Angel Friends

So insomnia has struck again. Perhaps its the fact that I took a 3 hour Sunday afternoon nap. It might have something to do with the fact that I can tell the people above me are taking showers at 6am. But I've only had 3 hours of sleep so I know that its not because I don't need it. I miss my mom the most during these hours...

I think I've started to get used to the idea of living without her. The other day I was thinking to myself that I will live more years without her than with and it made me wonder what that was all about. Like, will she be replaced slowly but surely by other things? I won't deny that I used her as kind of a crutch through some of my most difficult years. And even now almost 3 years after she's gone I still feel this yearning to talk to her and tell her all my troubles in these early sleepless hours. Mom would laugh that a couple of days ago I had an entire dream-fest about Michael Phelps (totally appropriate, I assure you!) and that I always have dreams about the PPC where I work Friday night before I go in for a Saturday morning shift. She knew me from the very start and loved me enough to let me fight her through half of my adolescence and teenage years without giving up on me in the sense that she thought that maybe someday I could become a civilized person. A person who is able to take all her passion and sensitivity (that usually got misdirected as bursts of fits on poor little siblings) learn to control them and become not only a decent human being, but a pretty amazing person.

Could she have ever imagined that I'd finally start to make amends with her father, a feat even her daughter thought impossible through years of instability and even more suffering on both parts after she died? Could she see how her children would come to realize that we actually were better friends to each other than anybody else we'd known in our lives? I graduated. Barely. Not everyone does that and I don't think I would have given it as much effort had I not known that she thought that was best for me. Well, the experience has broken me down, but then built me up as this brilliant, beautiful woman who wants to follow in her mother's footsteps, patience in the Lord's time her only hangup.

I do feel like I'm special. Not that nobody else is special, but just that I have something different to do that a lot of the people I know. The grass is always greener which is why for years now I've been aching to find companionship and start a little family. Wondering what's wrong with myself has been counteractive, I know, but inevitable in my limited understanding the great Plan.

Ha ha, I was just thinking that a plan is a plan. The plan is meant to be followed, but we are the ones choosing our own life's path that coincides with the big one. The general Plan is just that; our more specific plans less set, more fluid and definitely requires a lot of improvisation as we actually deal with road blocks, forks, floods and any other "life is a highway" metaphor impediments that you can think of.

It's been hard to accept that my plan is so very different from most others, I know. It's hard to not to take the consolation "good job, but you're meant for something else," because I don't have an immediate idea of what the something else is. Yes, I could go on a mission and save lives. Yes I could head off to New York to become the next big Broadway costume designer. I could settle down at a job in Provo until the end of time just waiting for that one guy to finally stumble upon me admist the thousands of others and realize that I am just amazing. But I don't want to do any of those things right now (not that a drive for those goals didn't get me where I am today). I don't feel like any of those things are what I should do right now and I have this almost indescribable feeling that what's next is on the horizon and I just need to be patient enough as I move closer to it...

Well, the sun is coming up and my eyes are stinging a little from sobbing over the whole first part of this. It's one sob closer to wisdom from suffering though and a nobler person to lament over could not be less than my mother. I've realized that the only little figurines that I display and the paintings I have are angels in some form or another. I did not realize this really until last Christmas. I'm usually not a theme person, I'm eclectic by nature. But I think its an unconcious way to help me feel for the presence of her and of Him that I yearn for. After all, through all this whenever I'm sad or lonely and cannot sleep I sing to myself "Angel Friends" from the musical My Turn on Earth and repeat perfectly in my mind my mummy's beautiful voice. It's nice to know that I have other-worldly beings who can still be my unseen comforters and lull me to sleep, taking me away for a little while to build up my strength for another brutal day in which I will hopefully come off champion.