dreams -Faith Brooks(19)

Dreams are really cool. They're basically a way to another universe where anything can happen, which is really interesting to me. So, I'm gonna list some facts about the oh-so-interesting universes that our minds make up :))
1. you can't read or tell the time in dreams
2. some people can "lucid dream", which is where you have the ability to control what happens in your dreams
3. the periodic table and the idea of DNA being in a double-helix spiral form were both inspired by dreams that scientists had
4. "premonition dreams" are basically what some people call being "psychic". these dreams are dreams that you have where things happen then they actually happen in real life. apparently, Abraham Lincoln dreamt of his assassination before it actually happened, along with other cases such as 19 Titanic victims having dreams about the catastrophe before it happened
5. dimethyltryptamine is an "isolated and synthetic" form of the chemical our brains naturally produce while we dream. a lot of people use this hallucinogenic (which is highly illegal) to sleep and dream during the day because they love dreaming so much
6. dream catchers are Native American symbols made from weaving string around a hoop and attaching sacred objects(most often feathers and beads), used to protect the owner from having nightmares. I've believed in dream catchers ever since my grandma gave me one when I was little. it may have been my belief that kept my bad dreams from happening, but either way, I believe in them
7. dreams increase your creativity
8. people who are blind but weren't born blind see images in their dreams, but people who were born blind dream with all of their senses except their sight, so they can't see images but they can hear, feel, taste and smell things in their dreams
9. 12% of people can only dream in black and white
10. you can have up to seven dreams in one night
11. people only dream one to two hours on average every night

Father's Day- Bethany Pace

Last year on Father's Day I was really unappreciative.  I don't even think I told my dad happy father's day.  I didn't think three words would really mean much to one man.  I just saw it as another useless day.  I stayed at my grandmother's all day, while my dad was at home with my step mom and her children, probably talking about how terrible of children my brothers and I were.  I had reasons to be angry with my father, but they weren't legitimate enough to completely ignore that for so long he served duel roles.  He was my father and due to my mother's absence, was forced to take on her role, and I didn't ever really appreciate that until this year.  
I started to spend more time with my dad and step mom, after my recent life changes.  I realized that my dad wanted what was best for m  e, and was the only man I would ever really be able to count on.  So this year I sat out to be an actual present daughter on Father's Day, and spend time with him to makeup for last year.  I got up and went to church with him that morning.  When we came home my step mom had a big meal cooked for all of us, and her family came over, and we all ate together.  
Afterwards, it was just my dad, my step mom, and I at home.  They decided to go for a ride.  Which we had no idea what it would consist of besides dirt roads. 
We rolled the windows down, played music, and stuck our feet out the window.  We stopped in the woods and my dad decided to get out and see if he could catch any fish while the water was flowing through this stream.  He was instantly swarmed by hungry mosquitoes and slapped them off and jumped back in the truck yelling.  We all laughed as we drove on.  When it was safe we rolled the windows back down, and stopped on a bridge.  As my dad tried to catch fish I talked to my step mom, and dangled my legs off the side of the bridge while pretending that my anxiety wasn't telling me to move them.  We looked at the water for awhile, and even saw a snake in the bushes.  After being attacked by more mosquitoes and the heat, we decided to hop back in the truck and headed farther down the road and sang to our hearts content.  
While driving farther, we saw a rabbit and a hog.  Towards the end of our ride, we stopped to watch the sunset.  And just as I thought the day would be completely relaxing, a huge bee flew into my window and I jumped out onto the gravel road, scraping the bottoms of my feet.  This time my parents laughed at me, and i hopped back in.  We stopped for some food and came home.  I think this Father's Day made up for last years.

TINY- Bethany Pace (Last Part, 4)

My piece of mind seemed to deteriorate while I was smiling.
Maybe I didn't notice, but everyone else did.
It was clear to see, but ignorance is bliss.
My façade, my smile, my happiness
It grew tiny.

My patience became tiny.

