how to lose.

Have you heard the new Rush album?  It's pretty amazing.  It's what I was hoping it would be.  It's different than what I imagined.  It's poignant and yet straight forward and even a little sad.  I can't stop listening to The Garden.  I've always loved songs like 2112 and La Villa Strangiato and The Spirit of Radio and their old things, but this is my favorite.  It's got me nostalgic and content and, as it is, a little sad. I would hate to see this be their last album, but if it is, I can see why this is the final song on that final album.  It seems like the right exit, if that's indeed what it is.

Miss Utah was tonight.  I couldn't go last year because I couldn't face everyone and explain all of the reasons why I dropped out of Miss Nevada.  There wasn't a right exit for me, because every time I tried to go back to a state pageant, something got in the way.  I wanted to decide on my own terms, and in some ways I did, but I also wanted something desperately that was never really in my cards.  It's difficult to go back, because you want to think that there's a legacy, but when you have hundreds of former girls and only a couple of winners, you feel a little lost in the crowd and very insignificant.  And when you're remembered as the girl who had a tendency to lose, it's even harder.  There really is nothing quite like losing.

You try your best, or sometimes you don't.  You put yourself out there.  You let everyone critique how you move your arms when you walk and how you laugh on stage and how far into your eyelid you take your eyeliner.  Your toe nails are judged by polish and shape and amount seen in each shoe.  And that's just the audience.  Sometimes you really suck it up.  You turn into someone else, someone you don't recognize, and you let your hopes consume you.  Sometimes you forget your piece and fumble your way through it, making that poor Rachmaninoff a total hot mess.  I'm looking at you, Jen Gulbrandsen - Miss Utah State Fair 2007.  Sometimes you go into the competition with so much pressure on yourself because the expectation to be what you were at seventeen is so great.

And most times you lose.  Well, I did, at least.

Sometimes you do your very best.  Sure, maybe you say something a little dorky in your interview, or you have a little blip in your talent, or you don't walk quite as well as you did the night before, but it's still pretty damn good.  All of those things are proof of your humanity, because you can't always be perfect.  But regardless, you do what you went to do, and you know it was your best, and the audience knows, and hell, a couple of judges might even be right there with you.

And you lose.

No matter what, you seem to just lose.

It sucks.  It sucks because it sticks with you.  You'll always go back and want to be involved, and you'll see that group of former Miss Utah's and you'll feel a little twinge of pain because you're not one of them.  You'll still criticize yourself and your performance from four years ago.  You might even go so far as to wish you had chosen differently.

But that's kind of losing, too.

So to my girls who lost tonight, those who I know, and those who I do not: it sucks.  You'll always carry it with you.  You'll be frustrated and sometimes sad and when you're older and past it, you'll wonder what your life would have been like if that lottery had gone differently and if a judge had ranked you one spot higher.  You'll obsess over what they might have ranked you and you'll be mad and you'll rage and then you'll cry some more, because tears actually do help you feel better.

There's a line in The Garden, that final song off Rush's new album where Geddy Lee sings, The measure of a life is the measure of love and respect...a garden to nurture and protect.


All of these things that I've done, the choices that I've made, and the many times that I've lost have given me empathy and humility and the right kind of pain that I think has made me a better person.  A person who can try her best, perhaps even the very best that could ever be for that person.  A person who has these infinite hopes, and who feels sorrow when it doesn't pan out.  A person who can grieve.  Because a person who can grieve can feel joy, and once you've grieved, you can remember the friendships created in the midst of the sorrow, and suddenly those friendships become loving ones.  And then maybe you can be the person who cultivates such a garden of that lifetime of love and respect that it necessitates protecting.

So feel some sorrow, and eat a cheeseburger, and know that you're your own worst critic, and then feel joy in the person you're growing into.  One with scars and bruises and patches all over her heart, but one who gave everything, and one who tried, and one who walked out of the refinery with fire in her eyes.  Talk about the right exit.