The Walls We Build

Walls are boundaries we set up in order to protect.

They give us shelter to protect our bodies.

They give us a haven to protect our families.

They give us privacy to protect our pride.

They push the world out to protect our innocence.

Similar to the walls we build to live in, are the walls we build around ourselves.

Without these walls we are open for the world to judge.

We set up these walls to protect our hearts.

We set up these walls to protect our feelings.

We set up these walls to protect our vulnerability.

We spend our whole lives building this wall.

Everything we do to shelter ourselves adds a layer of bricks around it.

It continues to get thicker and thicker.

But it's never enough.

Like any wall, there are always people trying to break them down and get in.

We try to break down other peoples walls too.

Sometimes, when we break down a persons wall, they embrace it and let us in.

They let us build a wall together.

Thats the best feeling in the world.

However, often we break someones wall down,

and they push us right back out.

Thats when we return to our place,

and gather our bricks,

and dust off our tools,

and prepare our glue,

and fortify our own wall.

I'm addicted.

So I have this new mix... and I'm addicted to it. Words can't even describe how much I love it. Every chance I get, I'm listening.

IT IS ABSOLUTELY PERFECTIONARY!!!

The point of this post is that I want everyone else to have a glimpse how perfect this music is.

LISTEN TO IT!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnKGGab1nJs&feature=related

Swings, Ducks, and Cheerios

Last night as I was struggling to write an essay that I didn't want to write, I received some news about someone I care about. I won't say what the news was, but it devastated me. I could no longer focus on my paper because I was so upset by what I found out. My eyes welled up with tears and I cried. I felt helpless, like there was nothing I could possibly do to make things right. I needed a distraction. So I called my friend and told him what had happened. He picked me up in his truck and let me just sit and cry while he drove me around Provo. Once I was done, he said that he would gladly help distract me. First, he bought me a cheeseburger. Then we went to a park.

He showed me this really cool different kind of swing that he had discovered. I can't explain what it was like at all. He pushed me in the swing. Then twisted me up till my feet weren't touching the ground. I held on tight while I unwound and I tried my hardest to hold my feet in. When I realized that I wasn't stronger than the centrifugal force I let my legs fly out and I leaned back while I spun around and around. I could feel the cold air rush against my face. I could feel my tightly pulled back hair come loose. I could see the stars spin around opposite of me. I closed my eyes and felt free. Then I went over to the regular swings. I told him about how my friends and I used to swing as high as we could and then jump to see who could get the farthest. I also told him that we used to play a game where if you were swinging in unison with the person next to you, it meant you were married. My friends and I also used to swing as high as we could trying to get up and over the bar. It was never possible, but we used to get close, parallel to the ground and sometimes higher. Then I started to swing. I forgot about what was bothering me and I let myself swing. I let myself laugh and smile. I allowed myself to remember the feelings I used to have while I would swing. I let myself feel like a kid again with no cares in the world.

There's a duck pond right by where we were swinging. I ran over to stand on the rocks while I watched the ducks swim around. I listened to the sounds they made and watched them wiggle their tail feathers. It made me smile. How easy it would be to be a duck. I closed my eyes and imagined the life of a duck. It was a good life, but I really appreciate opposable thumbs. My friend found a bag of bread on a bench. We fed the ducks and watched them while they indulged in this feast. We both picked our favorite duck. He named his Squirtle and I named mine Callie. They were best friends, we decided.

Then my friend found a bag of cheerios. We fed the ducks cheerios too. It looked so cool to throw a handful of cheerios into the water. Cheerio rain. We started throwing the cheerios directly above us in the air so that we could be rained on. When we got near the end of the bag he dumped it on me. Cheerios everywhere. All over the ground around me. In the hood of my sweatshirt. And crumbs in my hair.

This all was a nice distraction to my unfortunate evening. How nice it is that such simple things as swings, ducks, and cheerios can make us feel like kids again and distract from the reality of our stressful life.

When I showered this morning, I washed the crumbs and naiveté out of my hair. Reality set in, but I was able to calm myself enough to write my essay.

Last night I had the strangest dream....