My tolerance was tiny.

My anger was large..

My texts were long.

His responses were short.

Miserable.
Miserable.
All I had to do was wait.
Sit and wait.
I watched as my entire branch was uprooted and broke off.
It didn't just break on its own.
I sat and watched the one I loved break it off.
Silence.
Snap, Snap.
Rip it out.
Ripped me out of his life.
Watched me plummet.
He didn't care.
My understanding was tiny.


Everything I loved tore me apart.
Everything I ever wanted left me.
The only thing I could count on was the uncomforting feeling of the darkness that surrounded me.
No one was there to understand.
The clouds shifted over my scene.
The light grew tiny.


I couldn't move.
I didn't go anywhere.
In fear that if I crawled out, he would come back to look for me.
And maybe when he came back he would want me back.
And so I didn't leave.
I waited, and I waited, and I waited.
I became numb,
My reasoning was tiny.


He came back.
No rejoicing, no healing.
Melancholy smiles.
Tears.
The same amount of pain, broken trust, and nothing that could've been fixed.
We just viewed each other from afar.
He swore he loved me, he swore he wouldn't leave.
And I pretended to believe.
I pretended that I was put back together.
Pressure in my chest grew.
My lies weren't tiny.

It wouldn't work again, no matter how bad I tried.
I got nothing in return.
A lot of numb feelings.
A touch full of broken shards instead of butterflies.
The hope that we would work was tiny.


He ran full fledge from the hole.
No back tracks.
Just the sound of someone walking on leaves, sticks breaking, someone running.
In the other direction.
The person I cared the most for.
I didn't watch them walk away, I just listened as my whole world fell apart.
I listened as my heart dropped.
I listened as I screamed.
I listened to the sound of my knuckles hitting the walls.
I listened to the barrier I was being held in collapse and fall on top of me.
I knew it was over.
I knew we were finished.
I knew that my entire life was collapsing. 
I couldn't move, my strength was tiny.


I slowly picked myself back up.
Broken piece by piece.
Shard by shard.
Tear by tear.
I stood in complete silence.
Disbelief,
I had nothing left but myself.
So I remembered the sound, the way he walked. 
I dug my nails in the walls, climbed my way out of my self-made pit.
And I walked in the other direction.
On new leaves.
On unbroken sticks.
To find my own path.
My knowledge about where I AM going is very tiny.

I haven't ever wanted my story to end there.
With a boy.
With love.
Like a semicolon, the sentence continued where it could've stopped.
My story will continue past this.
Past the darkness, past my grave, past my false hope.
Past the people who shouldn’t of torn me down.
The view of who I once was is so tiny, that person can't even be viewed with a microscope.

So my grandfather was wrong.
Tiny was just a word, just a nickname.
It had no ties to me.
It has no ties to me.
My soul is large
My feelings are large
My future is large
Me?
No.
I'm not tiny.

TINY- Bethany Pace (Part 3)

I rummaged through empty spaces and meaningless places for answers.
Every page of the story having a different conclusion.
Everyday having a lower weight.
Every hour concluding to a new thought about how to stop it all.
I turned every moment of my life into a bad one.
If the world was still spinning, if I felt any shift at all it was tiny.

At 15,
I found redemption in change.
New hallways, new faces, a new hand to hold.
I was the new girl.
I reinvented myself into someone that couldn't possibly raise questions about my state of mind.
“You're okay as long as they think you're okay”
My actual personality was shoved deep down into a crevice until it was wrinkled to where no one could see, it was tiny.

I developed into someone I wasn't for such a short period of time. 
It was like someone was going to fling a rubber band, and instead of letting it fly, they stretched it so thin that it broke.
I snapped, I broke.
And the pieces were tiny.


Where was I to go from there?
Steadily, like rocks upon a window, I could exhibit how I felt. 
Eventually rocks turned into stones, stones turned into boulders, and boulders turned into mountains.
My sight of reality was tiny.


