Creating Peace Part Deux

Actually it's not a ladder! It's stairs.

I am going to save this scrap paper, because it's so funny to look at it hours later with fresh eyes and see what I was actually drawing. In my mind, I was using the rungs of a ladder to describe what I was feeling about the steps upward/forward I feel I've taken over the years. But of course I don't have any idea how to draw a ladder, so I was really just writing and drawing lines around each section I wrote. Slanted edges, then straight edges, then slanted, then straight, up and up until what I actually drew was a staircase. Love.

The next step I drew reads:

Overcoming anger, bitterness, and life obstacles; learning from mistakes; mentoring/teaching youth and peers; solidifying life skills and relationships; beginning to thrive rather than survive; living simply with compassion, hope, and gratitude for possibilities

As you may imagine, it took me a great number of years from 17 to arrive anywhere close to that step. Continuing on with my tale of my growing up years . . . around the age of 18:

I was accumulating student debt within only a month of leaving for college (and here I was back at the base of the staircase - accumulating debt and financial instability). Despite my long summer work weeks, dedicated savings, and even with a half-tuition scholarship to the little state college I chose, I could not pay for my basic living expenses without loans.

I even relied on heavily discounted rent, thanks to my kind-hearted grandparents' willingness to welcome a know-it-all-yet-actually-knows-nothing teenager into their home. But it was still very difficult to find a small-town college job. After a couple months of daily hunting, I finally landed pizza-delivery work at the now-no-longer Hub City Pizza in Mt. Pleasant, Utah.

If that Volvo hadn't been made predominantly of very tough steel (or if my parents had tried to send me down in any other car but that tank) I wouldn't be alive today. It had over 100,000 miles on it and I gave it at least another 100,000 over the next 9 months. I crossed paths (dangerously) that winter with a great deal of roadkill, trenches, fences, curbs, even temple flower beds . . . but luckily never hit people or other moving vehicles. I had to sit on a pillow to even see over the wheel, and could have most certainly died on many occasions.

But driving around delivering pizzas to townspeople in Sanpete, Juab, Emery and Millard counties was the only work I could find. And 9 months was the longest poor Kenmore (the refrigerator on wheels) could survive my terrifying lack of driving skill. I withdrew from my second semester at college with only 12 completed credits, packed up the Volvo that would cost more to repair and pass state inspection than it was any longer worth, and moved back up north. I knew that with access to public transportation, I could save up enough to continue my studies at Salt Lake Community College.

I moved with my best friend to her grandparents' basement in West Jordan, again for quite discounted rent, and set out to submit job applications to every store-front within one mile in every direction of this place.

I walked an hour round trip to the nearest library once a week to spend only one allotted hour checking and responding to e-mails, my only contact with family or distant friends since I had no phone. Thinking back, I must have talked to myself constantly. I can't imagine not having a phone.

I also spent nearly half a day walking to and from my LDS ward house every Sunday, because I belonged to a religion that split people into ward boundaries and assigned them to church houses that were not necessarily the closest LDS building to them. There was an LDS ward house literally across my street, but the one I was assigned to attend was at least two miles away.

I stubbornly refused a charity ride to and from the building, instead choosing to wake at 6 a.m. to leave at 7:30 a.m. to arrive prior to the 9 a.m. services. Following the three hours of meetings, I would stay behind quietly reading for at least an hour before taking the walk back, determined to avoid any churchgoers who might offer me a ride. I enjoyed those Sundays immensely, though. Looking back on that tells me just how much I've always loved walking, the outdoors, and connecting with my own spirituality.

Within a month I had found two part-time jobs, only 10-15 hours each, at a couple of nearby sandwich shops. I worked and lived in West Jordan for about six months, before moving to a tiny apartment in Salt Lake City where I was able to ride a bike and take one bus to and from Salt Lake Community College. I worked there as a Writing Tutor until 2007, when I transferred to the University of Utah to study for my Bachelor Degrees in French and Applied Linguistics.

I graduated with my second Bachelor Degree in May 2012 - nine years after my graduation from Murray High in 2003. If you had told me when I was 18 that I would have been a college student for that long, I would have cringed. I had expected to begin "contributing to society," by having a full-time job or becoming a stay-at-home mom, much sooner than the age of 28! And yet, as my life progressed in the real world, my dreams of "growing up" did become the reality of my early 20s. I learned from mistakes, mentored youth, and taught writing to my peers. And, I did begin to thrive.

It wasn't one certain step I took necessarily, but looking back on that time I can see that I was progressing during those years, even during the times I had to live paycheck to paycheck, depend on others for my welfare, just try to survive day to day, accumulate debt, and feel constant emotional and financial insecurity. Was I at the bottom of the staircase though, where I had started life? Of course not . . . I was slowly progressing toward bettering myself and my life.