_when_we_dream_

"She's been dreaming again" I heard my mom whisper to my Grandma, in the kitchen when she thought I wasn't listening.
"I know, I've heard her screaming... Everyone has." She replied in a voice that was all too familiar.

I was already late for school and had missed my ride there. Again. So I had to make do with the pestering overly concerned parenting style approach my mom had planned for both my brother and I.

Her questions about my dreams were never ending and ruthless and her tone of voice was sugar coated in pity, but she bore none of the real emotion that came with it.It made me furious being stuck in this too small car, with questions that were just too big.

I was suffocating in fresh air, and so it was no surprise that when I got to school I was ready to rip someones jugular out and my first victim was heading right into the storm. My best friend Dean. She walked toward me in her causally brilliant way that made all the girls jealous and all the boys slaves.Everything just seemed to come so naturally to her. It seemed as if the universe lived to help her succeed, but 15 years of experience had taught me to know better.

"It looks like you're ready to loose your shit." she said with sudden caution, as she slowed her approach to a safe distance away and waited for my reply.
"I'm ready to do more than just that." I replied without hesitation, cutting her reply off as I started for my first class of the day. AP Chemistry.

There is just something about being told that the world is merely a chance happening and that everything we know and love and idolize is a combination of tiny microscopic atoms randomly bumping into each other, that can calm you down... close enough to death by boredom really.

The bell signaled freedom, if only for two minutes, and with Dean by my side I took this opportunity to rant about my mom and how everything she said managed to drive me completely crazy.

Later at lunch in our schools overcrowded cafeteria, I told her that my dreams had started again.
"Are they still the same ones as last time?" she softly whispered
"Have they ever been different?" my sarcasm dripping off the words like acid over silk.

Every night it was the same thing. The same dream. It would start off with me, alone in a field. There was a storm coming and the lightning behind the dark grey clouds was ominous.
I'm petrified and I start running. I don't know where I'm going and I don't know why I'm running, but I run like my life depends on it.Then I'm waking up to my own terrified screams as my eyes grow accustomed to the pale moonlit darkness of my room. The sound of footsteps rushing down the wooden corridor. A warm hand and a soothing voice softly promising I'm alright and safe and that everything was just a twisted fragment of my own tortured subconscious.

And this would happen, on a good night, two or three times. On a bad night. More than I care to remember.

The pictures and emotions that flashed through my mind were always so vivid. So real. Everything I felt was so pure that when I woke up, reality felt more like the hazy illusion of life than my dreams had been.

Sleeping for less than 3 hours every night might have been the reason I was always so impossible and why I found living so hard to do. These dreams also created the innate fear of the dark inside me, because when the dark only promised horrors, how could you love it?

I wished everyday that I would just fade into everything surrounding me. I felt like I was being suffocated by the walls in my classes, the doors of my moms car, the clothes clinging to my body in the hot summers air.
I felt trapped. I felt like I was stuck in an eternity of being a tiny little ant in a glass container, following long tunnels that lead to no where.

Every road, tunnel, bridge, stairway and journey always had a start and an end. A reason it was put there. To span a gap or allow for transport. So what was I doing here. I felt like everyday of my life was being compressed into one long tunnel of memories that were full of darkness and blurs, that I was trying to crawl through, and somehow I just knew it didn't end anywhere significant not anywhere worth writing about.

A bridge had more purpose than my life, but here I was, a little ant, crawling through a never ending narrow tunnel. One that just seemed to overpower me. A tunnel that was dark and cold.









"Sammy. Snap out of it!" It was Deans shrill and obviously irritated voice, that had pulled me out of my day dreams.
"Sorry, I guess I'm just distracted."
"Wow, either those dreams are really bad or that guy across the cafeteria has really caught your attention. Go say hi!" I was being dragged across the twelve meter room before I even knew what was happening, and suddenly, he was there.

"Hi Dean. Sammy." His words were just as effortless as he was.
Oh God. I felt my blood rushing up to my cheeks, and the sweat starting to form in the palms of my hands. I could hear my heart beating against the veins in my neck. The blood struggling to get free of it's restraints. It was the only thing keeping me from falling over, until his piercing voice broke my focus and reminded me that I hadn't replied to whatever I was being asked.

"Yes. I do." I blurted it out, without even thinking and regretted it the second it happened. I could see that, that might not have been the most appropriate response for whatever he'd said, by looking at Deans face of disbelief and the tiny hint of poison that crept into her response directed towards me. I really couldn't pay attention to whatever it was because I was mesmerized by the tiny twinkle of curiosity that lived in Denmarkos' eyes.

It was a hint of magic in a forest of dark green. A forest I was now hopelessly lost in. My fantasies were soon interrupted by the bell. Home time. Oh the joys.

