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.