My subconscious is trying to destroy me

I've always had an over-active imagination. In some instances that's been great. I'm hardly ever bored because I just let my mind wander. But on the other hand, sometimes it wanders into dangerous places that then my conscious has to rescue me from. The way that my subconscious is the most rebellious is in my dreams. I understand that no one can really control what they dream about, but what happens when your dreams are so real they hurt you in real life? There's this boy, much like always, that I've been 'seeing'. Mostly we've been texting and I've seen him a few times, but it seems like things are going okay. I asked him when we started talking if this was working towards a relationship or if it was just for fun. I've grown to the point that I don't really mind either way, I just felt like I deserved to know. So I've known from the get-go that this is just for fun. Well the other night I had one of my crazy realistic dreams. In it, he arrived at my house during a party we were having. We just showed up out of the blue and asked to talk to me outside. I followed him and he told me that he really wanted to meet my parents. So I went and got them and he told them that he would like to take me out because even though we haven't known each other very long that he knew I was special. Then he came inside with me and started introducing himself to people from my church. I woke up in the morning and felt exceedingly empty, I hadn't realized how badly I wanted to be with him. So, is my subconscious just trying to make me realize and come to terms with something I've probably known all along, or is it just trying to screw with my brain and hurt me? Either way, sometimes it really sucks to have such on over-active imagination.

From the lips of the innocent

It never ceases to amaze me the things that kids will say. This week I've been teaching Vacation Bible School at my church and I've learned that Bill Cosby got one thing right, 'kids say the darndest things'. I had one kid make fun of another because he had 'squinty eyes', I had another tell me that his dad can't come and see him sing tonight because 'he's in jail because he did bad things'. There are so many times when I don't even have a response for these tiny people that I just blankly stare at them hoping and praying for appropriate words to come together in my brain. I think that thing that most suprises me about what these kids say is the vast difference in what they say. I had one boy tell me that I was very pretty, it made my night. I felt really good about myself because kids simply tell it like it is. Then another girl crushed my super happy high. She was asking me things that she felt made me a grown up. She asked me if I had a house, so I said no. She asked me if I had an apartment, and I said no. Then she asked if I had a boyfriend, and when I said no she gave me a horrified look and said "you don't even have a boyfriend!?" In her eyes I was a failure, because not only did I not have a place of my own yet, I also had no one special in my life. In my eyes I'm perfectly fine. I'm in school on my way towards graduation and I don't need a man to make me happy. It's funny how different the world looks through such a small pair of eyes, when big people are supposed to have houses and cars and families. But one thing about working with kids is for sure, they'll always keep you on your toes.

What's fair is fair

I've been thinking a lot about this statement recently. When we're children our parents and teachers teach us to share with our siblings/classmates because it's fair. My parents always split everything right down the middle because then it was fair. If my brother got a snack, I wanted one too, it's only fair right? In bible study two weeks ago we talked about grace, and how grace isn't fair. In a video we watched a man told us to spread the unfairness around. He decided that grace wasn't fair because none of us deserve it and yet, we recieve. It continues to astound me at how the lessons our parents taught us as children change with age. I'm now much too old to assume that I get something because my brother does, but it doesn't stop that tiny feeling of neglect that is embedded in my subconsious from the time I was a small child. Now, understandably we can't all look at the world with child-like innocence for our entire lives, I mean, we'd be completely screwed. And heaven forbid we look for the good in people or give them second chances, then we're just naive. But back to the idea of fairness. I've been told for a good portion of recent history that life isn't fair. Miracles don't happen more often then they do. Young people die just as often as the old. And crappy things happen to good people too, not just people who deserve it. Maybe our adult lives would be easier to deal with if our parents had taught us that we will get screwed over by people who told us they care about us, that no matter how we prepare for the worst that life will knock you flat on your back, and that bad things will happen no matter how good you are or how much faith you have. But I guess then we'd just be raising generation after generation of incredibly cynical children. It's these kinds of thoughts that keep me up at night. Why in the world would my parents want me at the age of four to believe that the world is fair when by the age of ten that idea will be completely shattered, if not sooner. Maybe our folks want us to grow up believing that we can change the world into the perfect one they lied to us about. Everyone is always telling me that it's the hard parts of life that define you as a person and that without hard times you can's really experience true happiness. I'd like to call those people on their bullsh*t. I believe that you can find happiness without having truly terrible things happen to you. Sure, it's easier to find the happy once you've had the heartbreak, but that just doesn't seem fair. And there's that word again. Its really been hanging over my head and whenever I've talked to someone it nags me in the back of my mind, 'is that fair?'. Like my mom, she's not even 50 yet, but both of her parents have been gone for at least a year. My dad is in his mid 50's but both of his parents are completely functioning, independent people. That's not fair. My grandma died of cancer after living her entire life as a nurse helping people. My grandpa smoked for between 30 and 40 years, had multiple heart attacks, and died because he broke his hip. What's fair about any of that? A man who is like my second father was laid off even though he was amazing at his job and had 30 of experience and now he can't find any new work. Not fair. My childhood lessons about being an adult didn't prepare me for this kind of blind injustice. If this was truly the world I had been prepared for we'd be a communist nation. Everyone would have just as much as their neighbor, there would be no homeless and no ridiculously rich. But would we be happy then? Would we believe that the world was fair or would we assume that there was still some injustice? 'Well his house is blue and my house is yellow and so that's completely unfair.' Maybe we were unconsiously conditioned by our parents to constantly want more than we have been given. Or perhaps they did this to us on purpose because they never wanted us to settle for anything. Or maybe in a sick and twisted way, they taught us in this way to get some revenge because their parents did the same thing. A mix of all three? I think the most twisted part of the whole thing is that I realize that the world isn't fair, but that I expected it to be beause of what my parents taught me, and I'll probably end up teaching my kids the same thing. I'd like to think that we're taught this lesson in the vain hope on the part of our parents that our generation would've been able to change the inheriant unfairness in this world. But can anyone really make anything fair?