Minutes, hours, days..
I couldn't get past a certain thought all day.
Fogging up my mind, but I didn't care.
I finally felt warmth, light pulling me out of the grave I dug for myself.
I wanted to go towards it.
I let it happen, I let another person pull me out.
My sense had seemingly grown tiny.


Love clouded my eyes like cataracts, that I didn't want removed.
Affection, touch, warmth.
He picked me out of my grave, but we were still standing near the hole. 
Hanging onto a branch that loosely held our weight.
At any moment it could snap and I would be thrown down, but this time with bruises and cuts. 
But I never looked down.
The hole had grown tiny in my thoughts.


I was so happy.
So much happier than I had been.
I took him like poison, like drugs.
Poison hidden in a water bottle.
I clearly could have seen it, but I didn't look.
I refused.
I didn't listen to anyone.
Shushed them as they cried
 “poison! It’s poison! He’s poison!”
The love I had for him wasn't tiny.


Maybe it was a few months later, a few minutes later?
I was gripping a pillow, I was biting my nails, I was driving my hands into my wrists, I was biting the inside of my cheek.
I did what I could to keep it alive.
I was happy, we were so happy.
What happened?
The roots of the branch were growing tiny.

TINY- Bethany Pace (Part 2)

The majority of the time, no words at all hurt worse than hurtful ones.
How can you fix something that you're not quite sure what you did wrong?
Seclusion began.
My friend group steadily began to become tiny.

It's hard to believe that a person can hear you when they aren't responding.
Staring into your eyes with a blank stare, without meaning, without feeling.
Heartless...
I tend to find myself asking,
“How can you do this/that to someone?”.
I sure wish I had someone to answer those questions, because answers were what I needed.
“Build a wall”, similar to trump campaigns, those were the only words that hung in the air.
The wall I built between myself and other people wasn't tiny.


I learned that silence isn't actually silence.
Silence screams louder than a tornado siren.
You can't close your mind, you can't say what you want.
Your mind is full of distress and empty thoughts, open ended answers, and lose strings.
The thoughts in my mind weren’t tiny.


Being tossed around from atmosphere to atmosphere is a big struggle.
Eventually my siblings and I, were sat in one place.
The mother figure in my life vanished along with my understanding.
My grip on my life loosened.
I couldn't exactly handle what I thought was going on.
Pretending….
My mask couldn't be tiny.


Blunt comments and misunderstood perceptions.
I drew my friends close, along with a bad image.
I grew angsty and rebellious.
Doing what I could to throw away my current reputation, and little did I know, my desired future.
Everyone eventually saw through to what I really was, my mask was transparent and tiny.


No one really is oblivious to the fact of teenage girls being insecure, it's overused.
“Self image”
It really projects to people who you are.
If you hate yourself, they’ll hate you.
If you think you're better than everyone, they’ll think you're a snob.
If you think your legs are too fat, if you think you’re stupid, if you think your hair always looks bad...they will too.
My confidence was crushed into debris smaller than tiny.

“Whatever”
“Stop”
“I'm fine, really”
“Yeah, I just ate a lot at lunch”
“I accidentally cut it when I was shaving”
“I’M OKAY!”
“Leave me alone”
“Just let me be”
Like a broken record, nearly broken door hinges, I repetitively said these things for months.
Trying to shelter my parents and my friends.
Meaning none of them.
Regardless, no one needed a magnifying glass to see the truth in my words were tiny.


Blood and tears tend to flow into the same stream, or into the same shower drain.
The scratches on the mirror matched the scratches in my mind.
Physically and mentally.
Band aids couldn't fix them, long sleeves covered my lies.
 “You’ve changed.”
“What's wrong?”
I couldn't answer any questions, I couldn't respond to them.
And only because I truly didn't know the answers.
My ability to control my emotions was tiny.

TINY- Bethany Pace (Part 1)

 8:00 am

(maybe)

The time I was born (probably)

My grandfather saw me and the word, “tiny”, fell from his chapped lips.

