Why no post?

This is probably one of the longer gaps I've gone without posting anything. I'm sure all four of you (and I can't even count something cheesy like my mom, because she doesn't even know about this) were extremely worried.

Well, I'll explain in probably one of the best lines from Scripture: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I'd like to slightly amend that for the purpose of explaining things. "There is no(t many) greater fatigues than to fear for the life of a friend."

One of my friends, who will remain unnamed, came to me late Wednesday night, and wanted to talk to me in person. Then when we met up, he wanted to talk to me somewhere more private.

Apparently his sister had gone through a complete psychological breakdown about a week ago, and his parents had never told him. He was really worried about his sister, and he was worried about how his parents would react (his parents don't exactly rate high in parenting). He has problems of his own too, so he was worrying that he was going to have a breakdown too, that he would just wake up the next morning and not care about anything.

So, I hung out with him that night. We went exploring the basement of one of the commons, got some cheeseburgers at McDonald's (protein is always good for depression, although that was unintended), and then we made a mash-up of two posters we found in the commons, a blood donation poster, and an ad for a big dinner being held by a frat. Imagine a poster where they try to get you to donate blood by showing a huge black guy with a football helmet on trying to eat the biggest damn hamburger you may have ever seen. And we hung it up. And at least one of them is still hanging up in my commons, because I guess no one has realized yet that it's a spoof.

Like this, only with a helmet on too.

Staying up late killed me though, because once I was done hanging out with him at around 2:30, I had to study for a French test, which I did pretty well on, despite being sleep deprived and stressed out. Later that night, my friend called me again, said he had talked to a psychologist today, but he was worried that his parents had gotten a 302 (involuntary commitment) for his sister, and that they would do the same. In the course of the conversation, he also told me that his psychologist said he was going through "suicidal ideation," which means he's been thinking about committing suicide, without any actual plans or intent to commit suicide.

Luckily, he decided to go home for the weekend, and he's getting help there, but I'm still worried about him. After hanging out with my friends who came up for the football game last night, I slept for ten hours straight, and I still feel kind of tired. So, if you could, please pray for my friend.

I'm sorry for my problems

Tonight I screwed up a bit. My friend Dan thinks it was because of alcohol, which is good, because he thinks it's an outside problem instead of just me. I was supposed to bring "The Truman Show" to his dorm and watch it there with him and some other people. I showed up finally about two hours late, and Dan just advised me that he would "let this go, but you should probably just go home now John." Dan had called my cell phone much earlier, when I was only a little late, and while I took a quick poll about what to do, one of my other friends took my phone and told Dan that he had stolen my phone.

Myself, I don't know whose fault it was. It definitely wasn't the alcohol. I was thinking about not going to Dan's dorm before I started drinking at all. I just didn't want to see him. It's a long story, and I can't decide if it's my fault, his fault, or someone else's fault entirely.

Like I said a few posts back, I have a problem. Usually it's nothing. This week has been crappy, and something Dan had said a week or two back had sort of set off flags in my mind. It wasn't until today though that what he had said really had an effect on me. I read something in a book every student had been given at our high school graduation. I just didn't want to deal with what was bubbling up inside me, so I fell asleep at my bed so I wouldn't have to deal with anything. That always seems like the best option to me. Do nothing, hide away from your problems. They'll go away in a little while if you get some rest.

I know I should apologize to him, but right now I'm just trying to figure out who to blame. He doesn't know what's wrong with me, so I can't really blame him for something he didn't realize he was doing. I think I should blame myself, but my mind is telling me that's not right either. Maybe I should be getting more help with this problem. Usually it's no trouble at all. I went through the entire summer without a single hitch, I just think the stress of a new semester of school and a lack of sleep is getting to me.

Right now, Dan is IMing me, implying how he feels hurt, and I just don't know what to say. He said he felt hurt, and I said I was sorry. I told him I didn't know how to explain, but that I did feel like an ass. Then he had to head to sleep.

If there's one thing that I definitely know is my fault, it's this: I'm sorry that I don't know how to deal with this better. For all of my smarts, I'm still in the dark. I'm sorry that I can't figure out how to deal with this.

Strange Dream #1

Sorry that this post is so long.

There has been a person that I've been wanting to talk about here, because he's the center point of one of the proudest moments of forgiveness I've ever had. His name is James, and I have been thinking about him recently because I haven't seen him in over a year. The last time I saw him, he had run away from a home he was in, and I bought him a ticket for a rated R movie he was seeing with his friends at the movie theatre. It was a good rated R movie though. I gave him my phone number, but I didn't think to get his, and I haven't seen or heard from him since.

He was friends with my little brother, and he was the adopted little brother of one of my classmates. He was adopted around the age of five or so after living in foster homes for a few years, I think. He was a pretty hyper kid, and I think he might have had a little ADD, but he was a good kid. Some people couldn't deal with him when he got really annoying, but if you wanted him to stop, all you had to do was ask him politely. He would listen to you if you were polite to him, which is funny, because you'd think it would be common sense to ask politely, but most people didn't think to do that.

He ended up in my scout troop, and I was one of the cool older kids, and I was one of the only liked Senior Patrol Leaders. He got to be pretty close with our scoutmaster, which pretty much any cool person did because our scoutmaster is pretty much the best person ever.

