Maybe We Were Made, We Were Made For Each Other

I didn't realize until recently just HOW unhappy being in Utah made me. Sure, I knew that I was homesick a lot, and I missed my friends who weren't in the Provo area, and I talked about what a sad, strange little place Happy Valley is, but I never had anything to make a comparison with.

I never noticed that I was slowly dying, starving to death under a weight of unhappiness. You think I'm exaggerating, or being melodramatic. Look at this, though: when I came to BYU, I weighed somewhere around 125 pounds. When I went home this summer, my weight had dropped to 105, and probably sometimes below that. I spent two years not eating, and it slowly stripped the weight from my bones. Sure, there were other factors. I can't eat when I'm stressed, and finals week is a stressing season. I can't eat when I'm emotionally traumatized, and there were some pretty traumatic events over the last two years. But what about the times that I wasn't stressing or traumatized? I didn't realize it just like the way you don't realize how dingy your favorite white t-shirt has become until you hold it up against a brand-new sparkling white t-shirt. Then you feel your cheeks grow hot as you wonder why people weren't laughing at you for wearing that old, grey rag.

I've gained weight this last week, I can feel it. I'm hungry for food again, suddenly, in a way I haven't been in years. I'm getting out of this place, and I'm finally rid of that undercurrent of unhappiness that was choking me.

Maybe you still think I'm exaggerating, that I'm blowing things out of proportion and making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe you're perfectly happy here, and you generally are no matter where you go. You say that it's not the place, it's what you make of it, and that I was prejudiced against this foreign place with its high walls of rock and its strange, scrubby landscape. The truth is, I've tried being happy here, but I'm not one of those people who can just be happy anywhere. I have a very definite sense of home and of fitting. It's not some misguided pride that keeps me aloof and half-starved, it's a very real feeling of alterity that bends me until I turn back again, back to where I came from, back to where I fit, naturally, unquestionably, seamlessly.

And it's not a matter of loving some people more or some people less. No matter where I go, I will always miss people, and miss them deeply. But if the choice is left up to me where to go, I know a perfect little green valley and a perfect little house with a perfect leather couch. And maybe Keely will be my roommate and Mike will be Art's roommate, and it will be so fitting, all of us together. I'm going to go eat another slice of pizza now and think about it all.