Last night after I posted my previous entry, I curled up in bed and watched Top Gun. It helped a little, but there was this nagging feeling that I just was not doing enough.

I honestly cannot remember right now if I mentioned this in my blog, in a response, or in a PM, so in case it's the latter I'm going to go ahead and explain it here before I get to the weird dream I had last night when I did finally sleep ;-)

One of the greatest classes I've ever taken was Intro to Philosophy. Don't get me wrong; I'm not big on the study of philosophy academically. It was just a fun filler elective, or so I thought.

My instructor, Mr. H. I'll call him for privacy's sake, was quite possibly the wisest person without coming off as such, that I've met in a long time. He sparked some incredible discussions not just pertaining to philosophy, but ethics and ethical conduct, like whether or not someone living on life support with no higher brain function should be allowed to die peacefully - one of the more memorable of our class discussions.

I asked him about his religious beliefs once, knowing he was an ordained minister, and his response really made me smile. He talked about how he had spent many years trying to find exactly what faith meant to him. It was an answer that echoed my own struggle at the time (I thought about theology instead of philosophy at the time, but figured the latter would be more fun).

A few years down the road, my dad suffered another heart attack - this one near-fatal. They had to move him to a bigger hospital 45 minutes away, and Mr. H was there that day, and met with my mother. He was, and I believe still is, one of the hospital chaplains. I also just learned last night that he's a licensed counselor.

He was a guiding angel for her when she needed it most.

That's why, when I suddenly remembered he worked in the medical community, I decided to do some more digging. I discovered his name on a contact website for ACBS, the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science.

I emailed him explaining about how I was trying to find a therapist I could trust. I didn't mention the gender issue yet because I wasn't sure if he'd even remember me, but did mention there was something else that may be core.

But anyway, he replied this morning that he did remember me, and would write again this evening.

This is a huge step for me because, not only have I been dealing with depression for years, but it's one of a number of reasons I don't want children right now. The other being that I have a very, very violent temper.

I've been able to work it down to the point that if someone actually manages to push me too far, I can walk away and work it out on my own through healthier venting than trying to punch their lights out. I say trying because I've only succeeded in being sucker-punched the one time I did try, waaaay back in elementary school :-P

So.. yeah. It's a start. It's a start I should have taken ten freaking years ago, but I was so far in denial you may as well have called me Cleo.

Anyway, there are two other things I wanted to get out in the open while I'm thinking about them.

I thought a bit more last night about what my mother had said the last time I tried talking to her, and I can see where she's coming from, kind of.

My "escape", the way I've dealt with things for several years now, is not just through writing, but through video games. That started when I was laid-up for a month due to eye surgery when I was 10, but more recently, about ten-ish years ago, I started playing female characters in multiplayer RPGs.

I'd played a few in earlier games, multi-user dungeons (Both text and graphical MUDs), but I made no secret of my real life gender back then.

When I started playing Asheron's Call back in '01 though, I started a male character and found myself almost constantly being harassed by other players wanting this or that, wanting me to join their guild or whatever.

I finally got fed up with it and made a female character to putz around. The bizarre thing is? The harassment stopped. People would still bug me to join their guild or what-have-you, but they took No for an answer (and accepted my explanation the first time) better than 90% of the time.

It was also different for me in that nobody did any role-playing there that I could ever find. There were a few groups on other servers, but I had friends on my server that I didn't want to leave, so I sort of 'became' Sarah to everyone (Including one poor guy who had a huge crush on me for months before he finally admitted it. I felt so bad for him.)

Ever since then, in every game if there's an option for a female character, I almost exclusively take that option first. Claire Redfield in Resident Evil series, Zoey in Left4Dead (Three guesses where I 'borrowed' my pen name. Taylor is a play on my real surname, but Zoey was my hero in L4D ;-) College student as obsessed with horror as myself? Heck yes!), female Sparrow in Fable 2. I could go on forever, but I won't :-D

So.. yeah, I can see where she would have grounds for that accusation, but the thing is, this is something I've dealt with since I was little, so there's also grounds for calling that a case of denial on her part too.

Okay, enough drama from me. I have to tell you about this weird dream I had last night.

There are two parts I remember vividly.

