Do you see this pencil? This pencil is special to me. I don't use it much, but I need to know where it is at all times. If it ever breaks, I might have a hard time throwing it away. Anyway, on to the topic at hand.
I've written more than once about my compulsions. Generally, I know where I got them and now I find them more of a side interest to who I am. This is about my writing obsession, or rather, my need to have writing utensils and paper with me. I've always had a thing with paper and pencil. In high school, I once put a whole year's notes of one of my classes on one narrow-ruled piece of paper. I always used narrow rule because I thought wider rules were a waste, and I didn't want to waste anything. Because of the narrow rule, I had to write small. That led me to mechanical pencils because they had narrow lead. Mind you, at the time, mechanical pencils weren't cheap and weren't nearly as ubiquitous as they are now.
When I went to college, my office-supply obsession switched to high gear. I didn't have the funds to really let it fly, but I never realized there were so many ways to write things, so many different papers to write upon. My engineering classes used a type of green graph paper that was easy on the eyes yet the quad lines on the back bled through enough for me to write away on "blank" paper and have the lines guide the writing. It was also a fine paper, using a finer pulp. My writing could be nice and tight and I fell in love with the stuff. I had a dopamine rush every time I filled a page and tore it off the pad. It brought such a sense of satisfaction.
Because I was a mormon at BYU, I had felt the pressure to go on a mission. It wasn't exactly overt. My closest friends had all gone on missions. I was told that to be a good person, I needed to go on a mission. Mostly, I felt gratitude for being able to find such good friends and while college was difficult, I completely enjoyed it. I was learning so much. I also had a girlfriend, and my gratitude to God extended to meeting her and I wanted to be a good person because she deserved to have a good person for a boyfriend. That isn't to say I didn't have issues. I wasn't fond of LDS culture. While I had my reasons to believe in the Book of Mormon, I wasn't exactly proud of the writing style or even some of the narrative. I won't go into the difficulties I had in school and other personal matters. They factored in greatly to what the next year was to unleash on me.
To prepare for my mission, I bought a new engineering pad. I was going to write half a page a day to my girlfriend, send two pages per week to her and that would be my mission journal. I had it all planned out. I wanted to become good at writing about what I was experiencing and share that with her.
When I entered the Missionary Training Center, the depression hit. It hit hard. I didn't know that it was depression at the time, but I started to become someone I wasn't. The indoctrination at the MTC was strong. I didn't have any real knowledge of the culture or really participate in it at BYU and I grew up outside of the Mormon Corridor so I didn't know what people were talking about half the time. I lost weight. I hated the isolation I felt, as well as the forced companionship the job entailed. I guess I felt dishonest about everything. Don't get me wrong, I was a believer. I didn't understand what was happening to me though. I didn't understand why or how I could share my faith effectively with anyone when my defining relationships were being severed. The church was taking away from me some of the greatest things about my life. In those few moments when I shared what I was honestly feeling, I was sent to counseling. I was told that I should go home as I was clearly emotionally unstable. Then the panic that set in. My friends would reject me. My school would reject me. My girlfriend would reject me and I'd have to live my life as a failure amongst those that believed like I did. I knew damn well how accepting the culture was to missionaries that left (it has since improved, I'm told).
Did I tell my friends how I felt in my letters, in my writing? No. I lied. I lied because I thought that it was expected of me. This was supposed to be the best time of my life, and I was beginning to resent every waking moment. During my time in Switzerland, the depression never left. I didn't get money from the bank. I was still losing weight to the point that none of the clothes I had fit me. A member of the church there took in my pants about 6-7 inches. My belt had long since run out of notches and I had to have one hand in my pocket at all times to hold up my pants. It got to the point where I couldn't function and it was determined that I should be sent state-side if for nothing else but to eat. I don't know what I wrote at the time. When I spoke to my then girlfriend many years later about it, I found out how much I had lied about it then. I was becoming all that I didn't like. I wasn't honest with the people I cared the most about. Yeah, I made some excuses about why I was sent stateside, the big reality being that I was starving to death, but I never phrased it that way.
When I was stateside, the depression continued. I don't remember what I wrote about at the time, but I did write. I never gave up writing during that first year. Still, it was probably becoming more and more feverish as my mental state kept going bad. In my first summer there, I had transformed into a person I hated the most in my life. I lashed out in my writing. I let the missionary culture into me and I became an ass. Deep down, I hated myself to an extent that I can't fathom even now. My girlfriend, if that word could even qualify at that time, had enough and told me to get lost. So I did. It was the wake up that I needed. I stopped being the person I had become and I tried to find myself in all that rubble. I stopped writing for the most part. I'm not sure where along this path I equated writing with honesty, other than my sheer desire. At this point, I had betrayed any sense of honesty that I had. I had slipped into survival mode. I didn't write because I couldn't be honest. I didn't write because I didn't want to remember any of this. I didn't want to put any more brain cells to what I was and who I was.
