The Burial Of My Blog.

Writing used to be something I looked forward to doing. That is no longer true.

Truthfully, I’m not exactly sure why. I used to love writing. It used to be a passion, something that I thought I rather excelled at. Now, it seems as if my appreciation feels more like a burden. Something I have to do.

This is not at fault of this blog, rather than my sudden lack of motivation as well as creativity. I have no drive to write. No thoughts. No original ideas. My writing now feels staged, as if I’m compiling a bunch of words hoping I can create art. This art, I generously refer to as, has no emotion lately. The blogs I’m vaguely attempting to write seem ablaze at first, but now feel like another failed project. What once was a source of my pride and joy feels like a job. Therefore, I’m quitting such job. It gathers virtual cobwebs and wreaths of flowers as I metaphorically mourn the death of my liveliness.

I’m engulfed in the guilt of my own failure, academically as well as personally. My fingers lie lax on the keyboard, hoping for inspiration to dance upon the letters. Rather, they rest with nothing lifting them. 

The death of my words has been a slow one I’ve not fully come to accept, until this moment. I’ve even bought a leather journal as a feeble attempt to let my words wander, with no direct purpose. To let them find themselves again. But they only scribble, ending in pressure from the pen to the paper, in what turns out to be a scream- imprinted in the thin pages.

It's frustrating as well as disappointing. That something that has so affected my life can be shut down so easily. But all things change, and this is no exception.

And so here it is. The goodbye I've been procrastinating writing. I won’t fret though, because these words represent me. Doing the best that I can, floating in an abyss of possibility, amounting to nothing.

Thank you so much to all of you who have been with me through this journey of self discovery, and to those who have supported me and pushed me. Thank you to my english teacher Mrs. Gull, who helped inspire me to start this blog, and continues to inspire me.

I hope to write something for you soon. 

Lungs

The air I'm breathing becomes thicker, weighing down on my lungs.
Sometimes I find it easiest not to breathe at all.

Letting the air envelope me in a tight hold, I lay. Breathless.
Empty.

The feeling of emptiness wasn't negative or painful rather than it was total bliss.
Nirvana.

The weight of the world was lifted for a moment and I could stand tall.
But then the blanket of air fades and I wake, surrounded by angry faces and regretful souls.

Ant

Her presence seems to most ghostly. A subtle interruption in the flow of the air, a single breath among millions. You don't have to fly in a plane to see her as an ant, she is that already in comparison to her peers.

She knows this is true, and it doesn't kill her spirit. She busies herself with more important things. She silences herself by raising her voice for matters she finds important.

But every now-and-then she finds herself wondering as to why she is still just an ant amidst great humans. Her voice is so loud, but it is also the quietest silence. On paper she is strong, in speech confident. In her head stuttering and tripping over phrases she would speak, if she did not constantly worry of disapproval.

She fears being forgotten. Being hated.

She wants to be noticed, to be admired. But ants can only leave footprints so far until the tracks cannot be seen.

Puppy Barn and the Horror Stories Behind It.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2016: As Puppy barn is regaining popularity, I would like to bring back attention to this obvious crime that is so commonly overlooked. Excuse any factual/grammatical errors, all of this data is from August of 2015.


Puppy Barn. The beloved store and attraction in American Fork, Utah where unaware people looking to give a home to a puppy may do so. But there are strings attached.

Walking into Puppy Barn you see seprate breeds in unprotected cages with a lining on the bottom, water, food, and a toy. Each litter is separated in different cages. It sounds, and frankly, it looks innocent. But it is not.

There is little-to-no supervision as to who is handling the dogs. They place a sign expressing you must be at least 18 to handle the puppies. (Although I played with them multiple times while I was 15, unaware, unsupervised.) You are asked to always have hand sanitizer applied while changing from litter to litter, playing with the dogs. I can testify, though, that this is not properly enforced. There are way too many people handling the young puppies, with newly developing immune systems.

