Return of the depressing posts...

The short version of how I have felt for the past 24 hours: worthless, useless, and helpless, and I hate myself.

Here's the longer version. I just feel so worthless, like I'm here to be used by other people to feel better about themselves, and then I can be tossed aside and trampled on when something better comes along. All I am is something to be drained. Who I am is not enough. No one cares. No one sees me as valuable enough to pursue, nor worthy enough to stay with.

I'm useless, because I can't do anything right. What I can do isn't enough.

I'm helpless because I can't help the people I care about. I sense their need and hear the pain in their voices, but I can't do anything to help them. If anything I make things worse.

Why am I here? What is the point?

Soooo tired....

Taking a break from the dream theme, I felt that it was necessary to talk about the past couple days.

To start out with, I have a summer job, painting houses. It's fun, and I like getting out of the house and actually doing something. Also, my boss is one of my friends, which may or may not be a good thing, I'm not sure yet. At any rate, I'm happy to be out doing something productive, and actually feel like I'm appreciated and needed. It's also nice to be doing physical work instead of all the mental work that comes with school and nearly everything else I do.

I have some difficulties with the job, but I'm trying to overcome them. One, I'm a woman and can't keep up with the men when it comes to speed because my muscles wear out faster than theirs do (also I'm out of shape...). I try to make up for it by making sure my work is done well. Like detail work and spotting places that need to be touched up. I'm told that I'm rather good at that, which makes me happy. Two, I'm working in the hot desert sun for most of the day. I'm trying to drink more water, but I don't seem to be drinking quiiiiite enough. Keep feeling like I'm going to collapse. Not good. I'm going to see if I can work something out to somehow get more water out to the job site. Three, I'm terrified of heights. Since painting houses requires much work high off the ground, this is problematic. Basically I just have to get past that, and be extra careful on ladders and such. I reeeeally hope my boss doesn't send me on the roof anytime soon.

Anyway, I was called out to work on both Monday and Tuesday of this week. I was fine with this, really. In fact, I was happy to be called out to work. (yay!) Just...didn't drink enough water on Monday (started shaking really badly and was just extremely exhausted), and even though I drank more on Tuesday, it still wasn't enough (worn out, unsteady on my feet). Mainly I just need to drink WAY more water than I have been.

*sigh*

Today I'm worried about three of my friends, and I can't help any of them. Only one of them is close enough that I can talk to face to face, possibly, but he's busy all the time. The other two are way far away, and...neither of them really want to talk to me right now. Understandably, I suppose...but...I'm worried.

I need a nap...

My first Story-Dream

Alrighty, remember I told you all about story dreams a couple posts back? Well, here's the earliest one I can remember having. I was probably in jr. high at the time.

I dreamed that I and a young boy around my age were wandering down a forest path and came upon a stretch of tall crumbling rock wall. Curious, we followed it until we found an ivy covered iron-gate. Somehow we were able to force the ancient gate open and entered a courtyard. Fallen columns and dried-up fountains were scattered about, and nature had long ago began to take back the area, but the boy and I passed all of these and headed for the old stone building at one end of the courtyard.

We explored the structure, examining the different rooms until we made our way up to the top floor, where we found several items scattered around the space. The two of us were drawn to two small statues, one of a man, the other a woman. We touched the statues, and suddenly blinding light burst forth from them! When we could see again, two small figures stood in front of us, the same as the two statues that were there just a moment ago. They introduced themselves and thanked us for releasing them from the spell that trapped them in statue form.

These two figures were spirits that served the people who used to live in the building, but apparently something terrible happened in the past. Everyone who used to live there was dead or gone, and the two spirits were imprisoned, doomed to wait until their masters could return and free them. They had waited many, many years...

Come to find out, my companion and I must've been decended from these poor spirits' masters, because the only way they could have been freed was by one of power. So they took it upon themselves to train us in the use of our powers.

The last thing I remember is the boy and I in the courtyard. White feathery wings sprouted from both of our backs, and we were working on controlling fire and water, conjuring them from thin air, so to speak.

I know, not that exciting, but since this was my first story-dream, I thought it deserved a place here.

