Love is not Love

A personal essay by Lindsay Taylor

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.

August 28, 2020. 

He was light, yet he was dark. Like the rippling waters of a disturbed lake, hidden beneath the mist of midnight. He was hard to see. It was only with time that I distinguished him, out from behind a persona he’d built like a wall. Little by little, a handhold here and a foothold there, I climbed it. Peered over the edge into the tempestuous abyss. He’d hidden himself with care, wielded a blinding light with skill, to shock the eyes before they could see clearly the man that stood in the shadows.

It wasn’t a marriage. Luckily, it wasn’t a marriage. Not in the truest sense, at least. What it was is an almost-marriage. A near escape. A dream shattered like broken glass; no way to gather the pieces without drawing blood. A broken engagement, as they say.

East of Eating: The Intersection of Steinbeck and Anorexia

 A personal essay by Sophie Plantamura

One girl's war with food, one novel's unexpected significance. 

One of the many products of
my morning smoothie cravings. 

8 am. I wake up with the fortuitous desire to really try and eat more today, paired with the craving for a smoothie. Ready to take advantage of both of these daybreak intentions, I set out to the kitchen, my cold feet cushioned by slippers, my bony shoulders wrapped in my blanket. My blanket drags on the floor as I sleepily turn on the blender. 

First step: almond milk. “Easy,” says the voice in my head, “almond milk only has 30 calories a cup—go crazy!” The same rationale persists as I shove handful after handful of spinach into the blender. But then come the seeds: hemp, chia, flax, all of which my dietitian told me to increase in my breakfast, all of which trigger a tsunami of anxiety in my sick brain. 

The Fear Litany

A personal essay by Janaya Tanner

Seeking to understand fear through examples set by my dad.

I have always known I am a lot like my dad. I knew it when he read all the books I read. I knew it when we liked all the same TV shows. Yet, my dad was always mysterious and different to me in a way I couldn’t understand. Like the Greeks attributing the weather to a pantheon of gods, I attributed my dad’s abilities to magic—a magic I wanted to have. Though reserved, he never seemed shy. He took on new challenges with stoic zeal. It was like fear didn’t affect him at all.

One Christmas break in college, I discovered Dune by Frank Herbert and fell in love with it—the incredible new worlds, the political intrigue, the technology so like magic, the unforgettable characters. I shared my new love with my dad only to find out he had never read it.

Big Canyons and Small Things

A personal essay by Mattea Chipman

“Identity cannot be found or fabricated but emerges from within when one has the courage to let go.”-Doug Cooper

“Mattea, as you get older you will realize that your husband will eventually just turn into his Father.” 

I turned and stared at Craig. 

“Wait,” I thought. “I didn’t sign up for Craig.” 

I pondered that for a long time afterwards. Are we all just splitting images and personalities of our parents? How much do our families define us? 

If I am half of each of my parents I am one of those dollar toy stretchy monkeys, one arm holding onto a cliff, one arm holding to the bank on the other side of a canyon. Stretched thin and dangling in the center. 

My family is the definition of opposites attract. 

It all started at the wedding. It was a disaster, and then a party.

Call of the Wild Things

A personal essay by Lauren Nelson

"And the walls became the world all around." -Maurice Sendak, 'Where the Wild Things Are'

It was 10pm on a Thursday when I found myself racing down Provo Canyon. White lines ticked past until eventually I wasn’t in the Canyon anymore. Mentally picturing the piles of work awaiting me in my apartment, I reluctantly pulled off the throughway and turned around in the Heber City Walmart parking lot. It was time to head back.

Three years ago I was in the Nxai Pan. I was three hours over lumpy, sandy, dung-beetled roads, two hours and fifteen minutes from the last time I saw goats in twig fences. A national park in Botswana, the Nxai Pan was the flattest, most remote place I had ever been, a full four hours from any recognizable civilization. On the drive into the wild, I suddenly found myself surrounded by fifteen giraffes all dotting the circumference of my horizon.

Spiritual Warfare

An essay by Anne Brenchley

"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes matter of life and death to you." -- C. S. Lewis

Growing up in a faithful family from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, meant a few things. By the time I could walk, I knew who God was and that He loved me. By the time I could form sentences, I knew who Joseph Smith was and that God picked him to be special. By the time I was eight, I could speak in front of congregations about why I loved Jesus. By the time I was twelve, I had picked out which temple I would be married in and had a list of required attributed of my future husband.

I had been spoon fed these truths, but it wasn't until I grew older that I decided to look into why I believed these things.

Monsters and Modern Medicine

A personal essay by Hannah Gladwell

Anxiety wasn't the monster under my bed. It was the monster in my head.

Photo of author by Martin Wyall

I was lying in bed a few weeks ago when a dull but persistent ache blossomed in my chest. It began in some unnamed crevice of my anatomy, pulsing with my heartbeat. An isolated symptom and nothing to be concerned about, certainly; nothing but the creaks and groans of a body lived in.

Of course, my mind does not deal in logic. 

Bolts of pain in my chest. Bolts of fear in my brain.

