September 7, 2008

• A Special Person

  We continue our series From the Dorm Room To The Altar with  a special post from Paige (xanga name trunthepaige ). Paige is well-known for everything from her political viewpoints to her beer reviews. Like several of us so far, she is willingly sharing the mistakes she made in her 20's so that you don't have to repeat them. I hope you'll take her words to heart. And by the way, please do subscribe to each new writer if you like their material, and tell them so! It took a lot of work and courage for some of these authors to write their columns.
  
  I leaned
  so much from Susan. She would baby sit me when I was a little girl. One of
  my aunts oldest girls, 10 years older than I am, she knew everything
  there was to know. I idolized her and for a good reason. Susan was not
  ordinary in any way.

   I wish I could tell you all about her, but
  that is not what this is all about. I am here give my sage advice on
  those years between living as a child with your parents and becoming
  your own family. Then as you start your own family, potentially you and your mate will become
  parents, thus producing offspring and starting the cycle all over again.

  I
  mentioned Susan because she was perfection in my eyes, a major player
  in the way I lived life as a schoolgirl. Her life is still a major
  influence on the way I am today.

  As a child Susan’s IQ was
  repeatedly tested. It was higher than the people testing her had ever
  even seen before. She had lots of different tests done, due to her not fitting in very well in first grade. She kept calling her
  teacher “stupid” and wanted nothing to do with her classmates. She
  thought she knew better than the teacher, and in some areas she just
  might have.  Susan was my second cousin, ten years older than I was,
  extremely tall, with blond hair that was just shy of her being able to
  sit on it.  She was just simply gorgeous. That is not just my opinion--no, she was obviously what God had in mind when he created women. I
  loved her and she really loved me. Susan never stayed out of touch with
  me very long. Others lost track of her for years at a time.

  Her
  flaws and her strengths were related to each other.  Susan never took
  anyone’s advice. She did everything her own way and usually that way
  was better than any other. She took on conventions and made things work
  by breaking them. She had no faith in anyone except herself, but no one
  was smarter than her and it usually worked for her. Other than her
  social life, though--that never did work out very well. She tried reinventing
  the way relationships work in the same way she “improved” everything
  else. Relationships, she seemed unable to improve on those. But she
  never talked about that very much.

  I was just like her growing
  up minus the ultra intelligence and extreme beauty. OK, actually a much lesser
  version of her except for my flaws. I was reinventing the way life
  worked as well. Family told me not to do things a certain way and I
  would prove them all wrong. You can have it all. All the fun, all the
  play, and still get an education. And make a good living, all at the
  same time. Boyfriends could share the rent, play fun games when the
  lights went out. I could make them become serious, loyal creatures, when
  I decided that is what I wanted out of them. Notice I don't mention my
  faith at all. I was ignoring that aspect of life then, so there is no
  point taking about it now. It was not part of that life. You can see
  that my faith (for those who don't know, I am a Christian of the
  evangelical sort) would have agreed with everything I was rejecting. So no, that faith was not convenient at the time.

  Susan died of cirrhosis of the liver, at 30 years old. She died alone, dead a week before anyone missed her.

  That
  started me thinking. But no, it took another two years, and another kick
  in the butt. Finally it all came together for me. My God and my
  parents were all correct. Those boring social conventions were not
  just there to make life boring. Life can not be reinvented to be the way
  you want it to be. My new friends were never really friends. They were
  gone as soon as I needed them, not the new family I thought of them as.
  No, those friends were not judgmental towards me, because they did not
  care enough about me to be judgmental. Real family were those people
  willing to anger me in order to tell me the truth. They were those people willing to tell me 
  that I was destroying my  life one stupid decision at a time. They
  called me "whore", when I was being one. They called me "irresponsible" when that is
  what I was.

  No, I never hit anything resembling a gutter by most
  standards,  but neither did Susan. We both had one talent in common. We
  both were very good at making money. We were very good at our chosen
  professions. But a profession may just be the least part of life. Funny, that is what almost everyone thinks is the key to a happy like. If
  that is what a happy life is all about, follow my footsteps and go
  straight where I turned, I suppose.

  So take that as an bad example of the
  way to do things. The one thing I did right was admitting I was wrong.
  I admitted it to my family, to my old friends, to myself, most
  importantly to God.

  My advice is that God and family are the
  most important part of your life. Don't forget them or ignore them--they love you. Their words very well might save your life even if you
  hate those words.

  The only other advice I have is just as
  important and maybe more so. Not every family is functional, their
  advice might really suck.

   Your path is not set in stone, don’t
  be to proud to change directions and admit when you are wrong. Pride
  can kill you. You can start all over and get it right the second time.
  The most gifted human I have ever knew, slowly killed herself rather
  than change her path. I am such a lesser person than she was. But I
  learned from her mistake.

  Thanks, Paige, for that powerful story about a role model. Visit her site here if you liked the story, and tell her so! And yes, we'll have ANOTHER guest writer tomorrow. For a while he's been quiet on Xanga, but back in the day he was one of the best writers I knew on here. Just don't call it a comeback, ha. As you can tell, I'm just a little excited about this series! And please RECOMMEND the stories if you would--these writers put a lot of time into this, and they're gracious enough to let me post it on my site instead of among their usual readers.
  

  • 5:05 pm
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