Moving on with life when your stuck on the past

I don't know where this entry is going to go, I guess its more to let my mind wander.  For the past two almost three years, I have had a friend.  At some points in my life he was more than a friend, but I devoted all my time to making him happy, I wanted more than anything for him to love me and care about me and to be happy with just having me being me.  But I was never ever enough to him.  He would like me for maybe a month max, before he would go find a prettier girl, or a girl who wasn't as quirky and blunt as I was.  He would tell me it was my fault things went wrong in his life, and that he wished he hadn't met me.  But other days he would be all buddy buddy, and we were best friends.  But what I realized last night, when he "accidently" hit me across the face, was that he doesn't love me.  I don't even mean in a lovey dovey way.  I mean that he legitly does not care for me in anyway, he hates me.  For the past few months, every since I've had a boyfriend, he has gotten more abrasive and hurtful in the things he says, but I kept trying, he was one of my bestfriends, and I figured I owed it to him to stick it out.  What I realized last night is that I don't owe him anything.  Everyone week I stand and say the young womans anthem "We are Daughters of our heavenly father, who loves us and we love him."  If I am truly a daughter of God, I don't deserve to be treated as if I were trash.  Someone recently told me that I had other people in my life, this person gestured to a picnic table, where almost all my friends were hanging out at.  They asked me what I wanted, I didn't understand the question until later.  What I want is to be happy, and as long as I force myself to remain in the friendship which tears down my selfworth, I am not going to be.  I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I pray that maybe one day, me and him can be friends again, after we have both grown up a bit.  Until then, I pray that I can become a better person, and that he finds happiness in life, as I intend to.

- Katie

Confronting friends

Lately I was a party, where almost everyone was mormon, but my guy friends were acting really inappropriate.  I'm not going to go into details but it was beyond inappropriate, its been getting worse for months and month how they all act, so I removed myself from the situation and went and cried.  I started talking to a few of my girlfriends and they also shared my concern, we had tried getting them to stop acting the way they did before but it just had escalated it, they think its funny or attractive or something, but its anything but.  My boyfriend finally noticed I was upset, and I told him what happened, I finally told him that I was going to tell the stake president about what was happening, because it had to stop.  Then the boys started acting inappropriate once more and my temper got the best of me, and I told them that they needed to stop how they were acting and that tomorrow I would be telling the stake president the things they were doing.  They thought it was amusing and laughed it off, but finally they grasped that I was serious.  It has been one of the hardest things in my life to do, standing up to my best friends and telling them I was going to turn them in.  I sat and cried in a corner and pleaded with God for strength because I knew I had done the right thing, but I had gone about the wrong way trying to accomplish it.  My boyfriend came to find me and sat with me, he told me how proud he was of me for sticking up for whats right regardless of the consequences, that he knew that he needed to be a better influence or something along those lines, I was completely baffled.  I had not done this to be an "example".  But a few of the boys have talked to me since, and told me that they agreed they had gone too far, they appologized to me and told me they were going to stop.  I don't know if I was some sort of catalyst to making them stop behaving that way, but I am thankful that they still speak to me after I yelled at them.  My temper is something I need to work on, but in this case...I suppose it got the job done.

- Katie

How I lost my Father

On September 6th of 2011, my Dad finally took his last breath.  It had been a quick and sudden death with very little warning.  We had spent out summer out at our cabin and had a amazing time, his back hurt a bit, but that wasn't unusual so we wrote it off, however he started getting really sick.  We went home a day early, slept, and then the next morning when he wasn't any better, in fact he was worse, my Mom took him into the hospital.  A few hours later, me and my brother Alex got a call, we had to come to the hospital fast.  Me and Alex headed and met our grandparents and other two brothers there along with a few other extended family members.  We were told that my Dads bowels were dying and they were going to go into surgery, and that it was risky.  They allowed us some time alone with him before he went into the surgery though, he had his parents, his wife, his three sons, and his baby girl around his bedside, he was tired and hurting, but told us how much he loved us.  Through my tears I asked him to tell me one final bedtime story, its called the schnigginfritz, it was a story he had made up back when my older brothers had been little, because he would tuck us into bed each night and tell us a story, but some nights he would be too tired to read one, so he created one.  After he told us the story, he gave his wedding band to Alex and said "Take good care of that, I'll be wanting it back" and gave me his engineering ring.  With his very little strength he gave me a hug as I left the room, the last words I know my Father heard me say were "See you in a few hours Dad".   I did see him in a few hours, just not in the way I had thought.  The surgery had not been successful, they couldn't find any live bowel tissue, but they left him open, saying they would try operating again.  They tried once more a day or so later, but again there was no live tissue, they tried one final time before the announced it was futile, that my Daddy could not live.  I couldn't be there when they turned off the life support, it was too hard.  I was at home, talking to my boyfriend on the phone how scared I was when my Aunt Karen told me that it happened, that he was gone.  In that moment I had never felt so alone.  Nothing made sense, I was so angry with life, that God could take away my Daddy from me when I still needed him, I was even mad at my Dad for leaving me, even though I knew it wasn't his choice.  Everyone else was still at the hospital other than my aunt Karen and I, so we just cried together.  Losing my Dad was not in the plans for my life, but I remembered a talk that had been given at EFY, it had been the thursday night, my cousin had actually been the session director, he called up a boy named Jaden, Who told us about the death of his brother which had happened right before EFY, and how much the atonement meant to him.  It didn't just mean we were forgiven of our sins, it meant we were worthy to enter heaven, and that one day we would be able to see those who we had lost.  Steve (my cousin) had called me earlier that week and talked to me about it.  I cried so hard, I missed my Dad, and I did not understand what was happening, but I knew if anyone deserved to go to heaven, that it was my Dad.  I miss him more than anything, and I still don't understand why he had to go, but I know he is in heaven, My Dad was and is my hero, I will always be his little girl, one day, I will be with him again, until then, I will continue to pray for the strength to continue.

- Katie

So I am starting this "BLOG"

Hi,
My name is Katie and I'm a sixteen year old girl, I'm a member of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints, and I'm proud to be.  I have decided to make a blog about my day to day life, the things I feel, the things I think.  Mostly this is for my own good, but if I can strengthen others along the way, then I will feel extremely blessed.  This blog will be covering a lot of stuff.  Dealing with highschool, the death of my father, financial troubles, quarrels with siblings, dating, entertainment, pretty much anything and how I try to keep my life clean in the sight of my heavenly father.  If your reading this, than you should know I have a testimony of the true restored gospel of Jesus Christ, I have never done a blog or anything like it before so this is going to be a lot of trial and error but I'm going to try anyways.  Talk to you soon!

- Katie