Three days...

Have you ever had a dream come true? I mean an honest to goodness, just like you imagined, daydream come true? It's unsettleing! This is not meant to sound pessimistic but dreams aren't really supposed to come true. Goals come true! Dreams live in your heart and your subconcious, giving you hope and purpose and light in your trials. But they're dreams! If they were meant to come true than they would be called plans! But here I find myself, three days from a dream come true.

When I was a little girl, I would crawl into my mother's lap and she would pull out her photo album. Inside were pictures of her in Norway, Switzerland, France, Italy and England. There were pictures of her at boarding school and playing with her siblings in Norweigian snow. My personal favorites were the pictures of her marrying my father in a little town just outside London. These places were exotic and elite where magical things happened. Paris, the city of romance and lovers. London, historic and mysterious where 1500 years of untold stories pulsed from its very walls.

I dreamed that someday I would walk the streets of those cities. But it was a dream, mostly I never imagined it could really come true. Now I am three days from boarding a plane and living a dream. It is kind of upsetting! What do you do when dreams come true!? I suppose you get new ones! I am just so afraid that I will go and it won't be amazing, it won't be wonderful and it won't even be fun! Or I'll go and it will fly by and I won't absorb any of it and I'll have no memories.

I know, I worry too much. I guess part of me feels like this summer is going to represent a division in my life. Like BC and AD, or BCE and CE. Laura's life will be measured BE and AE: Before England and After England! Does anyone else know what I'm talking about when I say that I can feel the change coming? Does anyone else ever feel like that? Something is looming, good or bad, it's something big and I'm not sure I'm ready for it. I was just beginning to get comfortable with the way things are now.

If you want a clone...

How, you ask, can a girl so boy crazy swear off men? That's a good question. I'd start at the beginning but that would take too long so I will start in the middle. I feel ill treated by the harsher sex and to steal a phrase from my best friend, I feel disposable! I'm not quite sure what happened or when but all of a sudden, I am just another girl. Worse than that, I am less than any other girl. As bratty and cocky as it may sound, I am not use to being easily gotten over.

Maybe it's just Mormon boys. Not to bash the men my religion turns out because the adult mormon men I know are some of the greatest most honorable men I have ever met. I look up to most of them like favorite uncles. They are loyal and dedicated and kind and intelligent and funny and everything that I could hope for in a husband some day. However, the single men my age, yeah, not so much. I have never been so ill treated as I have by young mormon men. They have used me, abused me, ignorned me, and as earlier stated, treated me as disposable.

I have been much better treated by the regular men I meet daily. The guys in my classes, at work, on the bus, at the local cafe, these men are funny and kind. They make me feel beautiful and special where these mormon boys make me feel completely interchangeble with the next redheaded mormon girl they meet. That is the most depressing thought. I have always wanted to marry a mormon boy because it seemed that they embodied all the best of what I wanted in a future spouse. Maybe I was wrong.

So, in an act of desperation, before I repeat my usual spring stupid rash decision, which is almost always prompted by another rejection from a mormon boy, I am swearing off men. (Ironically, both this year and last year, I was disposed of for some other mormon girl) This summer will be the best summer yet. I said that last summer and it was. I am going on my dream trip to England. I am taking one class from an awesome professor. I am spending this summer focused on my favorite thing...me. ; ) I am taking up my hobbies that I never had time for before.

I am going to fill up my portfolio with drawings and stories, practice mehndi and train to run a marathon! I am going to get more organized and prioritize. I am going to be there for my friends and volunteer at Hope House. And the whole time...I am swearing off men! I will still flirt or else I would die... But I will no longer zero in on every single man within ten feet and immediately asses his potential.

I am young and beautiful. I am funny and smart and loyal and religious. I work hard and play hard. I love my friends and family. I am bubbly and witty. I am interesting and mysterious and passionate. I am going to have an amazing summer. I am going to focus on me and let the Mormon boys date their carbon copy girls cause if that's what they want, they never would have made me happy in the first place.