Dream Runners (ON HOLD)

Authors Note

I love this story.  It's my baby, my first fanfic, and something I hope with all my heart to turn into a real original one day. 

The last few months have been really rough for me, I grew up in an extremely conservative setting, never taught to do a lot of things most kids learn at a young age-like thinking for oneself.  It was cult-like, our church was so tight and so sheltered.  I was kept away from so much, I'm just now finding the extent of everything I've missed....  and it hurts.  It's like grieving, yet moving forward, and struggling to go forward at the same time.  My parents did the very best they could with what they had, and my younger siblings are growing up so much better with different tools-like going to public school and learning how to talk to kids their age-than I did. 

MAIN POINT OF THIS AUTHORS NOTE  I'm putting this story on hold.  I want to focus on my originals that I want to publish and get back into writing with a better mind set.  Continue reading for more details that not everyone's going to want......

My growing up story is pretty average, really.  Nothing exciting.  No big trauma, no huge event that scared me for life, nothing that makes a person go, "Oh.  That explains it."  I just am the way I am. Different, by most people's standards.  I've been called everything from The Queen of Avoidance to Bitch to That Girl.  I was home schooled, brought up in a series of conservative churches.  Friends with who I was told to be friends with, oldest of four kids, a younger brother who was (and is) an abusive bully, and a dad with some anger issues.  My mom could never settle, never able to stay in one place long or even stick with the same set of household rules and consequences for more than a couple weeks.  There was no stability.  We moved nine times before I was 18, the longest we ever stayed anywhere was four and a half years.  That was heaven, I'd thought we finally settled.  Then it was all ripped away once more.  On the island, off the island, here, then there, then over there instead....  by the time I was fourteen I refused to call anywhere home.  When I was 18 I drifted, moving four times within a year trying to find a place I fit.  It's in the past, it doesn't really matter what happened-though I'm still sorting out my feelings on everything and what I was really feeling.  I got to the point I didn't know I needed help-my normal was numb and drowning.  I didn't even know I was struggling so much, I just thought I was stupid and slow and over sensitive and I didn't know why everything was so fucking hard for me compared to the people around me.

February of last year, so 2017, I went to my grandparents to help out for a couple weeks.  I didn't leave.  They gave me a place to crash in exchange for being available when they needed help with Nana, grandma's mom, my great grandma.  I found a job, and I stayed.  For the following year, I floundered-drowning.  But again, I didn't know I was drowning.  If you read my stories, you can tell my MC's have some issues.  They're numb, depressed, struggling, having panic attacks, cutting.....  I found it so easy to write because I put pieces of what I was feeling into them.  It helped me relate to them, to know where they were coming from.  But when they start getting better?  Meeting people?  My writing flounders because I can no longer relate to them.  They are me, in some ways.  I guess it's a therapy of sorts since I stopped journaling.

One day I was standing outside the bank and all I could think was there has to be more to life than this, just going from one day to the next, letting time pass....  And I made myself think, if I could have anything in the world right this moment, what would it be?  The first thought that popped into my head?  I wanted it to end.  I didn't want anything, just for this to be over.  I knew that wasn't okay, but it was just me.  I moved on.

Moving on, nine months ago I changed jobs, and my panic attacks started getting better.  I felt like I was finally moving forward.  Four months ago, a girl started at my work.  She's a ray of sunshine, brightening my days, making me laugh, and the first person who initiated and reached out to me-not just me to her.  She showed me what fun is, what real friendship is, and she gave me the foothold I needed to start climbing.  That was the point I went to my writing, looked it over, and realized I needed more life experience before I could relate to my characters.  So I took the summer off, and it's been the best summer I've had in years.  I had fun.  I met people.  I went out to bars.  I hung out with people my age.  I flirted.  I danced.  I was got on the back of a strangers bike and went for a ride.  I swam.  I met family I didn't know I had.  And it was good. It's been good.

When I decided to go back to my writing?  I was shocked at how numb my characters were, and how deep in the hole they are.  It hurts to read what I've written, to see how far down I was, and know that one little push would send me tumbling back down to the bottom.  I've climbed out of the hole, but I'm dangerously close to the edge.  There are days where I can feel the blackness pulling at my emotions, the numbness creeping into my mind, and I force myself to jump in the car and go somewhere-get moving, do something, anything-talk to people.  Laugh.  Smile.  And it retreats. 

I'm ready to start writing again, though it's a struggle-like stretching a muscle that hasn't been worked in a long, long time.  But I can't pick up these stories yet.  I love Dream Runners, it has a special place in my heart-same with Shattered-but I can't read them and work them right now.  I think in a few weeks I'll be ready to finish up Shattered, there's only a few sections left anyway.  And she's getting to be happy.  But this one has a long, long way to go. 

Thank you, and I'll be starting a new fanfic soon-probably one of the one's I put in the authors notes of Shattered <3  Most likely Unchanged.

Thank you again!

~SKimmel67628