Abandon Ship: Or, Some Things I've Finally Figured Out About Life

Like many high school seniors, I celebrated my graduation with a "senior trip", although mine was a little different. For one, we left the week after the fourth of July, not immediately after graduation. Also, I was the only senior aboard.


From left to right: Layla (10 months), Natalee (17), Erica (18), Bonnie (12), Hanna (16), Ashlin (16), and Carly (15). Not pictured: Camille (20), who had to leave early

My family owns a 1/6 time share of a houseboat in Lake Powell, a giant freshwater lake in the middle of the Arizona-Utah desert. Our boat has air conditioning, a flat screen TV, a water slide, and two bathrooms. Deal, right? I thought so. But I couldn't get a single one of my senior friends to go.
Since we only have one sixth of the summer, we meet with the other houseboat owners midwinter to assign weeks. Our family's prep and planning for the trip starts a month or two in advance. They needed to know how many friends I had early on, so I started recruiting well before the summer, only to be turned down by literally everyone I counted as a friend throughout high school.
A few of them had legitimate excuses. "I'll be in Montana that week" or  "I'm spending eleven days in Israel for my graduation trip and I won't be able to get more time off."
But most of them didn't. One girl got a fast food job the week before we left and didn't bother asking for time off. The restaurant is so lenient, they let my friend Tessa work just Saturday shifts all through the school year so she could balance homework and lacrosse. If she'd told them "I can start a week from Monday," they would have let her. Another girl told me in May, "I don't plan that far ahead, so let's just go with no." But my favorite is the girl who, when invited in February (this is a July trip), said, "I can't. I'm cleaning my room."
Chirp.
Chirp.
I've been in her room. It's not that big. Plus, she said she needed to "get it ready for college". She's living at home for college.
So I brought four of my neighborhood friends instead. Three of them have stuck by my side since elementary school. One's a newer edition to my neighborhood, but she's been there for me in my darkest hours. My sophomore friend brought her younger sisters along. The more the merrier, right? When we were done, the ages of our party ranged from twelve to twenty.
I talked with my boss weeks in advance to make sure I could get it off. Camille took time off as well, and she had to leave early for a family reunion, but she committed to as much of the week as she possibly could. There's always room when you make it.
The day before we left, one of my fifteen year old brother's friends called us up to say that by some miracle, football practice had been canceled for the next week. Could he tag along? This was my trip, so my brother and parents turned to me for an answer. I almost declined out of petty jealousy. Did he really need a friend? Why should he have this miracle last-minute friend when mine said no six months in advance?
But I let him come. I'm proud of my brother and wish I would've been more like him at his age. Confident, fun loving, and surrounded by friends. All friends bring drama at the worst times, but no friend should bring you loneliness at anytime.
Then the morning of the trip, I had a dream that Hanna called. She said she'd accepted an unpaid job running the tech for a play in a city an hour away from our home. For an hour, I lay in bed, unable to separate dreams and reality. I wondered how the driving arrangements, meal plan, and other details would work with her gone. But most of all I wondered why all of my friends would put absolutely anything before me and my trip.

Hanna, Queen of the Cliffs

I told Hanna about my dream on the way down, and she laughed. The same sort of "that's absurd" laugh people gave when I told them about my friends who bailed. That is, when they're not staring at me in slack jawed stupor or asking if my friends are druggies. She told me she wouldn't miss my trip for the world.
That's when I finally realized the truth: I hung out with derps all through high school. One time I invited six girls to a backyard party. One of them asked me to take a picture of her on our two person swing. The next day, I found it on facebook with the caption, "Nothing says summer alone than being on one of these by yourself."

In the end, I'm glad for the way my trip turned out. The kind of people who can't stand the stress of talking to a boss, leaving Mommy's side for a week, or marking a date on a calendar wouldn't be able to handle jumping off thirty five foot cliffs or hurtling over the water on a jet ski at fifty miles an hour. They'd spend the whole trip lying in our stuff cubby bunks with three foot ceilings. We had our quieter adventures: lying out on the top deck, heart to hearts on the beach, and hiking the desert rocks in search of cell service. But after the best week of  my life, I've decided that I'm not built just for safe harbors.