Dean invited me over for the afternoon, which meant an invitation to the most beautiful house where, just like her, everything was opulent and over the top. Waist high, white marble counters sparkling in the glimmer of the crystal chandelier, greeted me with winks of light and glimpses of the most delicious looking pastries mankind could ever hope for.

Her whole family seemed to be decedents from Aphrodite and Zeus and I bet people would always wonder about how we had become such good friends although we were so different. Her being the envy of every teenage girl, skinny, outspoken and drop dead gorgeous, ad me being the weird, dark punk girl with poor taste in hair products... well people don't always understand that Dean and I share more than just fashion secrets.

 and the fact that Dean still chose to remain single was a myth all on its own. I had heard the speil enough times to be able to recite it by heart.
"I am a powerful women, and I don't need the opinions of some little boy defining me. I define myself and thats blah blah blah." I usually stopped listening somewhere around there.

Everything Left Unsaid

I don't understand why your doing this to yourself. To us.
It scares me.
It's not healthy.
Please stop, I love you.

Your not happy? But every time I see you your smiling...
Huh?
They did what to you?
How didn't I see those marks on your arms? They're so obvious. They're so red.
Please, I love you, stop.

How can you feel alone in a crowded room?
How can you feel so lone when I love you so much?
I don't understand how...
Why didn't you come to me? Tell me? Speak to me.
I would've listened, I promise.

Numb? I sometimes feel numb as well...
Why wouldn't you tell me about all this earlier?
Darkness... Inside...of...you?
I could have shown you how light in the world was.

How did I miss the broken soul beneath that mask?
It's my fault.
I could have done more.



Please, I just need you to hold me tonight.
I'm scared.
I don't want to do this, but I can't stop.
Its consuming me.

I think I've forgotten how to be happy.
He stole it away from me.
So now I hide it so deep inside me, even I cant find it.
I love you too.

Is it cold in here?
I think I need my jersey.
The one with the long sleeves.
Yes, that one. Please don't ask me to ever take it off.

I don't want to feel anymore.
Every time I do, it just hurts.
Its inside me. Creeping through my veins like a disease.
There was nothing you could have done.
Its not your fault.
Please don't blame yourself for everything I did to myself.

I just want you to remember that
I really did love you.
But I couldn't wait forever.
I loved you then, and now...
All I see is red.

I Wont be Seventeen Forever

Seventeen is a place that I could only describe as... well rocky to say the least.

I have been tasked with the responsibilities of being an adult but I find myself a year away from all the perks.Well five months to be exact, and more so this year, I have discovered how challenging teenage life is.

Between school, family and friends, I still have to find time to fit in a part time job, sport, healthy eating and study time and trying to achieve that balance is not always that simple. Life has a funny way of throwing the most unexpected variables into our equations and be sure they don't always make things easier to understand.

It's always as soon as I think I've finally got enough time to breathe, that I suddenly find myself being dragged back underwater, or in my case, under piles and piles of notes and worksheets.
Some days it honestly just feels like my life is being dictated by font size 11 words trying to enlighten me about the kidney and scientific formulas trying to get me to discover that the terminal velocity of any object will be constant.

The only thing that ever feels constant these days is the feeling that everything I do this year will define who I am forever. Its scary to think that this is my last year of high school. To think that next year I will have to say goodbye to my friends, and that we might never see each other again as our lives take us in completely different directions.

These 9 girls have really changed my life and helped create the person I am today. If ever there have been problems, and trust me there have been plenty, from boys to misunderstandings among friends, I have always known that if ever I found myself alone in my dark room sobbing my eyes out every single one of them would be there with ice cream and alcohol before my tears could make my mascara run. I know I have at least 4-6 moms that I have no biological connections with, but that love and treat me like their own daughter, and its all thanks to these amazing young women that, dare I say it, have become my sister and companions for life.

Although this year presented a unique set of challenges it also brought with it plenty of nights I wont ever forget. Concerts like Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Swedish House Mafia and more filled my year with music and memories. Movie nights and birthday sleepovers that ended up becoming utter chaos as nine girls ran rampant, high on sugar and caffeine, in nothing but skimpy pajamas and slippers will never be forgotten. You can always be sure that with these girls your night will be a raging success if you have Mean Girls and Bridesmaids, and endless supply of tea, and enough cupcakes to put Carlos Bakery to shame.

I don't believe that I will never ever see these creatures that ensure my life is always overflowing with girl talk and endless gossip again, because it would take the Earths oblivion to ever tear us apart.

Our break time conversations have evolved from envy over each others barbies to how gross boys were to how edible they've become to the latest gossip about that girl at the party and now to university plans. It's scary to think that, what feels like yesterday, I was thinking how long the last 6 years of my school career were going to take, and now I only have 425 days left until they ask me to stop coming to school.

