i always thought the fact that i was coming apart at the seams was proof that i was somehow above everyone else, like something was trying to force me away from the rest of the world. i always thought that god tested the strongest most often, and my constant inner turmoil was proof of that.

but now, it is almost like my life is already laid down in a path before my feet. like i know what is going to happen before it happens, so there is no longer any challenge. have i fallen from grace? or have i passed all my tests up to this point. what is next? is this just the calm before the storm, or just the beginning of a different life for me. am i really pulling things together, or has god just given up on me and given me a normal life as punishment?

it is a wierd situation reversal. not believing in god finally leads me to the more positive of two solutions, but i feel disappointed by the fact that i came to this conclusion. it is all very simple. even in my quest for simplification, god proves to be too simple of a conclusion. simplicity isn't that easy. there are many varied, powerful and conflicting forces at work in this world, such that true simplicity would leave the world to shred itself to pieces in a series of grand and chaotic cataclysmic events. if god is the only force, then i don't agree with him, and i will do everything in my power to prove to him that he controls us humans using flawed or out of date stereotypes.

but i don't think he is the only force. i think there is more. i think i have a place somewhere, not for good or for evil, but for myself. i'll realize that there are no choices, there is just the path i have to take. i can't do anything that is counter to who i am. false forks are just alternatives available in case i am someone else. trying to force myself down a path i don't belong is what is dangerous.

maybe that is it. maybe i just forced myself so far off of my path that it took me until now to retrace my steps. maybe things are easy because i'm on the right track. that is the conclusion i am coming to more and more now. things make sense because they are supposed to make sense if they are correct. its not god, or a lack thereof. it is me, finally starting to pull itself together. all the inner turmoil, the headaches, the anxiety, the doubt and self-loathing, it was all just a sort of delayed mental and spiritual puberty. maybe i am finally catching up to the body that had wandered away, down a dark path it could not free itself from. i had to sieze things back for myself. i see signs of it all around me, in the back of my mind, tempting me, calling to me, trying to lure me away when my attention wanders. i can hear it talking to me sometimes, but i try to drown it out. drown it out with nothing, or something harmless.

the real battle is in my sleep. i used to have dreams all the time. as time went on, i lost them. they were occasional at best, and usually so uneventful i couldn't remember them. lately, i have been having dreams every night. multiple dreams. recurring dreams from my past, and new ones. dreams that start as nightmares. i am in a situation i don't understand. everything seems normal, but i know i'm not. i find myself in familiar places, places i never thought were real. places from my past, all the places i had convinced myself didn't exist because they are from memories i know aren't real. there are towns, buildings, cities based loosly on real places, but so different. but when i am in my dreams, i know all about them. i've been there before. i know how to get places. but i know something is wrong. because something is always wrong. usually, i just ran. i ran until my body would resist, and it wouldn't stay upright. i used to run on all fours, with my vision flickering in and out, fighting with everything i had because i knew something bad was coming, but i didn't know what it was. for nights in a row, bordering on weeks in a row now, i have stayed with it. i haven't run, unless i had too. i have been trying to win.

the last few nights i have been having this one dream. it started with people coming to kill me. people i didn't know. they were all after me. other people thought i was nuts. some of these other people tried to kill me after i mentioned it. eventually, things got out of control, and half of the population went nuts. i grabbed the people around me, and ran. i found the weapons i knew i had from a previous dream. i fought back. i protected the people i was with. last night, i think i beat them all. i had been fighting for three nights in a row now, i had killed so many of them and they had killed so many other people, that i was one of the last targets. i took the person with me, a girl who had been with me for what seemed like days, and ran one more time, to a place, to the dream version of the apartment building i live in now. i had seen it before, when i lived at my old place, but i didn't recognize it before. i always thought it was some sort of hotel i was staying at in my dream; i stay in a lot of different hotels or college dorms in different towns in my dreams. but last night i recognized it. i knew where i was. i knew this place was the only place i would be safe and stand a chance. it was MY home, my place in the world, the place i knew better than anyone and stood the best chance of survival.

i found my last two boxes of ammunition, and this crazy soul bomb me and one of my buddies had been working on as a last ditch effort. we had been trying to find a way to lure the person behind it all out into the open. i knew there was someone behind it all, and i knew it was a real living person. they had to be real, because they knew everything we were trying to do, they were one step ahead of us. nothing like the mindless creatures they sent after us. i give the girl two of my guns and half the ammunition. i kill the last of the people coming after us, and see two figures walking down the sidewalk towards me. i knew it was them. the people behind us. i fire shots at them in the distance before they can recognize it is me. they stop, and fire back, and i run away around the building towards my room (which is strangely on the bottom floor on the other side of the building it usually is. there are a lot of strange differences between the dream version of this building and the real version). i break through the window, and inside. i know where they are going to come. they know where i have hidden the bomb, and i know they know it. i put the girl in a room away from it all, a nondiscript room on a different floor from where all the action is going to be. i try to make it look as normal as possible so no one will be able to find her and she will be safe. i tell her to wait for me. i go and i hide the bomb across the hall from where it is hidden now to throw them off the track.

