a dream (NOT zombie)

Last night I dreamt that my friend Sarah and I went to my Grandma’s house. My grandma, she acted really sweet and lovingly towards both of us, but then my cousins showed up. They grabbed Sarah and shoved her into a back room, and my grandma pulled out a gun and forced me outside. Standing out on the patio, she explained to me that she and my cousins were cannibals, and they were going to eat Sarah. I tried and tried to get to her, but I was unable to do so. I was left alone outside, unable to get inside, and I could hear Sarah’s screams. I fell onto my knees and stared up at the sky, and I raised my hands and cried out to God, “Whenever something great happens to me, it’s taken! Why don’t you step in and do something?!” I woke up crying. I don’t know what to think about the dream. I’ve always believed that dreams mean absolutely nothing, but I also believe that dreams can be symptomatic of unconscious rhythms in the mind. All day today I have been asking myself the question, “Is this really how I think? Do I really believe that God is out to thwart my plans and to shatter my happiness?” My long litany of romantic relationships shrieks, “Sabotage!” Three of my five past girlfriends treated on me. Another one chose a lifestyle of sin over a life with me. My hopes and dreams have been handed to me on a silver platter—or so it seemed—only to be crushed under the weight of misfortune. This isn’t the case just with romantic relationships either. When it comes to platonic friendships, more than once I have had friends backstab and abandon me out-of-the-blue. This time last year, I lost six friends in a single day, with no rhyme or reason, and I spent the better part of Fall Semester alone in my room, too depressed to wander about to forge new friendships (a few months ago, one of the six former friends apologized). And while I know that God is good, and that He treats His children with love and rains blessings upon them, sometimes the misfortunes and happenchance of life can play to a different tune.

My baby sister told me today, “I feel so depressed. I just want things to be good. Something is always going wrong. It’s like God hates seeing me happy.” On Monday, seven of her friends abandoned her for no reason, and her week has been a living Hell (thankfully she is coming home this weekend, so we will get to see one another). I told her that she knows that God is not out to harm His children or cause them pain, and she responded, “I know. But don’t you feel like every time you’re close to being content something goes wrong?” I candidly remarked, “Yeah, ain’t that the truth?” I told her to hold her head up, that “things work out for everyone else, so they have to work out for us eventually.”