I Am I

Years ago, and I do mean YEARS ago, I was singing in the choir in our ward.  The choir director brought out a song and I was the only person who liked it, and it seems like we ended up not doing it. I no longer have the music, and I only remember a few lines, but they strike me as much now as they did then:

"Who am I, this being that I am, who walks the earth midst beings as myself? Born was I of parents; who are they? Why do I exist to walk a while and then depart? Who am I, who takes up time and space, whose motions vacillate, some bad, some good...."

Who am I?

• I am Faith. That's my name, and it's a name I chose for myself, and thanks to my sister and my soul sister, it's my legal first name.
• I'm heavier than I'd like to be, but quite a bit less heavy than I was this time last year.
• I'm a writer.
• I'm a fair pianist.
• I'm a mother to two angel babies and to my furbabies (3 at the Rainbow Bridge and one in my home).
• I'm a wife.
• I'm a sister.
• I'm a sister-in-law.
• I'm a daughter.
• I'm an aunt, even a grand aunt.
• I'm a friend.
• I'm an operational controls assistant for an automotive finance company arm of a bank.
• I have a love-hate relationship with housework.
• I love fashion, but fashion my way, not necessarily the fashion you'd find in Vogue.
• I love to cook and bake.
• I love reading, and if I could find a paying job that involved cooking and baking and reading, I'd be in heaven.
• I love teaching, but the lack of certification keeps me from making a career out of it. And I don't want it badly enough to go back to university.
• I love kids, and kids love me back. If you come into the room with a baby, I'm going to ask for it, and that baby's going to be happy with me, until it's time for a diaper change or feeding, at which point I will gladly hand him/her right back to you.
• I love acting, even though I'm not very good at it.
• I love singing, although I do my best singing when no one is around to listen.
• I love interior design.
• I listen to audio books when I'm driving, as that keeps me occupied and far less likely to scream profanities at other drivers.
• I love dressing people--as in, I'll go to the store with you, tell you what to try on, tell you what looks good and what sucks, and you're going to look fabulous!
• I love doing research.
• I'm one of the fastest typists you'll ever meet.
• Off and on, I'm a vegetarian/vegan. Right now I'm on.
• I love dancing even though I completely suck at it, and don't do it anywhere but home. Unless I'm at the grocery store, where for some reason I feel compelled to dance through the aisles. Go figure.
• I have bipolar depression and have to take medicine for it, but it helps, so I take it. I also have a wee touch of OCD and anxiety, so I normally prefer staying home to going out and being surrounded by a lot of people.  And when I go to certain places, like Target, I have to go through the store in a certain order, and it causes me physical discomfort if I am not allowed to do so.
• I love my friends fiercely, and I won't let anyone talk smack about my friends or family.
• I ask a lot of questions.
• I'm willing to say "I don't know" when I don't know. Of course, then I'm going to go try to find out.
• I'm a good listener.
• I frequently say things that I think are funny, but no one else does.  I crack me up, in fact.
• I suck at math.
• I'm an exceedingly amateur Egyptologist--was fascinated with Egyptology as a kid and through many of my adult years, although I've since lost interest.
• I was passionately in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was in high school, and read everything he ever wrote, and grieved over how his life turned out and how he died. I used to have a set of statues that I named Scott and Zelda, and they went with me from Fort Worth to Galveston to Austin to Utah, and I ended up giving them to a roommate in Utah who loved them as much as I did.
• I love to play games, but have trouble finding people to play them with me. Especially trivial pursuit, because I have amazing amounts of trivia in my brain.
• I tend to quote Boethius in thank-you notes.
• I've also read everything that Geoffrey Chaucer ever wrote.
• I quote Shakespeare at the drop of a hat.
• My former boss and I will randomly send each other emails or texts asking for our two dollars, or informing each other "now that's a real shame, when folks be throwing away a perfectly good white boy like that," or asking what the street value of that snow-covered mountain is. Kudos if you know what movie we're referring to. And for the record, the last time I asked for my two dollars, he said he spent it, and will have to find another two dollars for me.
• I'm kind of an intellectual snob, even though I'm not all that intellectual.
• Misplaced apostrophes and misspellings drive me up a wall, as does modifying absolutes. I've been known to walk into a shop and point out the grammatical errors in their brochures or on their signs. I have also been known to correct the punctuations on signs that one finds inside ladies' room cubicles.  And I'm highly embarrassed to admit that I once corrected the spelling, grammar, and punctuation on a love letter when I was in junior high school.  My sister, knowing how I am when it comes to grammar, frequently uses absolutely ghastly grammar just to watch me twitch.
• I love art and photography, but I don't necessarily know how to translate my inner vision to a finished project.
• I love music--it makes me really happy, and every time I find a new artist to enjoy, it makes me even happier. I like to sing karaoke, although probably everyone within earshot is frantically plugging their ears in an effort to block the noise coming out of my mouth.
• I loathe romantic comedies, and it is damn hard for anyone to persuade me to watch one. I also don't like reading romances.
• On the other hand, I love scary movies, if they're scary without being gory, because I don't care for the blood and guts stuff.

And that's just a little bit of who I am. Scratching the surface. You could compare me with every other person on this planet, and there wouldn't be one other person exactly like me. You could compare yourself with every other person on this planet, and there wouldn't be one other person exactly like you.

How can someone say that God created us all with his power and glory, only to damn us eternally if we don't follow some specific plan that seems designed to turn us all into little Stepford morgbots? Why would God create us at all, knowing that we would all be damned forever if his son didn't come to earth, live a perfect life, give himself for us, and thus save us if we believe?

I'm not a mother, in the sense that I don't have children living on this earth. I did IVF back in 2000, only to lose the two precious embryos that were transferred into my womb. But I can tell you that I loved those two babies more than anything on this earth. They were my treasures. I would have done anything to stay pregnant, and if I'd managed to carry them to term and bring them to life, I would have done anything to keep them safe and healthy and happy and strong and smart and to keep them with me until it was time for them to go and start their own families. I don't know whether there is a God or not--I don't think anyone can know for sure until s/he has died and knows of a certainty--but if there is a God, how can s/he not love each of us as fiercely as I loved those two bundles of cells that I got to carry for less than two weeks?

Who am I? I'll answer with another song that has always been meaningful to me:

I am I, Don  Quijote, the Lord of La Mancha!
My destiny calls and I go!
And the wild winds of fortune will carry me onward
Whithersoever they blow.
Onward to glory I go!

My destiny is calling, and I'm being tossed by the wild winds of fortune. And when my life is over, I will go to whatever comes next, and rejoice in the journey. "Come along with me; the best is yet to be."