Faith, Divine Nature, Individual Worth...

Knowledge

Choice And Accountability

Good Works

and

Integrity.

These are the Young Women Values.

So, my patchwork masterpiece of a life has pretty much faced in every direction and taken on every possible identity. There was Child of Teen Parents Who Partay, Hell Yeah (We could just say "Born Coping"), and then there was Cooperative Child of Class/Mormon Zeal ("The Faces of Parental Overcorrection" or "Mom Remarried Someone Without A Coke Problem And Pretty Much Ran With It"), and later on, Child of Dual Parental Meltdown ("When The Bitch Is Back, And That Bitch Is Called Booze").

Then college started: Dramatic roommates and dumb boys and malfunctioning cars and degrading jobs...pretty much the easiest and most balanced time of my life. 

During the second stage, the stage where we were hardcore LDS faithful, I learned the Young Women values. "Young Women" is not just a demographic; it's a program created by the LDS Church to keep girls busy and out of cars with boys, and focusing on manners and chastity and self-esteem. I may be giving it too much credit. Sometimes, their idea of an activity is to get together, put on your mom's wedding dress, and sit around eating wedding cake and talking about eternity with your hunky husband, who would of course be, at that moment, somewhere reading his scriptures and preparing for a righteous mission. And how it is the most important thing YOU WILL EVER EVER DO IN YOUR MORTAL EXISTENCE. While creepy, I will admit that if my mom had a big fluffy white wedding dress, I'd have been ALL over it. But for supposedly-responsible adults to create this get together for a bunch of 14-year-old girls, rather than have a slumber party to get them all amped up for COLLEGE and ETIQUETTE... and...and SOCIAL SKILLS and crap like that...I don't know. Creepy. Besides, given that these 14-year-old-girls had about 5 years before they would be viewed as Of Age To Marry, making their wedding day into the crowning moment of their life, is just mean. From 19 on, all the good stuff's behind you, and you are just plain depressed. 

So the self-esteem thing sometimes gets pushed aside for the other shit. But at least we're not in cars with boys with our shirts off. Well, most of us.

But the last one - Integrity, was one I fixated on the most of the seven Young Women Values. It was the hardest one to define, and from what I could understand of it, the hardest one to master. It had been described to me as "Being the same person in every situation." What that was supposed to mean was, like, not being two-faced or, probably more accurately, not acting one way in church and then acting another way on Monday Morning at school. But to me, I just heard, either you are a Good Girl from a Good Family, or you are a Naughty Girl from a White Trash Family. The bookends of my life as a legal minor, were the White Trash one. So I had a hard time identifying. 

Later, I learned that Integrity is more about being honorable, and doing the right thing when nobody's looking. Or when it would even be justifiable for you to do the wrong thing.

Today's object lesson of Integrity is just that. Case in point: When your spouse does something very mean to you, and within 30 seconds of you Finding Out (while he's away on business), his earthly belongings have begun to pile up (violently, with much breakage) on the floor of the computer room until all is waist-high and in a state of extreme clusterf**kishness, you are furious and devastated, shattered and humiliated, bewildered, lost, and without your own best friend to cry to about it. And given the fact that it would not be hard to go out and within 45 minutes, be in bed with someone moderately attractive, fornicating your sorrows away...means that not doing so is an almost active decision.

Yes, I've joked about my future relationships on this blog, and maybe solicited names. But that won't start until my divorce is final. Because while the last one might deserve it, I also deserve the dignity of telling the future "one," that I honored my marital vows until their expiring moment.

And probably a little after that, for good measure.

His pile of shit is dumped into one room. The pictures have been taken down from my wall. Furniture has been bitchily claimed, and the farting dog has been herded toward and locked into every room that he occupies during the limbo stage of him moving out. I have flung every verbal assault at him that has entered my mind. I have made every effort to change my name back to its former, maidenly state. 

But I'm a Good Girl with Integrity.

And Faith, and Divine Nature, and Individual Worth.

With Knowledge, Choice & Accountability and even Good Works.

And I don't show up to church all that much right now. And I'm about to go get another cup of evil coffee. But I didn't forget the good stuff they told me there.