The first part, I was in a church I haven't attended in 15 years. The short of it is they ousted a good minister, and we quit, and a few years later every single person who voted him out either became terminally ill or outright passed away (Cancer, stroke, heart attack, etc). I won't get into that because it's the past, and needs to be left alone :-) But anyway, I think my mind chose this church because it was where I was an outsider among the youth group for awhile.

Here's the thing, though. I wasn't there as myself. I was there as Zoe, and I was there for somene's funeral. It was someone I didn't know (I didn't recognize him in the casket - it definitely wasn't me). I wasn't even sure why I was there until I arrived.

There were several girls that knew me, and I recognized some of them (In context of the dream).

It's possible that my mind was just messing with me because, just before I finally went to sleep, I had stayed up watching Star Trek: TNG - the episode where Geordi and Ro Laren were believed to be dead, so they were able to attend their own funeral (they were out of phase, or something. I wasn't really paying close attention. I just needed something to make my mind shut up long enough to fall asleep :-D)

The second one, I can blame squarely on Tiffany and "Daring To Hope". Not... that I'm complaining ;-)

I dreamed that I was back in high school again, and going to cheer practice instead of band. Everything was exactly as I remember it from the dark brown high-polished tiles in the gym hallway to the big open-air gym area itself.

Things weren't entirely the same though. There were some subtle difference that I've been reflecting on (Not to mention "Cheer practice" shifted to "pep rally" the second I set foot inside)

For starters, there are two main entrances to the basketball court, which basically comprised most of our gymnasium. The main entrance is three sets of double-doors between the two sets of bleachers on the 'home' side where you enter.

The left side is a single corridor leading off to a storage room as you enter to the right, and to the left are the boys' lockers, with the girls' on the other side near the visiting team bleachers.

In my dream though, the corridor didn't exist. The gym was more... stadium-ish. It was huge! The open area where the corridor used to be had an area for us cheerleaders to walk by on the bleacher side, with a mobile security rail set up with people waiting in line on the other side for some reason.

At this point my mind registered that we weren't there for practice. I looked down, and rather than seeing my home school's colors - purple and gold - I realized I was wearing red-on-white, with a white skirt with red 'under' pleats, for lack of a proper term, and red socks.

I don't remember any team in our district that ever had red and white for their colors, although the more I think about it, that is the colors for our state university's sports teams.

The scene shifted after that to shopping, but unfortunately that was all such a blur that I don't remember any of it.

What strikes me about all this is, I haven't had vivid dreams like this in years. When I was younger, up through about 20 or so, I used to have them all the time. Sometimes I'd dream I was a girl, sometimes not, but only a few of them actually seemed to register that something was different, to that end.

One of the central themes to these dreams though, was that I often found myself fighting bad things. I know that sounds utterly generic, but I don't know how to put it more specifically because it constantly changed.

Like in one, I was in a haunted house, trying to exorcise a spirit (at 14 :-P Did I mention if I had been born a girl, I would've totally been one of those creepy goth chicks? ;-)), and in another I was in a cemetary with someone that looked like my dad, only he was giving me lessons on how to fight demons.

The freaky part of that one is, I remember I was holding an antique oil lantern. When I moved it the way he instructed me, there was this unearthly, ear-shattering howl from all around us that gives me chills to this day.

Then there was the one where I dreamed that I met (and kicked butt alongside) Buffy Summers, but that one was, I think, just fan worship ;-)

Err... ANYway. Sorry. This has gone longer than I intended it. For what it's worth, I feel a lot better today. Knowing I might finally be able to get help is encouraging, yet frightening.

I am absolutely terrified of the idea of anything in my life changing - especially so drastically, but... Well, it's like I told someone in PM last night, my entire life, I've been different. I think differently. When I set my mind to something, I always eventually find a solution.

Sorry, one more anecdote incoming. Something I meant to touch on sooner, but forgot about until just now, related to that last part.

About two weeks before seventh grade started, I was in the laundromat with my mom helping her with a load of blankets or something, that our home washing machine couldn't handle.

I was wearing flip-flops because it was another 110-in-the-shade August day. The floor of the place was a solid slab of high-polished concrete, and one of the washers was leaking...

"CRACK!" Yeah. You could hear the sound of bone striking concrete through that entire area. My foot hit that little puddle just right, and went sliding right out from under me before I could catch myself on the washing machine, and I landed right on my left knee.