How ironic is it that for 13 years they beg and force you to come to school every single day and then suddenly, as if your final year were a disease that you've now caught, it all changes and they start to politely tell you that you can't hang around anymore because your scaring the little kids.

Seventeen has been a year full of ups and downs, some downs that nearly hit the core of the Earth and some ups that lead me to believe I was partly eagle and could fly. I can remember thinking to myself last year December that 2014 was going to be a year to remember. I looked at the calendar and discovered it was already October and I had still done nothing that would set this year apart from the others. I swear it was April less than a minute ago?

I must say though, this year has taught me one thing, and that's that life is like trying to build a house of cards, outside, in a public park. There are guaranteed to be obstacles like joggers and old ladies, and sudden gusts of wind that threaten to blow everything over, but once you've completed your masterpiece, everyone passing by will stop and stare and think to themselves, " How on Earth did (s)he manage to build something so wonderfully delicate in such a harsh environment?!" And it will be your turn to take a step away and say, "This was all me.'

2014 has been a year of love, life and learners licences. Substantial developments in my life have lead me to believe that with love comes heartbreak and the two will always be paired together. I also discovered that I am a human practically incapable of "moving slowly." Whether I'm out jogging in the evenings or trying to navigate the rough seas of relationships, long and short distance, I always find myself sprinting at top speeds and then suddenly coming to an abrupt halt as I run out of stamina and breath to continue and so I'm left standing there wheezing and red in the face.

Am I too young to love? Too young to understand the complexities of what the word entails? I am constantly surrounded by those who are posed on opposite sides of the spectrum, those who believe with every fiber of their being that love exists and can be found in even the smallest place, and those who are dead set against everything teenage love represents and believe that we are incapable of the depth needed to feel these emotions.

Emotions have played a huge part in this year for me and have lead me to make both rash and rational decisions that  in the end have ultimately worked out for the better, although not all of the time.
Some advice I can offer is that all highs are only temporary and that lows are determined by your own resilience.

Teenage Memoirs

The most common question I have been asked is, "What are you going to do one day?"
Well, lets just say it's... interesting.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly how this all works. School, Friends, Boys and well Life. Its a delicate scale that has to be balanced perfectly in order to work out...

Some days I wake up, just happy to be alive, and content to live and be exactly who I am, and other days its a little more difficult...

My exams have started and although I get days off to study at home, I still feel as if I'm drowning in little black words printed next to grey and white microscopic diagrams. Sure, it seems as if I'm working hard in my room, but really I'm just staring at words moving my eyes from left to right across the page, trying to comprehend concepts that seem to be floating past my brain and getting stuck while being absorbed.

I also cant escape the fact that these exams will pretty much define the rest of my life... every adult I've spoken to, keeps telling me about how important this grade is, and asking me what I want to do when "I'm Grown Up"

First they'll tell me do something you love, and then in the same breath they turn around and tell me that money is everything, and that all they see in my future is success beyond my wildest dreams, as long as I'm willing to do something that I kind of want to but don't really... and make all these sacrifices in order to be wealthy.

If you really knew what I wanted to do, I would tell you I wanted to do everything, I want to be on stage, acting, singing and dancing... I want to be playing hockey everyday, pushing my body to it's limits. I would want to be learning how to make the piano obey my fingers at every stroke, I want to travel the world and discover each religion and culture and meet the locals, live like them and make friends all over the world. I want to be scuba diving... exploring the depths of the ocean, chasing tides and turtles and then I also want to make tons of money so that when I want, I can take a roadtrip down to the oceans shore and bathe in some sun. I want to come back up and work on an artificial chlorophyll that could sustain rural settlements and create fresh water and glucose that could be manufactured into food and given to these people and that could help sustain them, and win a Nobel Peace Prize for this reason. If I could do anything I wanted I would be painting and drawing and creating music with all my international friends in foreign countries studying biochemistry and biotechnology while being able to sing for people who wanted to hear my voice fill up the air and still find myself having time to relax with some really nice boy and maybe one day settling down somewhere breathtakingly beautiful.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" "What are you going to study when you leave school?"

Please don't ask me those questions, my own dreams and expectations scare me, they truly frighten me. To think that I have no idea what or who I am...That I don't really know what makes me most happy and most excited, is a concept I'm still trying to figure out.

I look at my peers and ask them the same troubling questions that I can not yet answer and some have a very clear idea, but the others are just as confused as I am. Its scary having to make these decisions that will one day define you.

Life is but a mere balancing act, a delicate art form only a few every master.

What do I want to be when I grow up....

Happy.