Dear Birthday Boy!

Hopefully you found this after your LONG and VAST journey, not just from you reading my blog!
It's your birthday, how exciting! You're 17, well... You will be technically on a specific time I suppose, but today is your birthday so it doesn't matter anyways! You're one year from being a legal adult, how awesome is that! Now if you realized everything with the hunt had to do with something in our relationship! I was really clever about this, the people who helped have no idea!

So I know this isn't an amazing prize to your little scanvenger hunt, but I can't see you today nor did I see any of the helpers of my project, so I couldn't give them the real present.(Which you'll obviously get tomorrow!) I was so glad that you found this little hunt exciting and awesome, because frankly I thought it was nerdy and dumb, I just wanted to give you something special. This is afterall your birthday and you deserve to have the best day/week you can possibly have. I have some writtings for you to!

I want you to go home, assuming you're not home now. Take a nap, do homework(SOME!) and not stress about school at all! No worries tonight! Eat a wonderful dinner with your parents, open presents and hopefully get some well rested sleep if you haven't taken your nap! Tomorrow when we get to my house, I'll have two-three presents for you to open and another gift for you as well! I'm excited to see you and hold you like we always hold each other. Trust me, when you pull up at Booker, I'll be standing there with such a huge smile!

I guess I don't really know what to write, so I can't really say this is an amazing present after you solved the mystery that was your day. You're very special to me, remember that always. You're caring, compassionate, sexy(Lol... :P), smart, adorable and over-all the best person I could ask for in my life. I'm very lucky to have you. Stay Groovy. Have a wonderful birthday and be prepared for your gifts for tomorrow! See you soon!

 The day we met. Ignore my poor editing skills :P I'll make it cooler later!

I'm Afraid

It's 10:19 am... Normally I wait a few days in between posts(Especially since I posted only a couple of hours ago. Readers, don't forget to read the post before. I don't remember what I wrote, it's just important I guess.) But I feel like this can't really wait. I had a nightmare. That's not really a big statement, especially since dreams and such are very common, yet this nightmare, even though I don't understand it, just makes me tear up thinking about it.


Dream
(I'm going to try and describe it the best I can)
I was in Myakka, why? I have no idea. My father just dropped off my friend and I: Holly. We were going to stay with my Aunt, who was also the mom of a friend of Davis'(Which doesn't make sense, for this friends mom of Davis passed away last year, I never met her and why would she be my aunt? Also she looked exactly like Alana's mom....) I don't know why we were staying with her, but it was exciting and I was happy to go. She had a son the same age of me, but he was in New Jersey with Davis where they were supposed to live(They never lived in Myakka, so I'm wondering why his name came up and why it was his mom) Anyways, I made Brownies, but these were like super Brownies, they looked like loafs of bread. Holly was just happy to be there and after a few hours we sat down to Dinner and I don't remember if we prayed, but I know we spoke before we ate. Then she looks at me and brings up a very odd topic.
"I don't like you Doug."
Doug:"Wait, why don't you like me?"
"You're a terrible person."
Doug:"Wait, what did I do!?"
"You know what you did"

Now this was getting kind of weird and I just kept arguing about why she didn't like me.
Holly:"I think she's right Doug. You are a bad person."
Doug:"Holly what did I do!?"
Holly:"What haven't you done!? You have no one!"
This is where the "Aunt figure" got violent. She threw the dinner plates off the table and started shouting.
"I know what you did to my son when you were little! You made a fort in his room with him and your cousin! I know what you did! You took your blanket and made a fort!"
(Why this fort was such a problem I have no idea. I made a lot of forts with friends when I was little, even playing mommy and daddy with Holly, but I never did anything bad. So even though I never made a fort with Davis and them, in my dream I thought I did)
"Yeah I did! And you helped! You helped!"
She got up and ran out of the room and Holly just sat across from me looking at me with such intensity.
So I called my dad.
"Dad you need to come get me, Aunt ____ is teaming up with Holly and they're ganging up on me! Dad!"
"Everything will be fine, she's probably just made at something, stick it out" and the phone hung up.