From then forth I was called the utterly, embarrassing nickname, tiny.

It was more so related to my size (at the time), but to me, it meant more than my appearance.

My patience was tiny, my ego was tiny, and my sense of security was tiny.

My ambition was always there, but I was always afraid of doing things on my own.

Always forced my mother into drawing the dotted lines before I attempted to trace letters onto paper.

My brothers and my feet always met the ground in the place I wanted them to meet.  

My ambition was not so tiny.

I grew up learning that things, and people are taken for granted.

I also grew up learning hidden lies.

Lies that a family could stay together, that it was okay to be happy, and that the world would allow you to carry happiness into your dark, secluded, wooden coffin.

My hope grew tiny.

       Arguments and broken promises were the foundation of my childhood.

The occasional trip that we couldn’t actually afford.

Nothing out of the blue, just a distant father and a facade of a mother.

Everything eventually shatters, and reveals the truth.

The sight of closure was tiny.

My desire to write grew from experiences.

The sun seemed to be brighter, the grass seemed to be greener, the clouds seemed to be more attainable, the trees seemed to be taller, vines seemed to curl in many different new directions when I actually searched.

My imagination wasn’t tiny.

12,

Hair constantly in undoable tangles, just like my thoughts.

The era of trying to create someone I wasn’t, began.

I soon began to realize that, “tiny”, was an adjective that couldn’t describe my appearance anymore.

My confidence then grew tiny.

           5’4, 5’5, 5’6, 5’7, 5’10

I didn’t think I’d ever level out.

I just kept growing, and growing eventually toppling over the majority of my peers.                                                           

I always learned that girls were supposed to be short, right?

A girl shouldn’t have more power than a boy.

Dominance and submissive, it didn’t quite fit my situation, did it?

I wasn’t, tiny.

14,

I wasn’t prepared for the water I was being thrown into.

“Sink or swim”

Boys of course, the most important thing to a teenage girl.

(lots of sarcasm in that statement)

There were the boy crazy girls, and if you weren’t boy crazy you were lesbian.                                     

Unless of course it was out of your control and you weren’t the prettiest wildflower in the field.  

The respect immature boys had for girls, including my choice significant other, was tiny.

It’s a learning experience to realize the difference between want and deserve.

My tolerance was large, and I thought i was doing myself a favor.

Lies, love, and unfinished apologies

Young love is an extraordinary thing to partake in.

(even more sarcasm)

The love someone has for you in their heart is not equal to the love they have for you in their belt buckle at 14, 15, and 16.

The luminescence may look the same, but it definitely does not feel the same.

My popularity was tiny.

 
                                                       “Sometimes quiet is violence”

College? (4) Chloe Reese

college is a big deal to many people, including me. Getting into the right college can affect my whole future. But first I have to graduate high school. Graduating is a part of what will help me get into the college I want. Taking the right classes and having the right grades is also an important part in getting into college. Doing all these things will also increase chances of getting scholarships. Scholarships are a whole other important part. I want to get a scholarship to help me pay for college. Let's face it college is expensive and every little bit will help. But the dream is getting a full ride to the college I want to go to. So when I have all the things in high school I need to get a scholarship, next comes the trouble of picking the colleges. There are so many different colleges out there to choose from. There are also many factors that affect what college I choose. To start, the location is a big deal. "Do I want to stay close to home?", " do I want to move out of state or far away?", " if so, how far away?". These questions start to affect my options hugely. There is also the factor of what colleges offer what I need to get the career I want in the future. This a huge factor in choosing a college. What is another huge factor that I need to know in high school is , what GPA. ACT score, and grades each college expects. This will change which colleges I want and am able to go to. Then then the last factor I will it leave out is cost. Cost will change which  colleges scholarships will cover and how much I will have to pay. For example, if one college cost more than another, but they both offer me the same education then I will pick the cheaper one. So, in the end college is a big decision and there are many factors that will affect my choices along the way.