up to this point i have kept myself hidden. i have used stealth and misdirection. i have been as silent and as invisible as possible, sticking to shadows, slipping behind piles of wreckage. at this point, i know my buddy is there. the only other person besides the girl and myself i know is alive. i know he is close. i step out of the shadows, and into the middle of the hallway. i let my presense be known to anyone who can see it. i hear footsteps coming towards me. i walk down the hallway and slip into one of the open doorways until someone can see me, my gun pointed towards the entrance, on the same side of the door jam as the person is coming from. i know it is one of them, one of the two figures who was walking towards me. not the one in charge, but the other one, still one of them. i hear him come to my doorway. as he approaches, he stops, and i know why. i know my friend is on the other side, and has just confronted him face to face, unthinkable before this moment because this man is so powerful. it is enough to turn him around. i know the evil man is smiling, enjoying the prospect of killing my friend. that is when i rotate through the doorway, and shoot the bad guy in the head. my friend is smiling at me, unafraid. he knew i was there, and that it would be ok.

this is what has been happening lately. in one of my other dreams, a dream in which i was a part of an evil gang who loosely controlled monsters made of energy. about a week ago when i was thrown into it again, i thought about running again, but then i realized that i had infiltrated this gang somehow. i felt out of place, but no one questioned my presence at all. i saw these people, and these monsters in the times they weren't killing, in this crappy little hole in the sewers beneath this snowy hotel resort town. i watched, and i knew what i had to do. it was up to me. everything was up to me. i was the only one who could stop them. and as i watched, the monsters slowly revealed their weaknesses in front of me. and then it happened. they were luring people into the sewers so they could kill them. they all ran out. as they did, i killed the last one to leave when no one was there before slipping into the tunnels. i ran, and found the people first. i started leading them through the sewers. i knew one of the monsters was coming, so i sent the people off alone down a fork, and led the monster after me. but i was unafraid. the monster came screaming down the tunnel towards me, and passed me without a second glance. it was after the people, and it was used to me. i went back and found the people, who thought i had abandoned them, and started leading them towards the exit. when we got there, the same monster came towards us. now it knew, and it charged me. still, i was unafraid. i knew its weakness. as the last person escaped up the ladder, i stood alone in the tunnel, unafraid in the monsters path.

i can't pass these things off as coincidences. one night, maybe. but it has been days, weeks in a row where i have been dreaming everynight, and every scene is familiar. i have started going through what i remember about some of my worst dreams thinking about everything i know now about the surroundings so i won't be so afraid when their turn comes. i know i will visit all of these places i have dreamt about before, and constantly throughout my life and find out why i was there in the first place. i know i am not done with the zombie people, there is still the bomb i haven't seen go off yet, and the other mysterious person, but i have been victorious up to this point. i know i haven't killed all of the monsters in the sewer, but i know i will. it is like i am slowly going through my dreams and fufilling my purpose in each of them. their stories have progress, instead of ending with me blindly stumbling and groping my way through a scary place i don't recognize, running from some nameless terror.

something has changed in me. it can't be coincidence. these dreams are like memories of my past, of my past imagination. a lot of them never made sense to me, but they are coming more and more into focus now. these dreams feel as real to me as any other memory. i remember the places i go to from my past, because i have already been there in dreams in the past.

i remember a few dreams in particular, recurring dreams. one that started when i was 5 years old. i had this dream that i fell in love and got married, and even started loving this woman romantically when i was 5, before i understood what love was, or even what sexual desire was, but i know now what i was feeling in that dream. i had that dream, the same dream with a little bit added to the end for 11 days in a row. i remember because i counted. i haven't thought about counting the number of times it was since i was 5, but i remember for some reason. i don't remember the dream anymore, except the end. we were running, me and this woman. i don't know where we were going, but we were running.

where were we going? who is this girl? is it the same girl from the zombie dream? is that girl ok, locked in her room? i never got a chance to go back and find her before i woke up. come to think of it, a girl was the last person up out of the sewers while i was standing there. who is this girl, and do we ever meet again?

i don't know exactly what is happening to me, but i feel stronger today than i did yesterday because of what has been happening in my dreams.

frivved up by Ben at 7:40 PM