Acknowledgments

So since my date of release is looming, I decided to get together my acknowledgments page and I am trying to think of all the people who have helped me in getting this project off the ground and kept me inspired through its development. Some people are very obvious while others I am still trying to nail down. I am not putting people in it just to appease friends or family. I am looking for those who have offered some sincere insight into what I have been trying to do.

Looking back to the end of October when I just opened up Word and started writing with no real purpose, things have changed a great deal and some people have played a role in the completion of my book. It saddens me to think that there have actually been 2-3 people who have looked down on me not only for writing, but even for going back to school. I kept thinking to myself how awful their lives must be to find nothing better to do that to try and tear someone's dream down and make them feel as if they will never accomplish anything. Well, I am happy to say to those few people who hated on me...KISS MY ASS.

In less than a month, my dream of putting my work out there for people to read is going to come true, and to be honest, I don't care if i sell just a measly 10 copies. I will be happy to be read by any and all readers, and if my work can leave even the slightest impact, I will feel as if I have accomplished my goal. It's not often that people can see a life dream come to fruition, but I am thankful that it will for me. Obviously, any money I make off the project will be welcomed as I am still just a poor college student. I never expected to get rich off of this; all I wanted was to be heard.

Well, as the day draws closer, I am clearing my throat and hoping for the best. That being said, even if the best doesn't happen, I will never stop writing...I can't stop writing. My mind will never rest. I have accepted that. It is the reason I cannot sleep. I wake in the middle of the night after maybe an hour's rest and cannot help but turn on my computer and write until my fingers tingle with pain and fatigue. And the few hours I am able to sleep, the dreams never stop coming. They haunt me and speak to me and the voices carry on like a choir of musing. The inspiration surrounds me from all sides as if i am being pursued by a ghost of ideas as it desperately pleads with me to share it's ideas with the world.

I will always be that outcast and I will always be different from everyone else, and now I know why. I am who I am and I write what I feel, and the voices in my head will not rest. Ever. My legacy will be intertwined with my creations, and through my work, they and I will live forever.

Butterflies

“Dreams are like butterflies, fluttering through our minds while we recover from our lives. Their colors are rich and vibrant at times, and offer us a glimpse into an ideal world where anything is possible. Yet during others, their wings come caked with nightmare and sorrow, and look only to unhinge us from ourselves, leaving our souls faded, and stained with melancholy.”

-Olivia Shirai

Static and Silence

Static is all I hear and it might as well be silence. I’m not sure what it is I am listening for, but I know it’s more than this. Highlights and twilight beckon and I am not certain of very much anymore. Nothing new I suppose, confused incontinent mind unable to grasp my foreseeable future. My fingers spitting out toying words and subject matter of the 7^th degree; not making much sense as I deal with illness and dizzying tiredness. I've lost 6 pounds of water weight just today and I am not sure if I want to look at that as a bad thing just yet. I inhale bottles of the stuff, yet it melts off me as my mild fever comes and goes. I dress in layers, warm ups covering my legs and I even place the wool cap on my head, but I can never seem to get warm enough. Two blankets I place over my body. The one I feel on my torso is soft and comforting while the other is stiff, its material eliciting an itch which I cannot help but scratch. I toss it from my chin as my patience is beyond exhausted.

No longer can I rest so now I must write and express and tell stories no one will understand, but I write them anyway. Words keep coming, but no sense is assigned. Mindless and tired, sometimes we do things out of habit more than for survival. While not bothersome, my habit is never being able to let my mind sleep. Even when I do sleep, I am restless and my body tosses about on the bed till I am sitting on the floor once again harboring delusions of fanatic assumption. I crave sleep. Admittedly, I sleep to dream and dream I do, but my mind, forever writing its stories, battles my fantasies and forces touches of reality into them. While I imagine others sleeping and snoring and perhaps unknowingly smiling in their slumber, I can feel myself moving, twitching, unable to let myself relax.

At times, I cannot tell if I am dreaming or waking up. I force myself to become self-aware which is both a blessing and a curse. Blessing so forth, the knowledge of dreaming, exhuming the fossils of my nature and the demons of my past, yet the curse lingers. Knowing my mind is lurking and hiding reality from me, sitting, waiting to procure enough sentiment to cause my logic harm, I tread lightly and wait for the storm to arrive. Still, I cannot help but let this happen for dreaming comes much easier to me that the realism of the world outside my bedroom door, for in my dreams, I can create and write however I like without fear of prudence and judgment. In these dreams, I can see her and only her and she makes me feel normal and real and safe. Her hair long and flowing, her body small and almost fragile. I look into her and she stares back, looking into my nothingness and finding what is hidden and blackened by disdaining aberration. However long the night or complacent the façade, she tears it all down and reveals what is real and I begin to feel content. The opening of my eyes enemies my infatuation and need to be with her, but I know my time with her is limited, so I must revel in its glorious splendor.