Terror and Rescue

Since the theme of this blog lately has been dreams, I've decided to put in a dream I had many years ago. It affected me quite a bit, so I couldn't help but remember it. I actually haven't told many people this dream before...but I think that perhaps that would be good to put it into writing and let people see it now.

It started with me in a church, outside of the sanctuary doors. (For those of you who haven't been in a church, the sanctuary is where the congregation sits and listens to the preachings.) My heart wasn't really into entering that room, so I decided to explore the church building. I found a set of stairs leading downward into darkness. My curiosity led me down those steps.

When I reached the bottom, all I could see was a red path suspended in darkness. In the distance I could make out more paths, but I was separated from them by the pitch-black dark. So, I wandered down the path in front of me. Eventually I lost sight of the stair. After a while, I realized that I had been wandering around for a while so I tried to turn around and find my way back to the staircase, but even though I could swear this was the same path I had been on the entire time I never found those steps. I began to panic and broke out into a run, dashing along the red walkway. With every step I took, the path became narrower and narrower, until finally it was like a rope or a cord.

I fell into the blackness and was snared by hundreds of these red cords. I struggled to free myself, but every move I made caused more and more of the cords to wrap tighter and tighter around me until I could not move at all.

I screamed into the darkness for help, for anyone to come, but no one did. I don't remember how long I cried for someone to come rescue me, but I finally gave up. I was trapped, helpless, alone, terrified, and sobbing in the darkness.

Then a figure of light appeared before me: a man dressed in robes, brilliant white light radiating from him. I looked up at him pathetically, tears still streaming down my face, but as his eyes, brimming over with compassion, met mine, he just reached down to me. With a touch, the cords released me. I collapsed on the ground at his feet, but he picked me up, wiped the tears away, and carried me out of the darkness. I remember he spoke to me, but the words have since faded from my memory. What has remained is the feeling of safety and love that enveloped me as I was in his arms.

The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress, I called to the LORD...He reached down from on high and took hold of me...He rescued me because He delighted in me.

~Psalm 18:5-6, 16, 19

I am such a Band Geek!

I had another dream last night, this time about marching band. Unlike my awesome story dreams, this one was just plain weird and a little nerve-wracking.

I was with my high school marching band getting ready for a contest. I'm not quite sure why I was there...something about allowing past graduates to come? I don't know. Anyway I was there. Where is "there"? Some strange kind of carnival type place. o.O

Anyway, as I'm starting to get ready, I realize that I don't have my band shoes. Slightly panicked, I decide that nothing can be done for it, and I'll just have to march in my tennis shoes. Then I realize that my clarinet is at home! EEK! Now that I'm freaking out, I go to Mr. Bartlett (the band director) and let him know what's going on. He tells me that I'm going to have to march anyway, even without my shoes and instrument. So...as the rest of the band is ready and lining up to head to the field, I run into the trailer where the uniforms are kept. I find the garment bag with my name on it, but when I open it to get my uniform...you guessed it. No uniform. Instead there was a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Looking again at the garment bag, I saw an underclassman's name on it, and I realized that there had not been a uniform for me.

I tell Mr. Bartlett, who then says that I should just go watch the show, since nothing else could be done. I grab my sister and we start heading to the stands. However the route to the stands was something freaky. We had to go to a playground inside one building and traverse the obstacle course, sliding down a slide to get into a different building. This second building was made of marble, which was pretty cool. Anyway, my sister and I raced up and down the marble staircases, cross a room with a spinning floor, and reach the docks, because obviously the only way to go into the stands is across the river in a boat. (Everybody knows that, right?)

The tickets cost a dollar each, and I happened to have cash on me, so as I'm reaching into my wallet to hand her the dollar bills, the teller looks at me and asks for my debit card. Confused, I give it to her. She swipes the card, gives me a cold, hard stare, and says, "Trying to steal from us, are you?"

I get a look at the card, and somehow I had aquired some blond woman's debit card, and this is what I handed to the teller. (I have no idea how I got that.) I finally convince the teller that no, I was not trying to steal anything, she can keep the card and help get it back to its original owner, and I have the cash on me to pay for the blasted tickets! I throw the two dollars at her, grab the tickets, and Nicole and I race down to the dock where the boat started leaving without us. We leaped into the small boat from the dock...

