tell you what the topic of discussion was that night at USGA, but what I do remember is that I smiled. I smiled. Allie, who still had a suicide plan in place for Valentine's Day the following year, smiled for the first time in 10 months...

I continued attending USGA meetings for the rest of the semester... needless to say I did not end my life on the 14th of February...

SENIOR YEAR: 

Well that brings us to right now! Like I said, today was the first day of my senior year of college at what has been recently delegated as the 4th worst university for queer students...

I am still very active in USGA- and I am proud to report that I am currently serving in their leadership.

There were some things I left out of this background story (people, cancer scares, coming out to friends and family (WHICH I DID), etc... ), but I feel as though what I have written has been the things that really led my journey.

I now have an extensive support network through USGA, including my current best friends... I want to put as much into USGA as a leader as I possibly I can, because when it comes down to it...I owe my life to this organization.

Scars remind us where we've been. They don't have to dictate where we're going.

I Might Be a Vampire...

Being raised in the midst of the 'Vampire Era' of social media, there was always one thing about vampires that I always found interesting and relate-able - no, I do not have an insatiable thirst for human blood, I am not nocturnal (despite what my mother thinks), my teeth are of normal proportions, and I definitely do NOT sparkle... in any form of the word... which actually brings me to my point....

It was always just one factor of living the vampire life that stuck out to me...How frustrating would it be to not be able to see your reflection?! Don't worry, when I pass by the mirror, I see every fly-away and stain on my shirt; however, there's always been something in my reflection that I've never been able to see - and that's, pardon the pun, my 'sparkle'.

It's hard to listen to those who love and care about you tell you the many things that they think make you who you are while you sink into the basic random-head-nodding-'uh-huh'-'yeah'-'hmmm'-turn away-'I-guess-you're-right'-pattern that you always use because you feel their compliments and pep-talks have little truth because you've never seen what their referring to for yourself. Not only is it depressing to feel that way, but it hurts to make yourself disagree with the friends that you trust about EVERYTHING... just because of your blindness to your own qualities and abilities.

I don't really know where to pin-point the cause and origin of these feelings. It could stem from never feeling good enough and that I could never do enough to fill those I looked up to with pride... It could be from living in an environment such as Provo where the things that I feel define who I am have to be suppressed due to fear of being kicked out of school, or being rejected from society... or heck, I could be half-vampire and literally can't reflect internally but can see my physical reflection, who knows?

I'm lucky enough that I have the friends and family who are able to tell me the qualities that they see in me despite my inability to see them in myself. Hopefully as they relay my reflection to me, it will slowly chip away at the wall of low self-esteem I've put up around myself.

And since we're talking about mirrors, this is the message my mom left on my mirror when she left me on my own my freshman year of college. As I enter my senior year of college, the message remains - despite the mirror being made of cheap plastic and moved hundreds of times, being broken and falling apart on multiple occasions, and nearly being washed by various roommates... the message remains... and though I have to see the imperfect reflection of myself in the mirror when I look at the message, the love behind it allows just a little of that sparkle to show...

p.s.: I would like to formally add that I am not in any way a vampire...