I've realized that throughout my life, there have always been extremes. Either very high highs, or depressingly low lows. This has resulted in a pretty unbalanced, me.
My childhood was not ordinary. My parents married very young and both came from extremely unstable households. I don't resent them, they did the best they could, but as is known, there is no handbook & mistakes were made. Early on, I learned to expect the worst. I would be told and promised things that never happened, and before my teen years, I had given up hoping for anything at all. Preparing for and expecting the worst became how I lived, and unfortunately, I wasn't too often disappointed.
By contrast, I have had many miracles happen in my life. Things that should not have happened to me. Probably one of the biggest of these miracles, was my acceptance into BYU immediately following high school graduation. Listen, I was not supposed to get accepted into BYU, not statistically. I don't know if God felt bad for all the times I didn't understand white idioms as a child, but he tacked on a scholarship in addition to my admission. You'd think I'd be weeping with gratitude at this point & becoming the most devout, Christlike person in Provo, but no. I was a punk kid & slept through most of my classes (at one point, my backpack consisted of a pillow & a blanket).
Not many people know this, but by my junior year, my parent's generally tumultuous marriage had reached an all time low. My little brother Ian is the greatest thing my parents have ever done for me & at this time we became closer than ever. Ian has always been very mature, he rarely cried as a child, and by the time he was 3, tantrums, whining, fussing; it all ended. He had just turned 6 at this point and as we got closer, he began to cling to me; depend on me. I couldn't leave the house without him crying; it got to the point to where attending school made me feel like I was abandoning him. He started calling me mom, and it was at about this time that my mother stopped talking to me. As Fall semester started, I realized I was depressed. I would stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning just lying in bed, and sleep in until 3 the following afternoon. School was the furthest of my priorities, and after some triggers, I decided to withdraw from school, sell my car, quit my job, and move to California. I didn't tell anyone until I was at the airport. I just needed to get away.
I was in pure bliss for 4 weeks. Ian would call me on my mom and dad's phone almost everyday saying that he missed me and asking when I'd come home. Eventually, I stopped answering. His voice-mails would tear me apart. Often he'd be crying saying that he missed me and he needed me. My dad called me from BYU on one occasion in an effort to convince me to come back. But, I was happy in San Diego. I was living with my aunt and uncle and in those 4 weeks, my aunt Jolene taught me what it was to be a mother. She was the most loving, caring, understanding, interested person I had ever been around. She remembered things I would casually mention, we would go to lunch, we would talk for hours, she would drive me to church & pick me up on Sundays even though she isn't Mormon and Sunday was her day off. She was another miracle God gave me, to teach me what it's like to be loved. My dad called me one day in November to let me know that he was coming to San Diego to drop my great grandma off in Mexico. I hadn't seen her & missed her terribly. I agreed to go with him to Tijuana, but was resolute that I wouldn't return with him to Utah.
Long story short, I came home with my dad because the truth is, I will always be a Daddy's Girl. Nothing makes me happier than making my dad happy, and I knew that in the long run, returning to school was the best thing for me to do. I remember sitting in the car as my aunt kissed me good-bye, "You are always welcome here, " she told me. She didn't want me to leave, but in that loving way that only she's mastered, she supported me. I returned to BYU Winter of 2012, and after a depressing semester, I was told that I had let my GPA slip and was suspended from BYU for one year. I wasn't upset. I have always known that things happen how they're supposed to happen, I was totally at peace. My mom stormed out of the office & let me know how much of a disappointment I was to her, and my dad & I moved into a condo in downtown Provo.
I began working with my dad and we became closer than we had ever been. My dad became my best friend; I still remember staying up until dark thirty in the morning talking about the Gospel and eating ramen while watching Storage Wars.
One day, my dad's lawyer came in to Diego's to order some food. He knew about my interest in law so we often had conversations & knew each other fairly well. As he finished ordering he said, "So, the divorce is final." I looked at him with a blank stare, "What?" my parents have been saying they're going to get divorced since I was 10; I still have the journal entry I wrote in magenta crayon that is wrinkled with tear stains, from the first time they sat us down to tell us. What did he mean 'the divorce was final'? "Yeah, like your dad can date other women, now." Okay. I am easily the most jealous person I've ever met, and I am particularly possessive of my dad; just thinking of him dating other women made me nauseated. As cold and unfeeling as I had become, the minute his lawyer told me this, I felt myself regress to a child & the ball of emotion in my throat was on the verge of making itself manifest. This was it, I thought; I've become the statistic. I'm the 1 in 2 people who come from divorced parents. What am I going to say when I start dating someone, and he invites me over to family dinner, and his parents ask about my parents & I have to say, 'they're divorced', and his parents think, 'oh, she comes from a broken home,' and they decide I'm not good enough? Clearly, I lost it.
I was now, 21, not in school, from a broken home, without a car & to add insult to injury, my skin decided it was time that my acne, which never came in high school, showed up. I was in a lull. I was worthless. I wanted to move to Kentucky and live with my gay best friend, James whom I am in love with & just forget I had ever lived in Utah. But God had other plans. My dad served an LDS mission when he was 18 in Paraguay. His mission companion was Carl Hernandez, who I met not long after my world was starting to dissolve. Carl is the assistant dean at BYU Law. One day he came to Diego's & introduced himself, "Come sit and talk to me, I'll tell you about your dad." I was particularly mad at my dad on this day, but as I heard Carl talk about the kind of missionary my father was & his unshakable testimony, I began to see what an amazing man I have as a father. "I heard you wanted to go into law, come see me sometime." HA! If only he knew what a screw up I was, "I don't think school is for me," I responded, "Just come see me, we'll talk. If you don't, I'll call here until you do." I don't know what he saw in me, & I don't know why I felt I had to, but I made an appointment to see him a few weeks later. This is the third miracle; meeting Carl. I asked my dad to come with me, not really knowing what the objective of the meeting was, we met, I told him a synopsis of my depressing situation & sat back, sort of expecting him to say something along the lines of, "Oh, well I didn't know you sucked at life, never mind." As we sat in his office Carl said to me, "Jessica, you were accepted into BYU for a reason. I can tell without looking at your grades that you are very smart. If you'll let me, I'd like to help you." Again, I don't know what he saw in this messy-haired, slump shouldered, sad-eyed person on his couch, but he stood up, walked to a bowl he had on his desk and gave me a polished rock that had the word "BELIEVE" engraved on it. He knew my hope was dead. There was something about the way he looked at me that told me he could see into my soul; he knew I was depleted, but he insisted that I believe in him, and believe I could make it back to school.
I don't know what Carl saw in me, I don't know what my aunt Jolene saw in me, & I don't know what the admissions committee at BYU saw in me; but I do know that God places certain people in our lives with a purpose & I am eternally grateful that these people are in tune enough with the Spirit to follow the instructions God gives them. Under Carl's supervision & instruction, I reapplied to BYU, got re-endorsed by my bishop and stake president, and yesterday at 8:00 pm opened an email with shaking fingers which read, much to my relief, that I had been re-accepted. My patriarchal blessing says to work hard in school, & to realize that trials can be opportunities for growth; let's just say, this past year, I've had quite the growth spurt.
There aren't a lot of things I am sure of, but I know for a fact that the best is yet to come.