All I remember after that was being in the most pain that I had ever felt - including the time I ran into a lead pipe that some genius had stuck into the ground when I was six (and by 'ran into' I mean "America's Funniest Home Videos" ran into. "Crotch shot" took on a whole new meaning that day, though it actually missed that area and got my thigh instead, by a half an inch, thankfully ;-))

Err, anyway, back to the story. My mom and another lady carried me to the car, and took me to the emergency room.

This quack doctor who smelled way too strongly of gin for being on-call on a sunday told me that it was just a sprain, and to wear a knee brace for a few days.

That monday, mom took me to see an orthopedic surgeon the next town over, and that's when I got the really bad news. Not only was my kneecap a free-floating entity (which somehow managed to heal itself back without surgery. To this day I don't understand how that happened), but my groath plate also had a hairline fracture.

This is the part where I had the second worst of my fears come true. My knee, normally the size of a small apple at best, was swollen to the size of a watermelon, so they had to drain off that excess fluid.

I've talked about how I hate needles, so... yeah. Anyway, two weeks later I was still in a wheelchair because using crutches just hurt way too much.

My parents told me I needed to learn to use crutches, on the advice of my doctor, so they hid my chair while they went shopping. I was furious, so I got up on those god-forsaken, unpadded stilts, and I forced myself to walk down the hall to find where they'd hidden my chair.

Searing pain has nothing on wounded pride, by gumbo ;-)

Needless to say they were shocked when they came home to find me resting comfortably, watching TV in my newly reclaimed mobility unit.

Of course that didn't last because I had proven to myself that I COULD walk on crutches, but I had a point to prove to them. I just wish I could remember what that point was.

Anyway, by this point school had started. I was in the band, but I had missed a lot because of regular doctor visits about the knee, so I was way behind.

To add to this, I've mentioned before that I have terrible eyesight. Legally blind (I can see with glasses or reading glasses, but not well enough to be allowed anywhere near the driver's seat ;-)), so I struggled with trying to learn to sight-read music.

One day, I just got fed up with trying, and I started just listening to what the guy next to me was playing. Thankfully our band director organized us a little differently, with at least two people per "chair" part, and there were three of us for second so I always had someone I could lsiten to and learn from them.

It really didn't take me long to get the hang of learning to play like this, and it actually never came out that I couldn't read music until several months down the road, at a spring solo/ensemble competition.

I went in for my solo and, rather than hand the judge his copy and take mine to my seat, I accidentally handed him both. I wasn't showing off, mind you - the truth is, I was just too shy to ask for it back (Like I needed it :-P) so I just took my seat, played, and got up to collect my music from him and leave.

The band moms found out about this one pretty quickly. They all thought it was cute, funny, and great, not necessarily in that order, but it inevitably got around to our band director, Mr. P.

He actually didn't say anything at the time, but a year or so later we were working on a piece, and someone noticed that I wasn't playing the first time through.

That's when he made me stand up in front of the entire band and proudly announced in his southern drawl, "Y'all, I just want to take a moment to recognize this guy right here. I know some of y'all have noticed he doesn't carry music around, and that's because he's memorized every single piece of music I've ever handed out."

Cue round of applause. Cue me turning about thirty shades of red in rapid succession a few seconds later.

Ironically this is why I never made first chair, but to be honest? I didn't want to. Two of my few good friends - I'll call them Amanda and Christina for their anonymity's sake ("Christina" has an unusual, but pretty real name, so I don't feel comfortable just throwing it out on the internet ;-)) were our star first-chair people. They both had talent to spare, and in some probably weird Zoe's-way-of-thinking way, I was happy to have the easier second parts.

I recognized early on that the second and thirt parts in each group (Trumpet in our cases) supported the first part. They harmonized and weren't just handed out to people because they couldn't handle first, you know? It was fun, plus I'd have my day in the sun as a soloist my senior year. I'll probably talk about that another time though, as I meant to end this several paragraphs sooner :-P

ANYWAY! Sorry.. Again. I'm going to sign off on this now before I think of anything else I can ramble on about for another hour.

I'll post a reply to this after I've talked with Mr. H tonight.

Thank you all again for your support and kind words. I feel like I should've said all this when I first came here. I guess it's the timing of it.

We're going to visit family I've never met before this July, and I'll turn 29 in August. I'd like to be able to face my 30th birthday next year, knowing that I finally decided to stop running away from the world and started facing my problems head-on the way only I know I can. ;-)

Best wishes,
~ Zoe