Another problem is that in this last year(2015), it has been a hot spot for teenagers. Unknowing people looking for a fun activity handle these puppies daily. It has even become a hot-spot for dates.

Puppy barn purchases many of their pups off of KSL.com from random breeders and puppy mills. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that the majority of their puppies are weened from their mother way, way too early for them to be healthy. Puppy Barn doesn't look at the medical history of the parents of the puppies they will be purchasing. In many occasions they have also advertised puppies as purebred, when they are actually mixed breeds. Selling them for hundreds more dollars than necessary; AKC prices. Why do they feel they must hide it? For the money. Which seems to be all this business cares about.

Just walking in and checking out the puppies you can see many have bloated bellies (worms), diarrhea, and on one occasion I've seen a young chihuahua vomiting, and not casually. Other reviews on Yelp.com say, "Another had goop in it's eyes and nose. (...) As I listened to the employees, none of them were telling anyone the responsibilities of taking care of a puppy. Just making sure everyone knew there were no refunds". Responsible breeders and organizations such as Caws.org take back the animal if it is not working out, because they actually care about the well being of their animals.

There have been frequent reports of Parvo, a life threatening and very contagious disease. Not surprising when people are constantly jumping from dog to dog.

A screenshotted review from Facebook posted on Yelp.com.

One of lots of tragedies occurring because of Puppy Barn. 

Other problem is the secrecy. If you post on their Facebook page asking a question such as, "Where do you get your puppies?" they delete it. They know what they are doing is wrong and unethical, but as long as they are making money they don't care. If you call them they claim they purchase them from "local breeders", but if you ask any more questions they get nervous and can't give you a straight and true answer. 

There are many, many other reasons why this place needs to go. 

Please take 30 seconds to sign this petition to shut down Puppy Barn. We only need 814 more to get to 7,500. 

https://www.change.org/p/american-fork-city-officials-shut-down-puppy-barn-in-american-fork-utah?just_created=true

For more reviews visit:  http://www.yelp.com/biz/puppy-barn-american-fork

For more information or just to support the cause follow @StopPuppyBarn on Twitter. 

Black Oppression and the LGBTQ community.

Oppression towards a minority. Denied freedom and rights. "Unnatural, inhuman." 

Both things to describe the treatment of the African Americans for so many years, and things that describe the rising awareness and continuing disapproval of the LGBTQ community.

The actions that the powerful white man made out of fear resemble the actions that are taken against the LGBTQ community by the fearful heterosexual homophobic men and women of America, and the world. 

Denied rights to vote? Denied rights to marriage? How is it so hard to see that the mistakes we made before, are being made again, but to a different group of people? Even though both are in the past, the scars from those cuts remain and wait still to be fully healed. 

After years of discrimination and hate, we realized that the black community was as equal to all of the others. Did their skin determine who they where as a whole? No. We realized they were people too, and that they had always been. No man should should be ashamed of their skin colour. It seems so obvious now. But why isn't it just as obvious that a man who loves a man is still human, still equal? 

We're repeating the past. The mistakes we are making now are the same ones we're embarrassed about from back then. We're all human. Men, women, gay, straight, white, black... We're all equal.

The names we call them. The "n word" that is frowned upon now, is equivalent to calling someone a "faggot". It's unnacceptable.

It's inhumane.  

We are all people. We all rely on the same things to feel complete. Love and acceptance. Don't we all deserve it? 

If you don't approve of it, that's your respected opinion. But being civil isn't hard to do. When you have a coworker you don't agree with, you aren't openly rude to them. You should be kind and respectful always. 

The new law letting same sex couples marry each other is a leap in the right direction. We have made so many of those leaps for African American equality in the past and even currently. Let's continue leaping. 

"Just because a law has been passed doesn't mean the issue is settled. Let's face it, blacks were freed from slavery and granted full citizenship a long time ago, but did that end discrimination?"