As a side note, I never blamed or accused my then girlfriend of anything. Yeah, I hurt, but I was also a jerk. I never wished her ill or spoke poorly of her. At the time, I never wished her anything but the best and all the love this world or the next could give her and that goes for today as well. My wanting to forget never involved the time with her, but my reaction to my mission as a whole.
So I came back to BYU, having behaved myself to the point where they couldn't send me home. I had been accepted into my degree program and I also took a custodial job in the early mornings. The difficulties that I had before my mission with school persisted to a point, but getting into my program completely had turned all of that around. I was dating like crazy. When I became more involved with Tracy, she never pressed me about my mission and I wasn't volunteering any info. I simply wanted to forget all of the pain and anguish I felt during those years. They didn't define me and they weren't who I was.
One of my custodial jobs was cleaning out the auditoriums in the business school. In my first pass, I would pick up trash and junk before my next pass with the vacuum or sweeper. Business students use almost nothing but mechanical pencils and the lost a lot of them. The most common were those Bic things but every once in a while, the better ones. I kept all the incidental pencils and pens. The expensive ones I put in the lost and found if I felt the person could be attached to them. I soon had a collection that I couldn't manage, so realizing that the only real value to them was the lead, I collected the lead and threw away the rest, except for the good pencils and pens, that is. That is where I picked up the above pencil. It was a Pilot brand. I loved their pens. This pencil was special though. For whatever reason, mechanical pencils have a little nib at the end where the lead comes out. It is only about 2mm long, but with someone as obsessive as I was, that was 2mm of wasted lead. This pencil was different. That little nib was pushed back into the pencil. I could get more use out of the leads that I had. It had a nice click. It had a good feel. I went through the rest of my college career, even my masters, with that pencil.
I kept the leads and better pencils after I graduated. Every time I went to BYU to visit, I would buy another engineering pad, even though I didn't write to anyone. I would occasionally go to the office supply stores just to handle some of their goods, but I didn't buy anything. That is, until I became acutely aware of Back-To-School sales. I put a limit on what I could spend, but I did spend and now I have more paper / pads / pencils than a sane person could use. I think I have a handle on it though.
When it comes back to my frustrations with my honesty, 2011-12 loomed large in that respect. Just like a coiled spring, I couldn't keep it all in anymore. It started to all unravel and scatter all over the place. I tried to keep it to myself, but it soon spilled over into conversation. I found people on-line and I began to finally be honest in my writings. I began to be honest about the things in my life, my feelings, wants, and desires. One particular morning is quite memorable. I sat at my computer and started writing about all those things that I was afraid to write about before. It was truly the culmination of what I felt about writing and actually doing it. It transformed me, but first it kicked the s*** out of me. It led to discussions, arguments with Tracy and with myself. It tore down all the walls I had built up. It almost took away all that I had done, the relationships that I treasured, but I had to be honest. I couldn't put that genie back in the bottle. After a lot of soul-searching, Tracy and I came out of it okay. I'm still probably more deferential that I should be, but I'm honest about it at least.
I bought some books about writing, let my interest in poetry out, and even received a few books as gifts to help me along. Reading a book of love letters was a revelation, in that I found people could express such deep emotion on a page. I even bought a book on how to write them, as it affected me so deeply.
So here I sit, with a bunch of paper and pencils. My brain tickles me into wanting to write all the things down, but reality is such that if I do write, it will be on the computer. Just handling the pads will calm my mind from a lot of anxiety, because I found myself in them. In the end, it might be all that survives me, other than a landfill full of computer cables. I doubt it though. Who wants to read the rambling of a millennial survivor tilting at his own windmills?
I'm not sure I'll ever revisit that period of insanity again in my writing. I'm finally getting over it and have accepted what it did to me. (I'm now 50. I process things slowly, I guess.) Well, I've always accepted it to some degree, but in a person's early 20s, a person can change so much and so many things can get established. I acknowledge that I was dumber than a rock and immature in a great many things. I still have issues with those that should have known better, but what can ya do? My life has been uneventful for the most part, just one of gradual self-improvement. I'm in a pretty good place overall. My wife still loves me. My family is doing okay. I'm pleased with my uneventful career. My friends, for reasons unknown, still tolerate me. Yeah, I collect paper, soap and various cologne and candles but I'm mostly harmless. I'm trying to minimize and refocus and I hope my last few years on this planet will be worth my while. I hope yours are too.
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