EFY is weird.

8/31/2014 The Lady 1 Comments

EFY is a special place. And by that I mean special. Don't get me wrong, being a counselor this summer was really one of the greatest things I have done in a long time, but also in all honesty, being in a large group of LDS people for extended periods of time only discussing the gospel and doing endless line dances does weird things to people. The participants who come only get a small taste of the oddities because their time is limited to a mere five days, while as a counselor you experience it week after week after week with very little relief.

For example, this summer I found myself flirting, hand-holding, and cuddling with other EFY counselors for whom I cared nary a whit. Nothing seemed to matter at all because I could not take EFY counselors seriously, and therefore I could not take myself seriously concerning them. Now this fragmented mindset towards relationships with the opposite sex does not overcome every EFY counselor as it did me, but each counselor is affected in their own little way.

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The Counselor (remember him from ages ago?) was an EFY counselor this summer as well, and the daze which overcame him greatly challenged my flirtatious spirit. His was a curious sort of flirting and exceeding kindness, and as you can suppose this only caused great confusion in my poor little heart.

All summer long, The Counselor showed me nothing but pure compassion. He was continually checking up on me as it was my first "rodeo" (so to speak) and expressing his admiration and faith in my abilities. After one particularly challenging week, I greatly felt the need for a priesthood blessing and The Counselor was the only one I knew well enough to ask. The blessing itself was beautiful and exactly what I needed of course, but afterwards (being quite the emotional wreck that day) The Counselor just held me and let me cry in his arms. If that doesn't make a girl feel protected and loved, I don't know what does. So there I was soaking his t-shirt with my tears, and he proceeded to tell me every sweet thing he could possibly think of (which I will not relate here, because for once it is much too personal). Blast it all. Who does that to another person? I mean really.

The rest of the summer, The Counselor and I were far apart from each other, which was all well and good. We easily kept in touch through frequent texts and phone calls and the like. Between one of our weeks, we bumped into each other in the airport and spent our layover time laughing and chatting and hugging much longer than is typical between friends. During one distinctly long phone conversation, The Counselor told me the many details of his past dating life, mostly revolving around a particularly tragic love story which provided some insight into his long-term bachelorhood. He spent the remainder of our conversation detailing everything he liked about me and telling me how he wanted to know me better than he currently did.

But through it all, there was no declaration of love or admission of any desire to be anything but dear friends.

I chalk it all up to the weirdness of EFY.

Con Amor,

The Lady