So I wrote about how I have such weird dreams all of the time. More recently they've occurred more frequently and last night I had another crazy dream!

Well actually I had two dreams.

The first one was really short.... It wasn't really a dream either. It scared me. I was walking down the street and it was dark outside. Then I heard a car coming up behind me with loud voices coming through the unrolled window. I stopped and turned to see who it was. Then I was shot at. I ducked behind a bush while the people in the car continued to shoot at me. Scariest moment of my life.

i had that specific dream three times last night...

The next dream wasn't so unfortunate.

I went sky diving with my friend. [I'm not sure who it was, but it was a boy. And he was much taller than me.] After we were finished, we went to the car to drive home. We were in Virginia. The parking lot was empty except for his navy blue SUV and a gold car parked next to his. There were also no buildings around the lot; just grass. In the gold car was a young woman with her two small children, a boy and a girl. The boy looked to be about five and the girl was three. [Actually the three year old girl was the same little girl that I met a few weeks ago when I took my friend to the ER. Her name is June.] My friend got in the car and reached across to unlock the door for me. When he opened the door it nicked the gold car because we were parked so close. The family inside didn't notice. I licked my finger and wiped off the scratch then proceeded to get in the SUV. Then the woman noticed us. She rolled down her window to ask where we were headed. We told her that we had just finished sky diving so we were just gonna drive until we decided what we wanted to do. She told us that she was going to follow us in her car. We said that would be fine. Then June crawled through the woman's window and through mine and sat down on my lap. She started playing with my hair. I told her that she had to stay with her mom, but she didn't move. Then her mom told her that it was fine, she didn't want June in her car anyway. June needed to learn how to ride in cars with adults and no car seat. [Thats crazy talk... June was three.] I didn't say that; I just nodded then picked her up and put her in the back seat.I put her in the middle so that she could see out of the front. She let me buckle her in. Then I closed my door and we started to drive. We drove down Pleasant Valley road and the woman followed us closely in her gold car. There were no cars on the road today, and my friend was driving the speed limit. June started fussing and refused to sit in the back. I let her sit on my lap while we continued to drive. [Pleasant Valley Road was longer than usual.] Then a cop walked out of the forest and told us to stop. My friend slowed down to a stop and we sat there until the cop came up to us. The gold car stopped behind us. When the cop came up, he told us that it's illegal to drive with a little girl in my lap. I started to explain [and by explain, I mean lie] that this girl was sick and she needed sit in my lap to calm down, but my friend cut me off. He said to the officer that it's a secondary offense to have a little girl riding in the front seat and since we weren't doing anything else wrong, there was no reason for us to be pulled over or ticketed. The cop said he needed some license and registration because he was going to give us a ticket anyway. Before we gave it to him, he told us that he was going to go give a ticket to the woman behind us. As he began walking back to her, we both realized that he had no car. The woman honked at us and we all sped away, leaving the cop alone. Then suddenly the setting changed. My friend and I were walking across a really thin, long, rickety bridge over an ominous river. The bridge was extremely high, and the wind was blowing hard. A fall would result in death. The bridge was made out of splintery wooden planks and all there was to keep us from going over the edge were two ropes strung on either side of the bridge about waist high. My mom was also there along with my brothers. My friend and I were pushing June in a stroller. None of us could bare to look down because we were extremely high up. We were just slowly plugging away trying to get across this long, high bridge. We had to get to the other side. [I'm not sure why, but I remember knowing that it was a matter of life or death.] We were about half way across when I heard my name being called. I turned to see three girls. Dana Braley, and Nicole and Lyssa Barton. [They are from my young women group from church back home.] They were much further back on the bridge. I asked them what they needed. Apparently I had to write a letter in a thank you book for my church leaders. Not questioning the timing of this at all, I scooted past all the people that were following me across the bridge and walked back to Dana, Lyssa, and Nicole. I wrote a letter in the book. Then they told me that when I reached the other side, I needed to find Sarah Clark and have her write in it too. I said okay and took the book. The three girls disappeared. [But for some reason that didn't seem odd to me.] I went back to leading the group as we struggled across the bridge. Then I stopped and turned around and told them all that going across this bridge reminded me of the time that I was supposed to walk across a tight rope. I was supposed to wear a harness while I walked across, but the people who told me to walk forgot to put it on me. So I walked across with out one. They all stared at me blankly. Then my friend [the boy I went sky diving with] told me that the same thing happened to him once too. I turned back around and we continued walking across the bridge.....