Life, especially teenage life, is supposed to be enjoyed. I didn't realize that through most of high school. A lot of my older posts talk about how "real" teenage life is actually pretty boring. I now know that I misrepresented teenagers as a whole, that I took my experience and tried to make it universal. Real friends make an effort to see you outside of school more than a few times a year. Normal friends talk to you on a Friday night, not just in class. True friends are there for you in the light, not just your darkest hours.
I am eighteen years old. I laugh without fear of the future. I'm proud of every passion and pain my teenage year brought me, and now I'm a young adult. I have a fabulous, colorful, lovely, adventure filled life ahead of me, and nobody, friend or foe, is going to stop me from living it.


The New Marriage Deal

These are the souvenir earphones my school gave out for Senior Dinner Dance. They're miles beyond our prom key chains that broke a week later, and as a bonus, they come in a commemorative box that could pass for a ring case at a distance.

My friend Matt took full advantage of the fact. While our principals looked on, he knelt down and proposed to the nearest girl, our friend Faith. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of the looks on their faces."They thought it was real!" We laughed as we made our quick getaway across the parking lot.That's when I realized it could've been. Marriage isn't a joke for us anymore. We laugh the most at things that are forbidden, but now we've crossed that threshold. Soon, Matt will be kneeling down for real.Just maybe not to Faith.

My friend Shelby is already engaged. We were Sterling Scholars together-a departmental award/scholarship competition put on by every school in the state of Utah. I didn't know her at all beforehand, but we posed for pictures and shared a table at the awards banquet. Yesterday I got home from work, clicked on my facebook feed, and the first picture to pop up was Shelby flashing a Diamond ring from a bridge with some boy.We have been out of high school for twenty two days.And she's only the first.My brother came by the computer, glanced at Shelby over my shoulder, and said, "Married by eighteen, divorced by nineteen." But I know that's not true. Some people have the perseverance it takes to get it right the first time.My mother's parents divorced when she was in kindergarten. One of her elementary school teachers fit all the divorced kids at one table. When my grandmother's parents separated, it was Something Polite People Don't Talk About. But when I met with my Sterling Scholar adviser, she scoffed at the sheer number of divorce essays she'd seen for the Hardships I've Overcome prompt. However real their heartbreak, divorced kids don't qualify as sufferers anymore.Divorce is new. Newer than two other marriage delayers, prolonged lifespans and educational pursuit.
Young brides are shamed. I've never had a boyfriend and I'm headed to the top school in Utah. But all I ever hear is "Don't get that MRS degree too fast." Of course, it's worse when you're actually a bride, according to teen bride blogger Natasha Craig. Some of the responses she's heard include:
"You're too young to know what real love is."

"Are you even old enough to sign the marriage certificate?"
"Are you pregnant or something?"
You know what? 
If a young couple gets divorced, they'll do it without your help.
If a young couple turns into an old couple and sit gray haired on their front porch surrounded by grandchildren, they'll do it without your help. And you were never helping in the first place.

Old lovers are just young lovers who grew up.

Modern people, no matter what era they live in, seem to forget they aren't the gold standard for normal. After marriage, the next biggest place I see this is college. Leaving home is the traditional, natural, normal way to attend college. I didn't even know staying home was an option until I was sixteen. I thought all the college kids I saw hanging around the neighborhood must be home for the weekend. My parents never explained it to me. So it still baffles me whenever I say "I'm going to BYU in the fall", and the response is, "Oh, are you living down there?"
Note the going part.

This is going.

This is staying.

I've read years ago about some Indian tribe (Hopis, maybe?) that believes in adding rooms onto existing homes instead of kicking adult children. But besides that, absolutely every culture I've encountered, visited, or read about believes in growing up and moving out. I can't think of a single place or time across the wide expanse of human history where this wasn't the standard. There is no shame in passing a traditional life milestone when your heart says it's time. Let's hear it for Shelby and her soon to be husband Bronson.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. Genesis 2:24