Waking Up In Someone Else's Dream

Big dreams. Would it be too presumptuous of me to write that we all have them? Perhaps. I have them. Sure, many of my dreams are seeded in reality or at least in the realms of human possibility, but I have them.

In fact, I’ve had dreams for a long time. I’ve even kept record on lists: dream vacations; top 20 places to visit before I’m 50; family activities; etc. Sadly, many of the dreams and wishes I’ve penned on paper are not mine. They never belonged to me. I named them, talked about them excitedly, and hung on to them as a rope connecting to my future. But they weren’t mine. Instead, they were dreams belonging to the girl I wanted to be, or at least thought I should become.

Somewhere along the time line of my life, and I cannot pinpoint the exact day it happened or why it happened, I deemed myself an undesirable. I knew that God loved me and that Jesus died for me, but never grasped the entire beauty that resides in that truth. Instead, I viewed myself as someone that God had to love and someone who most humans would never want to get close enough to know, let alone love. And with that warped world view, I began my quest to be wanted

I thought that my value was drossy, so then most of my interests were guilty by association. It is not uncommon for teenage girls to want to look and act like everyone else, so at first, my confused sense of self identity was normal for someone of my age. Yet, my desire to be anyone but me grew and aged with my body and morphed into perfectionism. Knowing that no one was perfect, but thinking that everyone else was superior to me, I began to take parts of others to create the “perfect me.”

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