The last thing I saw before I woke up was one of the planks fall beneath the weight of my foot.

CrAzY dReAmS

I don't dream every night, but when I do have a dream, its either super trippy and completely ridiculous, or its so real that I can't tell that I'm even asleep.

The other night I had a ridiculous dream.

So I decided to write it down.

Two of my best friends, Macey and Sarah, were with me in Elliot's (our other best friend) room. He didn't have a roommate, and we were laying on the two beds in the dorm room. Macey was on one bed and Sarah and I were on the other bed, while Elliot stood awkwardly in the center of the room. All of the sheets and everything in the room were white except for the blue carpet and the brown closets. Then Elliot told us that he's been learning how to tap dance. So he put his tap shoes on. Then when he realized the screws were lose, he told me to fix them. So I did. Then he laid down a brown board on the floor and began to tap dance. Then Matt Moses (the RA) came in and told us that girls can only lay on the beds if they have one leg or the equivalent of one leg hanging off. Macey scooted over so that one leg was hanging off the bed and so did Sarah. I scooted down the bed so that my calves and feet were hanging off. Elliot started tap dancing again, but us girls were so tired that even tap dancing couldn't keep us awake. We fell asleep.

Then suddenly, everything changed. Sarah, Macey, and Elliot were no longer there. In fact, I wasn't in the room anymore. You know the backyard area where the queen of hearts plays croquet in Alice in Wonderland? I was there. My mom was there too. And a bunch of other women. I knew instantly that this was my backyard (even though it's definitely not). My mom and the women invited me to play croquet with them. So i did. Then I began to hear voices in my head. I heard the voices of two of my best friends from Virginia, Sarah Clark and Danielle Dixon. They spoke to me. I wondered where they were. AND THEY RESPONDED TO MY THOUGHTS! Thats when I realized we were speaking with our minds. I asked them where they were. They said they couldn't tell me, but they could see me. I had to find them. While I was still playing croquet with these women my friends started throwing paper airplanes at me. I asked them why they were doing this. It was so that maybe I would be able to find them. They told me I had to get to them quick and get all of the women out of the garden. I asked why. According to Sarah and Danielle, I wasn't in my backyard. I WAS IN A CONVENT! If I continued to play croquet with these women, I was going to turn into a nun. This was terrible. I COULDN'T BE A NUN!! I needed to find my friends. I asked them why I had to get the other women out. They told me it was because they found these incredible drugs that they wanted to do with me, but there couldn't be anyone else around otherwise we would get in trouble. My mom tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and she told me that she thought she saw my friends in a hole in the shrubbery. I went over to the hole. There they were. Waiting for me to find them:)

They told me that I needed to get everyone out because these drugs they were gonna do with me were AMAZING! I didn't question that. I proceeded to tell everyone that they needed to leave. No one questioned my request. Everyone just left. Then I went back to the hole and bent down to crawl in. When I got in, Sarah, Danielle, and I were about to start.....

Then I felt a tap on my shoulder. My real shoulder. Sarah (the best friend here at school) told me that it was 9:55. We had to get to tap class in 5 minutes. I never finished the dream because I had to get up.

Interpretation please?

[Just so anyone who reads this knows, I don't actually do drugs. Neither do Sarah and Danielle. It was just a dream.]

Silence isn't always golden.

I've decided to quit speaking. I'm the kind of person who needs to feel like I have some bit of control over things. As I watch things around me fall into chaos, I cling more and more to the things that I can control like eating and speaking and sleeping. Of those three things, giving up eating will kill me and giving up sleeping is simply not healthy. Everyone needs a good amount of sleep. Speaking, however, is something I can survive without. I decided to take control over something by remaining silent for 72 hours more or less. I began Monday morning at 2:00 am. I plan to quit on Wednesday evening. After I decided to do this, it became more than just a goal to be silent. I plan to observe how people respond to me, how my friends are affected, and how people live on a day to day basis. I plan to learn from this experience. Of course I can't be completely silent. I'm in a play and also stage manager of a play that I wrote. But other than in my rehearsals, where I have to speak, I will remain silent. And even in rehearsals I will strictly keep my speaking to a minimum; I will only discuss the matters at hand. And by matters at hand I mean the shows that I am involved in.