She came back in the room and I just remember shoving her and keeping my distance, the stuff between this and the next thing was just arguing and screaming and then Holly and her both had knives. I was trying to defend myself, but the next thing that I knew they had jumped on top of me. Now oddly enough another man was there and he had a knife and Holly had a chainsaw. Now this sounds really comical... But it wasn't, the worst part was that the place this was all happening in was my mom's house. I remember clearly standing in front of the front door screaming as the man cut into my ankle, the blade ripping my skin as I tried to fight them off. I ran through the kitchen(Somehow) and into the garage screaming, bleeding and just trying to defend myself. I didn't know what to do, so I called my dad again as I placed my back against the door to keep my attackers from me.
"Dad! They're attacking me! I need you, come get me dad! Come get me! Please" I remember crying (I'm crying now even...)
My dad acted as if I was over-acting and sighed into the phone, there was someone in the back ground to.
"Yeah yeah, I'll come get you. It'll take awhile."
Then the voice in the back ground spoke
"Yeah he's in Myakka, it's a 30 minute drive. Doug just go watch t.v or something."
I started screaming into the phone that I wouldn't make it that long and that if he loved me he'd come get me and then he said "I won't come get you if you don't calm down! Nothing wrong is happening, get over it!"(Sadly enough he's said this before in real life) He then hung up the phone.
The banging on the door behind me got stronger and stronger and a blade came through the door next to my face. I screamed as loud as I could thinking I wouldn't make it and then---


End Dream
I opened my eyes. I don't know what this dream means, all I know is that when I woke up. I was frightened. I was home alone at my dads house(and still am) and just sat in bed waiting for my attackers to come busting through the door. I started crying. I've never been this afraid, well, not since I was a child. I don't know what I did, but they kept telling me I did something and it eventually led to my death. What happened, I have no idea. What I did, I have no idea. All I know is that to me, it wasn't bad and to them it was bad enough to kill me. Why did it look like Alana's mom? Why was the Aunt figure the mom of a kid I barely know, when his mother had passed away? Why was I in Myakka? A place I've been too once...
I got out of bed went into my fridge and ate pizza, literally that's what I did. (My dad and my mom both got pizza last night... They always some how have the same dinner on the same nights or the next night and it always bothers me.) I paced around the kitchen, no longer crying, but having this sense that I shouldn't be alone. So I IM'd Sergio's aim. It was around 9:05 then and I knew he was in church, so I didn't text him, but I just wanted to speak to him. So the IM worked, I was speaking to him in a sense without him speaking back, kind of like this blog. It really put me at ease to know I have such a strong wall to help me stand. I texted my mom asking if she was awake, hoping that this would be a morning where she'd want to pick me up early and take me to breakfast (Like she has done) but it's been an hour and 30 minutes and I've still had no reply.

I feel really confused and alone right now. I just want to go home(Even though this is a home) to my old house, the house we lost last year. Go into my room, where I always felt safe and just get under the covers and hide. The house in my dream was my own house... So I don't know what this means. Well, I don't know what any of this means, which is weird. I studied dreams in middle school and 9th grade (Since I had night terrors) and I can't interpret this dream. I have no idea what to think of it. All I know is, my mind is probably telling me that I'm regretting something.

Flashing Lights

You know... I sometimes look at other families and wish and pray that my own would be like that.

Sure, my family is stable now, after 8 years of fighting and abuse, my family is now stable and happy. My dad is single and alcohol free, my mom has an amazing man for a boyfriend and they both give me a lot of freedom and slack. They don't pressure me, but yet... I feel like that itself is a sort of abuse. I feel like them not pressuring me and constantly looking out for me is their attempt at telling me I need to get out of the house as soon as possible. When my mother is home, I spend all my time in my room. All of it. We don't even eat dinner together. With my dad, I eat dinner with him, but yet again I spend all my time in my room. Both of them are fine with this, why? I have no clue. Back when we were a happy family, when everyone wasn't fighting and when marriage was still holy in our family, we always made it a point to eat at the dinner table... Well then again, I also prayed every night... I was only five so I wasn't exactly sure why these things were important, but they had to be done... Then over time they slowly disappeared.

