Maybes.

I’ve imagined a lot of things lately. I wonder about my testimony.

I wonder about the war in Heaven. I wonder about all those people who went to follow Satan. I bet a lot of my friends went with him. I bet a lot of people that I respected and admired and looked up to went with him. I bet there were people more intelligent than anyone I’ve ever met on earth so far.

I think it really tore me apart.

I imagine I got frustrated with all the spirits on Heavenly Father’s side when they would say things about the spirits who followed Satan. “Oh , they’re all just so completely nuts,” someone might say, or “Why would they not want to follow our plan? They’re so clueless.” I bet I stood up for them a lot to all the spirits who refused to see them as anything but foolish. I bet I thought about taking their side.

Maybe that third of the host of Heaven had a good point, even though we trivialize and berate it so often. Maybe those fallen ones understood how much agency would suck sometimes.

Maybe they realized how horrible it would be when one person, stripped of his or her memory, decided to impose his or her agency in a cruel way towards another person. Maybe they saw rape and murder and child molestation and starvation. Maybe they saw broken hearts. Maybe they saw cancer and arthritis and all the diseases. Maybe they saw despair and suicide. Maybe they saw all of those horrible things and thought it wasn’t fair to judge victims for eternity based on such lives; lives tainted through no fault of their own, but instead marred and defiled by circumstances or other people.

And what about when people screw up other people’s lives without meaning to? What about when our own curiosity or forgetfulness or clumsiness ruins everything for another person, or for a hundred persons, or for a thousand persons? I can think of lots of people who I have hurt without meaning for it to happen.

It just doesn’t seem fair. There’s something not right about it.

Sometimes I think I would prefer to be forced to choose the right thing always. I’m so stupid. And even when I know the right thing to do, I often don’t follow through with it. it would be nice to go through life doing everything right, even if it never proved anything.

So why am I here?

I guess I opted for this side only because of the atonement. And I had to be sure that the atonement would cover everyone for everything, no matter what. I had to be sure everyone would get a chance to hear about the atonement and everyone would be able to use it as many times as they needed to. Even if that meant a lot.

I think even then, the idea agitated me.

Bad things can be so pervasive and relentless and self-perpetuating. But what else could we do? I don’t know.

I feel crappy. I feel like I’ve either abandoned or been abandoned by every good thing that I ever had going here in Utah or anywhere in my life. I feel very alone here. I feel like whenever I’m around people I know, its an act. I feel like I need a fresh start, somewhere else. It doesn’t feel like I can fix any of the messes I’ve made and I don’t really want any pity, though I think I’m understanding a lot more about people who need pity all the time. Some things fuck you up pretty bad.

I wish that I could start my life over knowing all that I do now. Really. I wish I could start again as a little tiny kid. I’d be a better first grader, a better student son, a better friend to more people...I’d be more outgoing than I was. I‘d be more confident about how I looked and how I acted. Maybe I’d even try to ask girls out instead of just going along with them when they asked me. I’d be a better brother. I’d be more articulate, more sympathetic, more intelligent. I’d put more of a concentrated effort into everything I did, making sure it was the best I could do. I’d lay out all my issues and problems for my parents and family really early on so that we could work with them truthfully. I wouldn’t get into strangers’ cars as a teenager. I’d be a missionary.

Maybe this is why the whole reincarnation concept is so appealing.

Life hit a different kind of low tonight at IHOP. It’s been working it’s way down for a while, and then all of a sudden every link in the chain of perpetual misery was there in the same place at the same time, sitting within tables of each other and everything and everyone felt so hopeless and fleeting. Nothing was solid, nothing was reliable, nobody could be friends, everyone is suspicious. There’s always something new to catch your eye and set your hopes on. Depressing.

I have to wake up in less than four hours so I can go rehearse. I don’t feel like dancing. I don’t want to go to the damn football game or get diet cokes with lime for women who have lots more money than me. But I will, until I can change things. I will change things.