My momma asked me why and I wrote to her “to better understand the art of observance. To learn to appreciate the sound of silence. To exercise an extreme amount of self control. And because when I told my best friend my idea, she laughed in my face and said I couldn't.”

Monday. 3:00 pm

It has been 13 hours.

Time moves slowly.

This morning at tap class, when I didn't speak to anyone, people became curious. My best friend told them that I gave up speaking. Knowing that I wouldn't respond, they became more curious and began asking tons of questions. I smiled and walked out of the room.

I went to lunch with my friends. They held conversations with each other and ignored my existence until I left; one of them said bye to me. Thats all. All of lunch, because I was ignored, I stared out at the window at how beautiful the day was. You could almost see the heat from the sun. Beautiful beautiful day. I've realized today that it's nice to be noticed. If I've ever neglected you in any way, please accept my humble apology. Perhaps now I sort of understand how you feel? Not completely, but a little bit. I'm so sorry.

I think my friends disapprove of my silence. They also don't think I can do it. Perhaps they ignored me hoping that I would give in and finally speak. I wont. If I set a goal for myself, I commit. Period.

Why is it that the people who don't know whats going on get curious and those who “love you most” ignore? It makes me wonder. How often do I ignore people? It sucks to be neglected. It almost sucks enough to start talking again. In fact, if I wasn't so determined to prove my friend wrong, then I probably would stop. Congratulations to whoever discovered reverse psychology. It works.

Monday. 5:00 pm

It has been 15 hours.

I wrote a quick explanation on a note card that I'm keeping in my back pocket to show to people. It says “I'm not speaking because I want to see if I have enough self control to simply listen and observe. My goal is to last until Wednesday night. I will, however, allow myself to speak during rehearsals for my plays. Talking will be a minimum though.”

When I was walking to my theatre class I ran into my friend, Elliot. He waved and said hi. I just stopped and smiled. He asked where I was going. I pointed. He asked why I was only looking at him without saying anything. I gave him the card. He laughed and said “right on.” Maybe someone has faith in me. When I got to my theatre class my friend Dave who had seen my facebook status brought it up, so I sat next to him. Even though I was quiet all of class, I quite enjoyed myself. Walking back, I discovered that if you're simply going to smile and wave at someone who says hi to you, don't make eye contact too early. It makes the actual crossing of paths fairly awkward. I giggled inside when that happened.

This is liberating, yet extremely restricting. I love the fact that I have so much control over what I do or don't say (specifically what I don't say). But at the same time, part of me wants to stop. I like to talk. I enjoy socializing. And I realize how much I have to say, but I just can't say it.

I've heard that when you lose one of your senses, the others are heightened. Okay so speaking isn't a sense, however, the fact that I can't interact with people has made listening come so much easier. I've picked up on things that I've not noticed before. My feet squeak against these flip flops. I find it frustrating.

Monday 6:46 pm

I went to dinner. I quit. Not because anyone forced me to, but because I realized there was an issue and the only way to fix it is with words. The lesson is profound to me. Sometimes what is necessary is letting ourselves speak. I find now that I can speak though, that I have nothing to say. Oh, the change I have gone through.

Living off of borrowed light.