And then I woke up.

Seriously, who dreams about marching band when they haven't even played their instrument in over a year?

Short post before going to sleep

I love hanging out with my sister because more likely than not we get into deep conversations about all kinds of things. This occured yesterday when my sister, one of her friends, and I were waiting on Mom to pick us up from the dance studio. We ended up talking about love and such. During the course of the conversation I said something along the lines of, "In my opinion, love is made up of three things: Commitment, Physical Feeling, and Intimacy."

Apparently what I said was rather profound, because my sister's friend suddenly pulled out a pen and wrote down what I said so that she could quote me later.

Then my sister told me that one of her friends at school had actually quoted her when he/she (I can't remember which friend this was) was debating something with another friend.

I was unaware that my sister and I were so inspirational.

o_O

I had an interesting dream last night...

(GASP!!! NOT A DEPRESSING BLOG ENTRY!!!)

Once in a while I have what I call "story dreams". They're dreams that are so vivid and follow a sort of continuous story line that I get ideas of a plot and possibly maybe a story if I ever sat down to flesh it out.

Last night's was rather interesting. Lately I've been getting quite a few dreams where I have telekinetic powers (I know, kind of weird) and in each dream these powers get stronger and I have more control over them.

In this particular dream the world was dealing with almost zombie-like beings. These beings were violent, almost along the lines of the reavers from Firefly, though I didn't get the sense of terror from then as one gets from the reavers. (Probably a good thing, otherwise this dream would have been horribly terrifying.) These beings came out from hiding at twilight to hunt in the darkness, and either killed their prey or they somehow sort of...infected them to slowly turn the prey into one of them. As far as it was known, there was no way to reverse this process, so if a friend or loved one was attacked by them and lived, they were as good as dead.

The only protection that the humans had against the beings during the night hours were Sacred Stones, stones that held a great deal of healing protective energy. Depending on how powerful the Stone was, the area around the Stone that was protected increased or decreased. The beings could not cross the area of influence around the Stones, so powerful mages erected these Sacred Stones in the towns and along the roadways. Pretty nifty, really. Only problem was that some of the Stones were weakening, and the attacks from the beings increased as the area of influence shrank.

When the dream started I was just outside the gates to a small town. It was twilight, and I was surrounded by the beings. The only reason I was able to defend myself was because I possessed telekinetic abilities, so basically I was just chucking rocks, boulders, broken arrowheads, anything that was within reach of my powers at the beings, knocking them away until I could get within those gates. I was able to make it in untouched by the beings.

Slowly I became part of the townspeople, and over time, I lost a few friends to the beings (they were infected). Eventually one of the leaders met me and discovered I had telekinetic powers and that I even had a small amount of control over fire. Later I would discover that these were not my only powers.

One night, the Sacred Stone failed. It had been weakening for some time, but then it just gave out. The beings swarmed into the town, attacking everyone in sight. Panic, screams, fire everywhere. I ran to the Sacred Stone and laid my hand on it, and suddenly I felt power leave me and rush into the Stone. Light and glowing symbols danced in front of my eyes as the Stone's power became whole again. The beings, suddenly caught within the Stone's area of influence, screamed in pain. I shouted into the night sky, "BE HEALED!!!" Then everything went white.

That was pretty much the end of my dream, but I had some sense that the beings were suddenly completely human again. Truly it was a fascinating dream, and I would love to be able to work on it to see where it goes.

Hmm...I should post some more of my story dreams. It'd be nice to see what others think of them.

What is going on in my head?!

Yeah...so lately I've just felt like I've been slowly falling apart. Most of my friends could probably tell something's off about me, but I've only really talked to three people. I was chatting with one of them tonight, and...now I wonder, am I constantly talking to these three people for selfish reasons? I struggle with the same problems over and over, and I try to reach out to my friends for help. I want to know that they care. That they think I'm not going insane. That I make some sense. I want somewhere safe to empty myself and arms wrapped around me to hold me before I collapse.

I suppose I ask too much of my friends. I don't know what to do now. Do I stop reaching out and try to bury everything again? I don't know...

It's gotten to the point that all I can do is cry. Is this what heartbreak is like? Despair? Hopelessness?