A Dream Within A Dream

With Stills Disease so much, if not everything, really does feel like a dream within a dream (Edgar A. Poe). Especially my dreams. Not the stories we live in our minds while we sleep--I don't sleep, so I don't have those. If I sleep, they are nightmares, but I digress.

I'm talking about the ability to hope, for a future you desire, long for, thirst for. A desire that will never be slaked until it comes true.

I've talked about this already, about not wanting anything as much as I wanted Athletic Training. Well, my Stills Buddy just pried tonight, and it is the best thing she could have done for me! Truly, it is.

She got me to admit things I dream of happening someday, things I hope for. I didn't think it was possible, but here is this post that honestly scares me and frees me at the same time.

I now finally consciously realized that I had blocked them from my mind to protect myself. I burried them, and she dug them out. It's incredible.

I've lost so much, that I've adapted with the coping mechanism of never wanting for much of anything ever again so as not to break when it doesn't happen or worse when it does and it gets taken away. But, sour punch that foolishness.

In honor of her, with her strength, and for my sake, and...and because the only way to live a story is to want something, I am going to write my dreams into existence, right here, tonight, after midnight, for all of us.


* I dream of living in the Pacific Northwest. In Washington or Oregon, maybe Idaho. I want to live on water, like a lake or a river. The house will have a music room and a reading/writing room.

* I dream of auditing classes any and everywhere. I want to study a bit of everything, for the sake of loving to learn. I wish I could sit in on classes at Reed College just to witness and breathe in their brilliance.

* I want to visit the Athletic Training Program at least one last time. Maybe volunteer, if they would have me back.

* I love photography, especially of nature. I think it would be a blast to drive all over the country, because I love to drive, and to take pictures of all I see that dazzles me.

* On that note, I would love to live Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller, every last page of it, with whomever my Paul is, including living illegally in the forest with hippies.

* I dream of getting to go back to Powell's Books and getting to spend as much time there as my heart so desires.

* I dream of owning and attempting to play the banjo. Yes, I said banjo.

* I dream of softball being back in the Olympics.

* I dream of the world not being afraid to talk about depression and other To Write Love On Her Arms subjects.

* And I dream of a me who isn't afraid to dream anymore.