                         -Ryan Trimble

The Heathen: After I Left

Heathen: a person who does not belong to a widely held religion- as regarded by those who do.

A derogatory term. A familiar one. 

I've previously talked about my experience and process of leaving the LDS church. Slow, as well as relieving. As if an unexplainable weight was lifted off of my back. No longer should I feel ashamed in Sunday School where I knew not who Moses was, or why Joseph Smith need have so many wives. These were things I did not understand like the others did. 

What seemed to be over, was really just the beginning. The beginning of self discovery as well as hope. And while these were all good things to look forward to, I was not so naïve as to forget the stress and judgment to come.

My parents have often said the reason they didn't leave the church earlier is because they feared of what it could mean for my sister and I. They thought that we would constantly be scrutinized by our peers, unaccepted. Social outcasts in the tightly knit religious community. And while that is not completely false, it is not the whole story.

I still have friends. Great ones. Ones that love and accept that of me. I have never been directly bullied about it. Regardless, I've seen my share of insults and disgust. The only one that has stuck with me was a friend of mine casually nick-naming me "heathen" and letting my know I would surely end up in hell fire. Which you'd think wouldn't hurt because I don't believe in a hell. But they did, and they were certain that was what would happen to me. Which pinched a little.

Nonetheless, most people really are amazing. While they do not agree with my beliefs, they generally respect them, and if not that, they just disregard them.

We all find comfort in believing in different things. Whether it's Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahá'í Faith, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Slavic neopaganism, Celtic polytheism, Hellenism, or yes, Atheism, we are all just people searching for meaning in life. Not the meaning of  life. The meaning in it. 

"Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning."

-Joseph Campbell

The Big Wide Unknown.

I've had only a couple existential crises this year so far(woo hoo!).

A lot of which involve me staying home for days worrying about the fact that I still have no idea what I want to do in the future.

From day to day I think I have a plan. And then inevitably, I return to the state of mind in which my future is a cloud of possibilities and worry. 

In school we are pressured to have a plan. Seems like positive peer pressure, but it's not. They pressure you in the sense that you need to know right then what you want to do with the rest of your life. And sometimes, it sounds like they're telling us to settle, as long as we have a plan. Understandable that they want us to be prepared, but how many adults can say they knew exactly how they were paying for college, what job they were going to have, and where they'd be living in the future by the age of 13? 

I think this pressure causes fear in adolescents. Fear of the future, fear of life after graduation. 

But this fear of possibility is something we will encounter in our life time and time again. This single event in our life isn't the biggest. 

Life isn't planned. As much as it may seem like everything is a defined step by step process, it's not.

It's wild and spontaneous and scary and beautiful. Life isn't just one thing. "Life" is just the word we use to describe millions of adventures, losses, loves, and silences we experience in such a wide space of time. And who's to say that the future you have planned now is the one you'll be living in five years.

I'm not an expert, I know just as little as everyone else. But I do know that if we just stay brave, stay hopeful, good things will come. 

Congratulations to the class of 2015.

"It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see."

-Winston Churchill.

Before I left.

I had grown up in the church. It was a part of my life, a part of who I was.

I was baptized in the LDS church at the age of eight, something I had said I wanted to do. I felt like I was strong with my faith. I knew everyone would be proud of me, and immensely pleased with my decision. So I held my breath as I was dipped under the warm water, my white suit clinging to my skin.

In the stalls before the baptism.

As I was expected to, I felt the spirit. The spirit of The Holy Ghost. The one I had always been told I could feel, and that it would be very strong on this day.

Afterwards, things changed. I started questioning things, coming to my own independent thoughts and feelings. I noticed I was the only one who didn't know the bible stories, or watch the conferences. And not much longer, I realized that I didn't agree with what I had always been taught. I realized that I no longer had a belief in a God, or any supreme being.

And it scared me.