There is a road that my neighborhood back home is connected to. Pleasant Valley. It's a two way road with only one direction to travel.... forward. The only thing protecting you from oncoming traffic is the two yellow lines painted down the center and the obedience of the other drivers not to cross this line. I wouldn't consider it to be a particularly winding road, but there are some curves. On either side of Pleasant Valley are trees. They don't extend forever in each direction, but I like to pretend they do. Some of the trees curve over at the top creating a tunnel of shade for drivers. In the spring and summer the leaves are the purest, most perfect shade of green. The trees are full too. Leaves everywhere. It's absolutely gorgeous. When I was younger, my parents would drive through Pleasant Valley to get to our church building on Sundays. My momma always would remind us to look at how beautiful the trees are. In the fall, all of the leaves change. This is my favorite time to drive down this road. The leaves turn yellow and red and orange. Then they begin to fall. Sometimes while I drive, a gust of wind comes, blowing leaves off the trees and onto my windows. It's like a burst of colors especially for me. In the winter the leaves are all gone. The trees are bare and the road isn't quite as pleasant as usual. However, when it snows and there is winter wonderland all over the bare branches; I can't help but smile.

Driving this road in the daytime is actually an incredible experience, especially when no one else is there. It's one of my favorite places to drive.

Driving at night is a different story though. Once the sun goes down, the curves become sharper. The trees stick out further. The road becomes thinner. The drivers, if any, become less polite and obedient. One time, my sister and I were driving down Pleasant Valley. We were nearing the end of the tree line and approaching civilization again. Suddenly we saw a driver coming at us. He was swerving in and out of our lane. With trees on either side, my sister could only go straight. She sped up and just as the driver got close enough to hit us, she swerved to the right. We had reached the end of the trees and she had swerved into turn lane. Both of our hearts were beating too fast to describe. We could've died. I hate driving this road at night. It scares me, especially, and I hate to admit this, because I'm not a particularly good driver. Every time I drive this road at night, I have the same thoughts.

I live off of borrowed light.

Now I realize that statement doesn't seem relevant to beginning of this post, but I promise it is.

In the daytime, I use the sun. I turn off my headlights and I drive using the light of the sun. At night, the road is busy enough that there is usually one driver ahead of me. I turn on my lights, but I really see everything around me using the high beams of the driver in front. I never see for myself. I follow. I follow other cars. I use their light. Here is the time in my thought process where I begin to ponder my own self sufficiency. I wonder, if that car were to turn off in a different direction than I am headed, am I good enough at driving to carry myself home? Understand, that this is all a metaphor. You should know that I'm a decent enough driver to get myself home on a road that I drive on all the time, often being the only car. But how am I in life? Do I ever really lead? Do I ever make decisions for myself? Am I capable of taking care of me rather than relying on other people to do it? I've noticed in my experience of driving down Pleasant Valley at night that there aren't alway cars in front of me. Sometimes I'm forced to do things for myself and shine my own light. I'm getting to a point in my life where all of these questions come back. I'm in college. I have to make decisions on my own. I have to choose to feed myself. I have to choose to get enough sleep. I have to choose to go to church on Sundays. I have to choose to do well in school. I have to choose to save my money. I have to choose what to do with my life and how to do it. My parents aren't driving in the car ahead of me any longer. I'm driving in the dark. This is something we all get thrown into. "It's time to take care of yourself now." they say. Then we keep on driving down the narrow pleasant valley. We hope the whole time that we won't take the curve to fast and run off the road. That someone won't drive into us head on. That we will remember where the trees stick out furthest, and be able to avoid hitting them. The good thing about driving on Pleasant Valley is that the sun comes up every morning. The light is always there waiting for us the next day. Just like when we are struggling with something when we're on our own, we always have someone to call on while our light fades. We always have light to borrow when our wisdom lacks the ability to sustain us. Eventually, however, we need to learn to give up borrowing the light of others and drive with our own two headlights. Thats what our parents did before us and our grandparents did before them. There is no art to taking care of yourself, it's just something we all must learn to do.

Eventually when we ask ourselves "Do I live off of borrowed light?" the answer should be no. I am self sufficient. I am strong. I can do this.

It's up to me to decide when to allow myself to trust my own headlights and follow my own instincts.

It's up to me to quit using solely the light of others and learn to rely on myself.

It's up to me to remember the examples of those I used to follow and be a good example to those who need to borrow my light.

It's up to me to move forward, the only direction there is to go, and allow my light to be a beacon the the drivers behind me.

This is the beginning of Pleasant Valley, where the green starts.

Its a two way road with only one direction to travel...

Forward.