Starting Over, but how many TIMES?

What happens when you realize that a part of your life is really just a dream? That it's full of empty promises (most of which YOU make to yourself) and corrupt people? When you don't even realize that you're being manipulated until a treasured ornament on your tree of dreams falls and shatters and you finally realize that it's just a piece of glass, dull and empty...

When you realize that the thing you've been doing every day for the last God-knows-how-many years will never satisfy you, will never fulfill you, will never let you accomplish anything of significance, and will never bring true joy in anything other than illusions of dreams and wishes and desires come true, when will this sentence end?

When all of this happens, how can you start over, from scratch?

In less than a year I apply to colleges. I've achieved absolutely nothing of significance. I don't know why this is so important to me... I mean, I have good grades, fairly good SAT I and II scores, blah blah blah. But I guess I've realized that this is true of many people at my school and many, many other schools. I haven't won any speech tournaments or been an editor for any newspapers, I haven't won any photo contests or gone to conferences for young leaders of America, or this or that... I think I've realized that now that a huge chunk of my life has fallen away, disapparated, has proven to be rotten and faulty and was probably nonexistant in the first place, I'm not special anymore. I'm not unique, in a good or a bad way.

I just don't have enough time to change this. If I join a newspaper or some other school club now, it won't look good on a college application. Way too last minute. So I have to figure something else out.

Oh man, I'm so stuck.

The following will probably make no sense, and I'll probably have to go back and reorganize my thoughts when I understand them myself (probably not). But I don't want to forget this, so I'm just "jotting" it down (I find these expressions so much more amusing because of the lack of their virtual counterparts - maybe speedtyping or something?) to have a "record" somewhere.

First: Realizing that you're you.
Isn't that amazing?
It's only then that you can really understand what it means to be self aware. I wonder if anyone else has had a moment when they suddenly stop and think to themselves, "Woah, I'm ALIVE. And I can do whatever I want right now, because I'm me and I control this person, this body, this soul..."

Yeah, I just had to get that out. I have no idea what I'm saying, as usual. :-)

Second:

I'm always thinking about the parallel universes thing - one of the theories that says that whatever scenario you can imagine, it exists in one of an infinite amount of parallel universes.
But there's a problem with this theory. In order for a certain scenario to exist, an infinite amount of events have to occur in a specific way before that scenario happens in order for it to happen. What if there's just no possible sequence of events that can lead to that specific scenario? That would make the scenario impossible, and that would mean that NOT everything we imagine can be a "true statement" or a solid way of things somewhere else.

Yes, that made no sense. But hey, I warned you, didn't I?

Hmmm...

I'm scared.

It's nothing new to me, and it's surely not new to anyone else. If you're human, you've probably felt scared at some point in your life. If not, please tell me your secret...

Anyway, I'm scared because for the last two years I've been obsessing over the future. College, college, college. Must volunteer for college. Must find job for college. Must join club for college. Blah, blah, blahbedy blah. I made a commitment that was supposed to help with college, one that was supposed to strip bare my life of anything but the commitment itself and school. One that was supposed to yield college-guaranteeing results. And you know what's scary? I'm starting to think - what if I fail? What if I've been putting in all this time and I fail and I have to stop? I look around and think - if all the time I've been putting into it is suddenly... free... I'll need to find something new. And there's nothing. It's too late. I keep thinking about all the scientific studies that insist that children learn the fastest, that children learn the most... If you want your kid to be musical when he or she grows up, teach them piano or violin or flute, and start really, really early. My parents started me with piano, math, and Russian at the right time. But now it's all gone. Other than school and dance, I basically have no supplementary skills.

So the whole point of that rant was to try and shed a ray of light on the thoughts racing each other like puppies after their tails in my head. Well, whatever I accomplished or didn't accomplish, it's nice to have a place to store all the crazy things you've worried about... So you can laugh at them someday in the future. Aaah, I really can't wait until that day. :-)

My new favorite quote

I've been feeling kinda down these last two days. I have no idea why. My guess: A combination of competition stress, several tests in school a day, the passing of my cat, and my sorry joke of a love life. But, as always, there's one thing that makes everything better: dance. Whenever I'm at home I feel really down and... somehow just not like myself. At dance, though, everything just sinks away. It's pretty amazing, really.

"Maybe there won't be marriage, maybe there won't be sex, but by God there'll be dancing!"
-My Best Friend's Wedding

For some reason I keep remembering this quote, and it helps somehow. It's so, so true. In any case, it's my new favorite quote. Exciting.