I haven't blogged in so long that it's nearly impossible to say everything I want to say in one post, therefore, I have decided to condense the story to the best of my ability and then elaborate later.
Plot 1
After graduating BYU-Idaho and leaving Rexburg, for what I hope will not be eternity, I moved back to SLC with Veronica in the Summer of '09. We were living the high life too--let me tell ya. We moved into an apt that we couldn't afford, being that we didn't really have jobs and all. Totally NOT ready to take on the world that college had prepared us for. Yet we were totally ready in every way. That whole Summer was fantastic. We spent everyday by the pool, hanging out with Jac, who is now Veronica's boyfriend for what seems like FOREVER, and basically just spending all our savings at DSW Shoes (k, maybe that was me, Veronica is more of a Payless kind of girl, love HER :-)) We tried going to our new Singles Ward, for all you non-LDS, it's a Mormon church for single people. Basically, the whole point is to get married and have babies. Veronica and I SUCK at it. Everyone in our ward drove Bentley's and looked like Abercrombie models. Once, in Sunday school, I smelt the girl next to me BURNING. True story. She had literally just come from the tanning salon prior to Sacrament. I'd know that smell anywhere. Needless to say, as much as I love living above my means, it was too much to handle every Sunday. We sort of started ward hopping...which in the end, leads to no hopping at all... Just standing...still...in your apt on Sunday NOT going to church at all. By the end of the Summer, I was bored with Utah. Veronica moved out of the apt into a townhouse, we had harsh words, and then I took off to California. (This is really leaving out a lot of important factors, but this is a blog, not a confessional, after all).
Plot 2
I moved to California. I moved to Los Angeles. Somehow I was really not aware of what LA consisted of at this time. My map location skills have always been a little rusty. I had no idea that I was a canyon away from Malibu, or that Beverly Hills was 20 mins the other direction...or that Hollywood was literally only miles away. It all sort of just hit me oneday. It wasn't the shock of where I was, or how far away from home I was...but it was the realization that somehow my life would never be the same after all this. I knew I wanted to live there. I knew it was where I'd always be. Yet, there was this nagging part in my heart that knew this was going to be a wave and I was going to try and ride it for as long as I possibly could. I was right about the wave part. It was more like a tidal wave. It was a big ass tidal wave that I got stuck in. I can't even spill all the details at this moment. It was the most beautiful disaster I had ever experienced. In all it's fabulousness, my life turned into a pretty mess. I went from a semi-normal girl, who had been living the BYU-I honor code for some time now, to complete freedom where nobody knew me and I could do whatever I pleased. It didn't happen like that over night, but now that I look at the whole picture, I guess it did. I cannot blame LA. I will not blame any of my friends that I made while I was there. It could have happened anywhere, I just happened to be in a city where things seemed more acceptable. I've always had agency and known right from wrong, but over time....I lost my discernment. You can't be in a worse spot in life as you are when you can't discern whats good and whats bad anymore. It's all downhill from there. So--to spare the FANTASTIC details of Bryson's life in SoCal, I will just simply leave it at this: LA was everything I hoped it would be and more. If I could do it again, I would. I'd probably make all the same mistakes and love it. I will miss it and cherish my time there for a long time, but I now know it is time to move on. I made some amazing friends there, fell in love, fell out of love, and then came back to the people that always loved me even when I pushed them away, my family.
Plot 3
Moving back to SC, especially under the circumstances in which it happened, was more than horrific. I had a pretty good job in LA, I loved my job actually. I had a boyfriend, I had a car, I had a place to live, I had awesome friends, and I had a life. I went to work oneday, had dinner with friends that night, and then the next morning was on a plane to SC. In 24 hours, my life went all haywire it seemed. The next day I woke up in my old bed, my hot pink room, with pictures all around of me in a life that seemed like it never even existed before LA. I had forgotten ALL about who I was before LA happened. I still don't understand how and what that even means. It just did. As painful as some things were in LA, I just laid in bed and cried. Constantly. Nothing made sense. I had no idea where my life would go from here. How could it??? I had gone from a happening city back to my house at the end of a dirt road....with chickens. Did I mention we have chickens? Uhh, we have chickens. All my high school friends have moved on in their lives, most married with families. No one lives in Walterboro anymore. But I do now. I swore I'd never come back once I found a way out. And now here I was. You can't know this ache in the pit of your stomach until it happens to you. I felt like I was always on the edge of something really big in my life and then I gave up when it got too hard. IS that how it was??? Or is that how it was supposed to be? I'll never know. But here I am now and good things are starting to happen again. I had a couple conversations with a friend of a friend of mine, who I think she might have sort of had this same situation happen in her life, just a little similar. She told me that I had to move on and basically focus on myself and leave LA in LA. It was then that I realized I was spending everyday reliving all the good and bad that had happened there, but not living in the present at all. I don't even know her, but it was a true revelation. Things have been moving in an upward direction ever since. Now I'm in love. Really in love. And I'm being loved back, which is honestly something I have never felt before.
NOOOWWWW, if anybody really even read all that crap I just wrote, thank you, haha. The other posts to follow this will be much shorter. I just felt like, for myself, I needed to bridge the gap in time on my blog. It HAS been 2 years after all.