Learning to Love My Sister Again

A personal essay by Mikayla Krupa

"Let her be taken care of: let her be treated as tenderly as may be." - Jane Eyre

Even before she changed, my sister told me often that I would do great things with my life. Her wistful comment that I was a college person and she was only a high school person made a frequent appearance in our late night conversations. Though I quickly offered her the same assurances I always did, praising her witty personality and perfect grades, the memories of lost car keys every morning nagged at my mind. She forgot everything, lost everything, mismanaged her time, upset easily. We both knew that she was right. She was a high school person, and college would be a death sentence. If only I had been the older child. I might have been able to spare her from the mental anguish she would endure for the next three years. 

Scars and Stones in the Fog

 A personal essay by Claire Owens

"A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar.” (Stephen King)

My Scar

“How did you get that scar?” Mckenna pointed at the white line across my wrist. 

“Ah,” I turned the white of my underarm towards the ceiling and peered down the mark. It followed my vein up to the edge of my palm. “I got lost after practice once,” I explained, “And the cross-country coach usually locks up the school once everyone’s come back from their run. He’d already closed down everything when I found my way back. While I was climbing over the gate, the chain-link fencing on the top snagged my arm, I guess.” 

“Oh, that’s sort of cool,” Mckenna remarked. “I can’t even imagine you doing something like sneaking onto school grounds.” She laughed. 

I smiled, thinking of the grueling 5ks and worn-out sneakers and foggy mornings. Every week of high school had led up to the climatic Saturday morning meets filled with youthful runners and that humid fog before sunrise. 

Homeland Hurting

A Personal Essay by Stefanie Shepley

With my family falling apart, could I really claim that everything was beautiful and nothing hurt?

Dulles International Airport

The foreign-exchange students and the scuttling businessmen didn’t notice the Toyota shaking in the Virginia heat. The Dulles International Airport rattled with comings and goings this time of year, the ins and outs of a thousand moving people. Moaning goodbyes and excited departures. Too many Toyotas to count.
But this one shook. The fake-leather interior, coated with a fine layer of goldfish crackers, was hollowed out by sobs. The big kind. The heaving and the hawing and the bursting that only comes from utter confusion and panic.

My Playlist #9

a personal essay by Allen Gregory

"The best music transcends your playlist or your CD and moves into a different place in your life, It becomes your companion."  - John Mayer

The earliest Christmas I can remember, at the age of four, while most children had a hoard of toys soon to be forgotten, I got a 3x3 inch brick radio that I didn’t know how to tune, my grandfather tuning it to the first station he could find. 

How pivotal that little dial would be.

The heavy rotation of Led Zeppelin, The Who, and The Beatles were the building blocks for a lifelong love of music.

The Better Part of Valor

A personal essay by Washington C Pearce

That's me, on the left. The calm before the fight really starts

Injury is an inherent risk of life, but some wounds are deeper than skin, and change our lives forever.

Simon Garfunkel’s “The Boxer’ plays on the speakers behind me. I’m trying to exercise again, but the pain in my arm prevents me from moving how I’d like. Every pushup sends bolts of lighting through the nerves, from my elbow to my head, reminding me I’m an idiot. 

Weak. 

I’d failed, justly, and now I’m paying the price in pain. Grunting, I refuse to listen to my arm and push up off the ground another two, three times, before the pain is too great and I roll over, panting. I have to get better, get stronger, or else I will never win again.

George and the Dragon

 A personal essay by Spencer Bates

Confronted with the impending specter of death and the chaos of our universe, I had to relearn what it meant to be a Christian--and what it meant to be human.

A terrible thing, to be as Gods. We stand on this whirling orb, weak, naked little Atlases, a great Red Dragon bearing down on our shoulders with the entire cosmos in his train, all bent upon our destruction day in and day out. What a burden to carry! What a heavy cross! The Atlas of myth towered; we Atlases of reality cower, knees tucked to our chests under the fury of the sky-dome’s onslaught. 

My knees tremble and my heart murmurs under the weight. It is heaviest when my bicycle’s rear tire unexpectedly skids across the steep trail behind me as the world whizzes by, when a semi materializes out of the corner of my eye and into my lane, when the snake’s rattle jumps up in a fury from just under my feet. My heart convulses and my mind spins, and everything else seems a dream. 

Do I bear this weight alone, or have I help?

Demisexuality: What Is It?

 A personal essay by Shoshana Weaver

One girl's journey from feeling broken and different to discovering her demisexuality and how the pieces fit together.

Books are my lifeblood. Their stories have fueled me, shaped me, and inspired me. As a young girl, I read about “Once upon a time”s and “Happily Ever After”s, falling in love and creating a life together. I longed to find that for myself. Like every little girl raised on fairy tales, I dreamt of finding my Prince Charming and a romance of my own.

But when it didn't happen the way I expected, I thought I was broken. Until I found a word that helped me understand more about who I am and why I do the things I do. 

“Demisexuality.” Most people have probably never heard of it. I had never heard of it until I was 22. Some might even say it sounds strange-- my brother once told me it sounds like someone attracted to demi-gods from ancient myths, though that’s not really what it means.