But I continued in church. I continued to go to the meetings, to take the sacrament, participate in the prayers, even give a talk. Hoping that no one would figure me out, before I even figured myself out. I even kept saying prayers nightly, hoping that these thoughts were temporary, and that the man I had been told all along would help me, would help me to not think these things.

Nothing changed. I started to hate myself.

But I never told anyone, for I feared I would disappoint everyone. It tore me apart thinking about my mom knowing. I thought she'd be angry, full of regret. I sat still with this pain for over two years.

Then I remember one night I just couldn't stay silent anymore. I had my mom come into my room, and we sat on my bed. My heart raced and my eyes sobbed. After what seemed like forever, I spoke. Each syllable tearing me up inside.

"Don't hate me." More crying, more silence.
"I don't believe in God." Uncontrollable sobbing.

I was eleven.

And of course she didn't hate me. But I still felt the overwhelming guilt.

I began getting stomach aches -the kind you get when you're nervous. I learned in church about atheists. And I didn't want people to know I was one. So I carried this bag of stones on my back everywhere I went, sometimes telling someone the truth, and letting a stone roll out of the bag, and on to the ground.

Going to church less and less. And with that, feeling guilty less and less. Coming to accept who I was, and hoping others would as well.

Little did I know the journey I was about to go on.

The minority.

For some reason I've been dreading posting this. But here you go. I really liked how it turned out.

In Utah County, Utah, if you look in any direction you should be able to see a LDS church off in the distance.

A study done in 2005 says that a little over 62.1% are LDS. But what about the other 40%? Mixed religions take this area up in small numbers; and those that identify as "unaffiliated" took up only 16%. While this also includes those who choose just not to pronounce themselves as belonging to any religion, this small group is even smaller when simplified down to include agnostic atheists, atheists, etcetera. 

I am a part of that group. 

Living in Utah as an atheist in Utah County, I am a part of the minority. 81.2% of Utah County belongs to the LDS church. 

So I took to Twitter to do a small survey myself.

(Those I talked to were not aware of my atheism. All participants were LDS.)

I'm going to share some answers that I received.

What do you think atheism is? What do they believe in/don't they believe in?

• "They don't believe in a God, I think. I don't know how they think we got here. 'Evolution'?"
• "Isn't it where you reject beliefs?" -I thought this was an interesting example of how many seem to know or understand so little about atheism.
• "I don't know much about it but, they don't believe in a God."

Do you know any atheists?

• 3 of 21 participants knew an atheist- whether personally or just aware of one.

When you hear the word, "Atheist", what do you picture? How do they look, act, etc.

• "Not the same standards. Like swearing, tattoos, body piercings, the way they dress, it's all different."
• And a favourite from Kassidy Barrus: " They are normal people. Some rich some are poor. Short, tall. Just like everyone else. Some are nice, some are mean(...)."

Try to put yourself in the shoes of an atheist living in Utah county. How do you feel?

• "I'd feel like the minority. I'd be afraid to tell people because they may stereotype or judge me."
• "It'd be hard. Because the Mormon community basically runs Utah. I'd always feel judged."
• "I'd feel out of place because of the Mormons and judgmental people." 
• "People would probably judge me a lot, and I'd feel surrounded by the LDS religion."

Almost every person I talked to used the same word in their responses.

  Judge.

Have you ever thought about the religious population in Utah? A lot of the time when I meet someone I just assume that they are LDS. And I cannot be the only one. I'm going to say it's a safe bet that over 75% of you that read this will only now find out I am an atheist. But that doesn't make me any less of who I am, does it?

I actually had a funny encounter the other day in Fitness class. A girl saw my second earring and was shocked. I asked her what was surprising. "Hanna, I totally thought you were a huge molly Mormon!" And lately, as my stance on religion has become more aware, I've been getting that a lot. I think that is a good example that religion does not define you. It's simply a part of who you are.

And finally, and excerpt from my dear friend Kassidy Barrus when asked what she would say to an atheist. 

Twitter: HannaRuita