Now I'm not saying my parents are bad parents, they're not. They're amazing parents who want the best for me, I just wish I was someone else in a different family. I don't know if it's because I survived a potentially very harmful situation with my parents and their issues, or the fact that I just notice faults about people, but I just can't look at them the same way I did when I was that happy five year old who was oblivious to the nature they both had towards each other.

I long for the attention of my siblings, Christine and Frank to tell me they love me, to check up on me, but they don't. Sure this is expected, they're both over fifteen years older than me, but even for my birthday, Christmas, their birthday, Thanksgiving... No one talks to each other. It's like both of them don't want anything to do with me, well not me, but our family. Is this the fate of my family, to split apart after they mature to take care of themselves? If that's so, then why haven't I left yet? I just want them to tell me they love me... Now not like "I'm in love with you.." But that sibling love where you care for each other, they say it to me every time I see them, but I just can't say it back. I always just say "You too" etc, ways to avoid saying it was a complete sentence and I don't know why. Maybe it's the lack of a connection and understanding.

Now John, my dad's son. He would be my step-brother, I've seen him a total of maybe five times my whole life. His graduation(When I was 7) When he visited when I was 4, his wedding when I was 15... Okay three times and yet I feel like I have a better connection with him than Christina and Frank(My half siblings, yet I consider them full blood since I've known them since birth) Jennifer... Oh Jennifer, I've talked to her three times and I'll never consider her my sister. She's fighting with Charlie over whatever their issue is and she stopped calling me because she found out him and I were speaking, I'm staying out of that mess. Now Charlie's wife: Josephine. She has kids. They're all in their late 30's and whenever I talk to Charlie he always mentions "Oh your brother and sister this and that"... How could I call them my siblings, I've never met them, I have no connection with them, they'd be step-siblings if anything, yet... For them to be step siblings I'd have to consider Charlie my father, which I don't and probably will never do.
There are a lot of people I could consider my siblings in this world... six to be exact, whether they be half siblings or step, but the small factor is... Their still is no connection.

My cousins, the closest one I'm too is Davis and we're not even related... My mom's brothers and her have a "good relationship" yet they never speak and are always trying to one-up each other with their kids (sibling rivalry?) So I barely talk to any of their kids or my uncles... I've only talked to Davis and his family, people who are related to my dad! Not this amazing family that I know my mom has. Maybe I'm being dumb and thinking that I have no connection with these wonderful people, but in my eyes... I really don't. I don't feel anything for them. Sure I'd be worried depending on the situation they get in, but I don't make it apart of my life to think of them a lot; I've actually started considering myself an only child. I'm just confused.. I just long for the connection that I see people have, where they share rooms with their siblings, spend their birthday and holidays together, feel the need to be in their lives in some way, some how, just to be there. I'm not unhappy with my family, I'm perfectly content and I have an amazing relationship. So I know I have love for me and I have love for these people, I just wish ties with my family could be different.

I wish I could walk down the beach with my sister and her three kids. I wish I could go to Karate tournaments with my brother and his daughter, I wish I could have a family dinner with John, his wife and my dad. I wish that on Christmas, I had this list of people I could call and say "Hey, Merry Christmas, I love you!" These people that I wish I could have these relationships with, they've been replaced by my friends and their family (i.e Holly's family. I've called them for every holiday to wish them love...) I want to be able to eat family dinners with my parents, get dressed up and go out with them, watch movies with my mom, do something. I could try talking to my mom about this, but she'd probably say "Doug, you're over-reacting! Let me watch T.V I've had a long day at work" Yet again, this whole thing, I'm probably over-reacting.

I just wish my family ties were stronger than there currently are... I think I can change that, I think I can help them grow.

This is an empty post... Ignore it! I don't really know how to get rid of it...

What should I be doing?

I don't even know why I'm writing. I feel like I should post something, but I'm lost in words. I haven't read anything in awhile either. I should get around to doing that.