i guess this year you would say i have become a humanitarian, i have been diving in deep into the matters of sex trafficking because it pulls at my heart. humanity is being explioted by humanity and it's disgusting, but it has gone on since the dawn of time. i could rant and rave about the injustice of this one issue but instead i have written a poem to challenge others to stand up for humanity in whatever fashion, be it poverty, genocide, trafficking, or whatever else.
this started out as an attempt just to write out what i felt in trying to wrap my head around the concept of people thinking they can own other people as objects.

Rip the heart open and pour it out
No more anger, no more doubt
No more lies,
and no one dies
No more cries,
Start saving lives,
give me your eyes
humanity needs us all
every one i call
if our creativity we have lost
we no longer know what that life cost
start with one
You’re not too small, not too young,
Neither are they and their heads low hung
Not every attempt will succeed
But one life in need
may one day feel the deed...

classes are finally over, exams done, except for having to sing for graduation tomorrow. so ready to be done, ready to be away from people. i'm just so tired of people right now, which is a big deal for someone as outgoing and extroverted as me. i am tired of depending on people, bc they almost always let you down in one way or another. i don't know how many times i have read that line from many other people, which makes me feel like i'm not alone. but i'm just ready to be alone for a while. I am about to cry i am so tired of everything. i have been getting sleep the last few days, but i have started running again, and there are things going on at home, i feel like a basket case. and i feel like no one wants to know what i am going through.
my family is not the great thing it used to be anymore, and i have no one else anymore that knows me well and gives a crap too. my brother (ex best friend) is a jerk, and my best friend has a life. but not having someone to talk to all the time is really starting to bug me, writing in my journal everyday only covers so much, and paper can only take so much burden off my mind.
its so exhausting. i have tried to make new friends here this year, bc most of my old ones graduated, but everybody's got clicks or are just too busy or too needy themselves. it just makes me wonder if the rest of life is going to be this way. i still have never really had a boyfriend and am not sure if i am even worth pursuing as a best friend or a girlfriend. i know i am misunderstood lots of times but, i mean really?
I know God is there, but i still feel alone, like i am pursuing him alone. i will be discipled starting next semester but what do i do until then? i feel like life is getting harder and i'm not measuring up. and it feels like every time i push harder, the harder i fail those i want to do good by.
I've noticed for the last couple of years that i have been waiting for something really bad to happen to me, like everyone else has a good story to tell about horrible things that have happened in their lives and how they came out of it, but my life was kind of nothing special, nothing to tell really. but now here it is. my brother is close to being kicked out of the house, i am not accpeted as an adult in my extented family, and i'm not a kid either so its like i don't exist. i have another year left of school bc i changed my major. my youth pastor wants me to disciple a kid or two, but i have no clue what to do with that, i feel like i would corrupt a child bc i've never been discipled. i just feel like these things are being put in my path, and i have stopped dead, trying to move the muck out of my way, but its just slipping out of my hands back into the pile still before me. like if i don't get through all this, i'm a failure at life.
i don't want to be like this. i want to get through the problems and not have to look back because it wasn't fixed here and now. but the hard part is there is nothing i can do if the others aren't willing to try to change, i can make as many choices as i want, but nothing will change if they aren't willing to do what it might take as well.
its depressing to think how much i loved my family and then seeing things and the way it has become and realizing it will never be the same again.
but i can't give up, but how do i find the energy to keep going? i've lost my passion for music, i don't want to be around my family right now, i don't want to be here, i want to go running and keep on running, but someone said, you should run toward something instead of away from it. but what can i run to now? a better life? what will that life be and how do i get there? Action has to be taken now, sometimes to cross a bridge you have to jump off it and go swimming, against the current and hope it doesn't sweep you away. i mean that in the family sense, not the metaphorical Christian sense that people like to use.
i don't know how many people actually read my journal but i hope thinking about questions like those and finding answers will help you if you're having trouble too. i know i'm not alone in feeling alone, lol.

The Train Doesn't Stop Til Finals Are Over...

So Pastor Tom was talking this morning and he said something that caught my attention, it was that this time of year is a time to reflect on everything that has happened and things that are coming up. So I started writing about it.

I know what has gone on this semester, it started out great and then I got lazy and then I got sick, and then I got sick again but I have become complacent (I found this as I was watching Glee a while back, don’t laugh). The people that used to scare me and kept me on my toes are gone now. Heather Clifton Haithcock, though I don’t think she ever knew it, was the one person that intimidated me the most while she was here at school, she was the bomb.com as far as vocalists go. She scared me because I knew I could never sound like her, but maybe if I practiced hard enough I would be my own kind of great, but I couldn’t see who I could become. Or maybe I was scared to see that I might could be great like her, because then people would see that and they might have such high expectations and I would fail them. But I’m tired of not letting people see who I can be, I want to be the best I can be. I might kick myself later for having written this, but it will still be no ones fault but my own, and this will hold me accountable.

So this will be my mentality to get me through the week, as dorky as I may seem, if you can tell me you have never done this, you will have my adoration, lol….
This week will be like my own action flick. The war is on. My target is the notes on the page, in all the songs I have had this semester that have been kicking my butt. That I will not only kill them, but be creative about it (musicality) and everyone will be able to tell it is my work, haha. It’s the biggest challenge yet, like it is for a hero or heroin in a movie. I have 7 songs this semester instead of 4 or 5. My defense is to not think about the next semester or year at all, or the possible outcomes that could come out of coming out of Juries alive. It’s too risky and distracting. So here’s the game plan. I will break the runs down into measures and do them over and over until I get it, and can do it without really thinking about it. I have to spilt the practice times into smaller parts that are manageable and stick to them, even if I can’t focus. And then the best part of a thriller action movie, the main character is racing against time, I have 6 days until Juries. Which adds up to 130 hours give or take however many I’ll have to wait on Saturday for the juries, and then about 40ish hours to sleep, which makes the actual total of hours about 90ish. But then I have 16 hours of class, so the real total will be about 74 hours. 74 hours to commit the songs to memory and finish learning the last one.

