Little Kite Girl

I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  Yes, it’s true.  I’m out.  Honestly, I think tinges of it run through all our veins.  I kind of consider it my “inheritance.”  I have a rather slight case, and almost look up to my Grandma June, who I think, might have been the one who started it all.  (I’m not sure though, because I never had opportunity to have insight into the cleaning and neurotic habits of other ancestors.  Not exactly something you can check on Ancestralfile.com.)  I remember her climbing up on counters to clean the top of the refrigerator, and having a special toothbrush in the bathroom designed to scrub the grout.  I also remember the distinct lack of dust on her thousands of collectibles.  Part of going to Grandma’s was watching her clean and organize and store and clean some more.  Her universe was order, and cleanliness, and love. 

When I was younger, I had a harder time with OCD.  I started to have some of the less common symptoms, anxiety links to certain behaviors.  I remember that it was pretty painful when my Mom noticed that I always turned the TV off on channel 2, and she made me start turning off on 37 or 14.  When my house didn’t burn down as a result, I learned to tell the difference between ACTUAL fears and the crazy ones.  In college, I was still a little neurotic.  I made the mistake of telling some of my friends that my occasional high-stress personality was due, probably, to this tendency in my personality.  I say mistake, because then anytime I was moody or just needed to do laundry, it was an “Is Erin being OCD?” moment.  My mission was kind of singular experience.  I lived in a lot of dirty flats with people who had absolutely no desire to clean up after themselves.  I let go even more, and relaxed into a more “go with the flow” mentality.  Every once in awhile, I feel the anxiety rise in me again.  Usually, I recognize what’s going on because John asks me why I’m “cleaning frantically.”  I think cleaning is the way I deal with other chaos, chaos that I either a) can’t control or b) don’t want to clean up yet.  I’ve found another way to gage my current level of Grandma June-ness.  When I go to clean the lint filter on the dryer, it’s incredibly hard to scrape off the metal screen.  In my mind, I think “Why is this so hard to remove??” when what I should be thinking is, “Obviously, I have cleaned the lint trap far too often, and this little bit of fiber will NOT cause a fire when I throw our whites in to dry.”  Here’s the real question though: If you gage your crazy level with a crazy method, does that counteract the sane-ness?  I don’t know.

Boys at BYU are stupid.  It’s official.  When I first moved here, I was told about the whole “Dating Smackdown” talk given by…um, maybe Boyd K. Packer? Basically, you actually need to DATE.  Make a time, pick a place, pre PLAN.  I thought, at that time, that the talk was kind of funnily irrelevant.  I had dated, and I had relationships that didn’t follow that pattern, but were serious, or serious enough for me at the time anyway.  Turns out, the talk was necessary AND relevant, because BYU boys are DUMB.  And the girls are dumber. 

I went to my little bro’s house last night for a Transformer’s party, and his roommate had some girl there.  Girl was VERY into roommate.  She was very affectionate, open about her feelings and her level of commitment, and quietly attentive to only him.  HE on the other hand, would completely ignore her as she hung on him.  He bought a big screen TV, and I was (rudely, probably) asking how a college kid could afford such a thing.  He answered that he is young and single, and has a good job, and nothing or no one else to spend his money on.  Girl responded: “You can spend your money on me.”  He just laughed.   He was borderline ignoring her.  He didn’t touch her, or look at her directly, she was just like a lamp, or a cushion on the couch- a clingy clingy couch cushion.  It was sad.

Walking to this class (sitting here waiting for my 7pm to start) I saw a cute girl with an ok guy walking toward the road west of campus.  He was saying something about his roommate’s girlfriend:

“She is seriously the cutest, coolest girl ever.  I mean, he is really lucky.  She’s really fun and has a good family…..”

Meanwhile cute girl is looking longingly at him. I wanted to stop them and say, “Ok, she is MUCH cuter than you.  You better get over your Jessie’s Girl syndrome and look at who you’ve got standing right next to you.”  It’s sad.  They probably wouldn’t have even known what JEssie’s Girl is.  Whatever.

Conclusion: Either guys around here don’t feel like dating, don’t actually want to get married or even have a relationship, or they are just TOO dumb to do it on their own.  I can just see it now.  It’s health class, junior year of high school, and they separate the guys and the girls for “those” lessons.  The only thing is, it’s different here in Happy Valley.  They tell the girls that they just need to pick a guy and  follow him around until he finally decides that he’s ready to take an interest and take you out, and for the guys it’s about how they need to remember to wear deoderant and keep their  language clean. 

Phew.  It’s infuriating to watch.  The guys infuriate me, because they OBVIOUSLY don’t value the interesting people they have around them, and the girls make me sick because they allow themselves to be treated like that. 

When I first started dating John, I hadn’t dated since I lived in PA.  There was never anyone in Dalton that I really dated, and I had been on a mission for a year and a half before jumping in my car and driving towards BYU.  When John asked me out…it wasn’t some grand gesture leading to an empty relationship, it was a simple invitation to spend time together.  At that time, most of my friends were guys.  I lived with two girls who constituted my “girl” friends, but my social circle outside of where I lived were mostly guys from my ward or guys from my classes.  As I started dating John more and more, those guys just kind of slipped into the background.  One of them, in particular, went a little weird on me and decided to tell me that I should break it off with John before things got too serious.  John was convinced (and still is) that some of these guys that I hung around were interested in me.  But my question is, interested in me HOW?  They certainly never asked me to do anything with them, one on one.  They never called me or tried to learn about my family or what I was studying or what I wanted to do after college.  They never tried kiss me, or even hold my hand.  So WHAT exactly, were they interested in?  I saw them all the time, they made time to be “around,” and nada.  I honestly wasn’t much interested in any of them, but is this what BYU girls experience on a regular basis?  Just boring blah-ness? 

I’m glad John asked me out.  I’m glad we began to date regularly.  We honestly, didn’t even kiss for quite a long time.  I was still mission-stupid, and he was just getting to know me.  It was commitment.  It was an inquiry into our two lives, to see if we were compatible, and I’m so glad that we found out that we were.