Then he started having problems at home, and he snuck away to a friend's house for a weekend without telling his parents, and his parents had enough so they sent him to a juvenile delinquent home nearby. Our scoutmaster went to his family and asked how he was, and they said he was doing well, and that he missed the scout meetings and the troop. And then he started having problems there, and he ran away, which leads back to the last time I saw him.

Last night I had a dream about him. I was Spiderman, only I had some other superpowers too. I was standing in a room that was either for a banquet or a press conference, because I was standing on the one side of it in front of a long table on a raised platform. The president was seated at the table, with what I'm guessing was his cabinet, and maybe some family.

I was terrorizing them. I didn't really hurt anyone too bad. Someone tried to throw some black rock or piece of food or something at me, and I let out some kind of sonic yell that knocked them back into the wall behind the table. I slashed my right arm forward and some kind of psychic or invisible wave knocked several people off of their feet.

Now, behind me, pretty much everyone had already ran. But one person who was still seated about 3/4 of the way back was James, and I noticed him as he just shook his head, stood up, and started trudging slowly out the back door with his head down. I was so happy to see him, I ran back to him and tried to say hi. He just kept walking. I asked him what was up, and he just kept walking, not looking up, but said something like "You shouldn't be doing that, it's not right."

I sort of laughed incredulously at what he said, and shot back "Come on man, you used to get angry and do stuff like that all the time." James whipped his head left to look me straight in the eye. His face was a mixture of hurt and anger. "I don't do that stuff anymore," was all he said. Then he turned and started his slow walk out the door again.

I was taken aback, and I felt ashamed of myself. This was a person that I thought had looked up to me, at least somewhat, and now he's practically too ashamed of me to even look at me. I felt horrible. I followed by his side, but I couldn't think of anything to say. He walked out the back door, and up a vertigo-esque stairwell. I followed him. After he went up a couple of floors, he finally stopped, turned to me with a half-hearted smile, and asked "Do you want to play a board game?" "Sure," I said meekly.

I just sat there as he started demurely setting up and explaining the rules of the game to me. I felt so ashamed of myself and so little. Then we started playing the game, and that's all of the dream I remember.

Aside from everything with my long-lost friend, this dream has an important meaning in it that I rediscovered. I can't just let myself sink down to other people's levels. Just because my friends sometimes do bad things doesn't mean it's all right for me to do those same bad things.

Also, very much more importantly, I miss James.

The Irony Does Not Escape Me

So at mass today, during the part about the forgiveness of sins (which I just found out is called "the penitential act"), the priest, instead of saying "let us call to mind the times that we have sinned," he added "let us call to mind the times that we have sinned, and let us especially remember to forgive those that have sinned against us." It was something like that. Believe me, with what I talked about in my post last night, the irony was not lost on me.

Oh, and last night, I actually ended up looking at blogs until 4:00, then taking a shower and going to bed. Nothing too scary happened, except when I went to turn off the last light down in the basement, I heard what sounded like shaky voices yelling from far away. As I walked back upstairs, the only thing I was thinking was "Oh please God, don't let me die, please let nothing happen."

I am definitely still alive, and I actually had a ridiculously long and awesome dream about a zombie apocalypse.

It's late and I'm scared

Right now it just recently turned 3:00 in the morning, and I am pretty freaked out right now. I started reading a scary book today, and I didn't exactly behave in the best manner tonight, not at all. So what with it being this bad hour and all of that, I'm a little scared. My house also makes funny noises at night, and half the time it sounds like people talking or walking around when I'm in the kitchen or the bathroom or some other place where I could be easily snuck up on.

I said an Our Father and some other prayers, but the Our Father says "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." I thought of someone that I still haven't fully forgiven for something, and it made me think that I had to forgive him before I could be forgiven. But the only reason I wanted to forgive him just then was because I was so scared for myself. I don't think that can count as a real pardon.

So now I'm going to take a shower and try to get to sleep in a decent amount of time. I have to wake up for mass tomorrow, and I've got some sins to be thinking of during that forgiveness of sins part and after I get communion, so I really shouldn't be falling asleep in mass.

Forming New Habits

I was reading something about getting into the habit of exercising, and it said to never go two days without doing something that you're trying to make a habit. One day every now and then is easy to miss, and okay, but once you miss two days in a row, it's so easy to blow off doing something the next day. And as a new blog, this is the third day since I last put something up.

I think there's a lot of truth to that statement, because I kept thinking about making this blog post tonight, then never getting around to it. So now here I am writing it but I have writer's block. Okay, so I'm lying a bit, but I want this to be a short entry.

Maybe there is some kind of habit I can try to take up that will help me be more forgiving to people. Oh yeah, I just realized, those are called "virtues" and someone already invented them. I need to come up with something different.

I'm in a bit of a bad mood right now. My body is just not working the way I want it to. I think it's getting close to the point of where I can be diagnosed as having "hypersomnia," which is also known as excessive daytime sleepiness. I want to sleep all the time, and it's like, never enough for my body.

But here I am, up late, and I work in the morning! Well, to get rid of my angstiness, I found a snarky forgiveness quote. Just one more reason to love your enemies.

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." ~Oscar Wilde

Really not the best quote for a serious forgiveness blog, but what can you expect from me at a time like this?