The next part of this may only help those in high school or others that are struggling with grades or just don’t see them as important enough, but I needed to write this down for me if it helps no one else. I am a junior voice student. I have natural talent, but it is doing me no good at this level if I am not really practicing and the people who instruct me should be able to tell bc you can only tell on yourself at this point. It is my fault if I am not working hard enough. Sure everyone gets sick and it holds them back from getting all their hours. And if you get burnt out and loose your passion, that is only an excuse until you realize you’ve lost it, and not after that. I say that because after that you have a choice to wallow and waste your talent or get back up and try to find your heart for it again. I have to cling to God to help me find that again, and set a goal for myself to keep on going. I want to sing with a soundtrack choir and do stuff like they have done in the Narnia soundtracks and Lord of the Rings and stuff like that. Which brings me to my next point that is also, and mostly for any high school students or others that struggle with grades.

I am missing out on good opportunities to use my talent because I haven’t taken care of my grades well enough. My talent alone will not help me get the job that I want because they want more than just talent, they want to know you can keep up with your other responsibilities. Now I don’t have another chance to try for that team because I am a senior, that door is closed. So now I have to go back and fix my mistakes that I didn’t take the time to fix while I was there before, which is one thing that irritates me about other people when I am working, and now I’m a hypocrite.

But I can still clean up my act before I get out of school, and there is another thing I have learned in my time here. That is that you cannot expect others to have expectations of you, you can’t always expect standards to be there to keep you in check. If you look at the world outside, where are the standards, they are flying out of windows. You have to set standards for yourself and either rise to them or fall from them, and you will fall. But you can ALWAYS get back up and try again.

Now I will stop wasting the limited 74 hours I have to do this and get to work, good luck to everyone else on finals or juries or whatever you may have coming up. I hope anyone who reads this had a nice Thanksgiving break, and will have a nice Christmas and New Year.

i have been having some really weird dreams lately, but there is one inparticular that really stood out to me, that kind of applies to my life, at least in the past semester.

I was flying through a beautiful, almost ruined structure, but the inside still looked great, there were arches and the type of architecture, it kept coming back to the same place i was flying from and to. I was flying slowly, like i was waiting for something to race for. do you ever feel like in dreams that you can never fly as fast as you really want to? I could see the other people below going about their day, whatever that meant for them. i kept rounding more corners at the same speed. then i was back where i started again.
some kind of encounter happened between me and one of the people below, and then i was flying really slow, like a depression my wings could feel.
i flew slowly under another arch only to find someone there on the ground waiting for me, a bounty hunter, with a weapon that shot out a net that confined me, and i fell...
and then i woke up.
some of this i can relate to flying at normal speed seemed like my semester finally feeling like a normal semester should.
but i have been cut off from the rest of campus, bc our school won't let commuters in unless they are buying the overpriced crappy food in the cafeteria, so i don't get to see people much. this has caused me to slow down, and i have been struggling not to fall back into a depression, though I know i am not myself.
the conflict with the person is really just my brother, he has either ignored me for about a year or he has been a jerk, and unreliable for anything for that amount of time. he used to be my best friend, so this has taken a huge toll on me too. could have also been a reason to slow down.
as for the bounty hunter, i have no idea where he might have taken me, he could have been there to save me from my aimless wandering for all i know. maybe it was something else that i can't see yet, i've found lately that i have really been waiting most of the last few years, anticipating something bad to happen.
i prefer to think of the first option though, i lean more toward that because i got a glypmse of him before i woke up, and he kind of looked like a guy i have gotten to know this semester, but any hope of a relationship is on hold bc his ex girlfriend is giving him problems, that could be why i woke up just then. he has stolen my interest in anyone else. i have come to know him better than i thought i would considering we didn't see each other much this semester. but i'm totally comfortable just being friends, i just like him a little more than that.

normally i do not look into dreams as an answer to my life, but this one seemed to correlated a lot to what is going on. and it was a good was to get out some things i've been thinking about for a while.

this past week has been ridiculous. i have been challenged physically emotionally mentally and spiritually, all of that together has been quite overwhelming. i am better now, on the ball, pulling myself back together again, it was rough for a while, i couldn't seem to focus on anything really. today though things seem more clear. i had a great epic focus kind of day which doesn't happen very often but i felt like i finally knew everything i had to do.
several things have come to the surface lately.
i have had a need to be discipled for a while, and that prayer has finally been answered and will start in action next semester.
there is a guy i have been getting to know, i really still don't know that well, but things seem to be going well, even if we're just friends. i feel comfortable around him, its easy to just be myself, which is something i haven't felt in a long time.
I have also just realized some other things about my life in general, i'm starting to grip that things really will never be the same again. life has already changed for me and will continue to do so. there are family issues that have been going on for a while that are about to take a turn one way or another. if its good, hopefully it will continue to be good, if its bad, i just hope that lessons are learned from mistakes and we can move on. its like the blue pill red pill thing, from this point on, nothing will be the same.
i also auditioned for the play for next spring. we are doing the "Pirates of Penzance". i got in as one of the Major Generals daughters. I also audtitioned for a ministry team that does music, called the Difference, and i made the callbacks and am still waiting to hear if i made it. these are big things for me. i have never been in a traveling group before. i did the play last year and it was great, so i am excited to be a part of the next one.