I had the strangest dreams last night & I knew I should have journaled them earlier, lest I forgot. Which, mostly I did. Each dream took place in high school era for me, which for some reason most of my dreams do.

I understand this because, you see, every day I would come home from school, eat dinner, and go to my room to fantasize. I would either stare out the window at all my popular neighbor’s houses or dream of Hollywood…

My pretend high school experience for www.wildfoxcouture.com :)

Please bear with the pathetic nature of the former fact, but this was my street: I always felt I was the only “unpopular” person on the entire block. There were the Reinas’ (Andrea, Eva, and George). Andrea was graduated but I was well aware of the other 2 because they were easily popular due to their extreme attractiveness (among other things, loves!). Eva was as tall as I with poker straight long dyed blonde hair, olive skin, and an amazing body with perfect c-cup boobs. George played football and was over 6 feet tall with Eva’s identical skin, his natural black hair, with a perfect mesh of exotic and all-American features. (I would later become best friends with both, but I’d have to wait a bit for that one.) George was close friends with his next-door neighbor, so they were in the same crowd. On the opposite side sat the home of two beautiful girls. The older one dated a guy I died over; he somehow was my George Clooney of freshman year and the younger one was just wildly outgoing and probably lots of fun to be around. On my side of the street was my beautiful best friend Tara and a couple houses down was “Tyler,” who proved to be freakin’ hilarious in classes and then next to him was- you know what, forget it. The more one travels down “Paloma” Road- from at least 1998 to 2001- all those kids were popular…

Really in highschool! Kelly, Me, Maria, Tara, Stacy, Kelley

Anyway, dream. In this dream I was in high school and all these faceless people that I seemed to recognize within the world, were letting me know that Tyler wanted to make out with me. I was excited but also so nervous; I never kissed anyone before. Would I have to tell him I wasn’t ready for sex? Then, in the midst of all the excitement Katie Holmes got on a nearby stage and started dancing and singing. No one paid attention to her, actually they thought she was incredibly lame, but no one audibly made fun of her or anything. Some girl was shaking my arm and talking about Tyler but I was spellbound by Katie on the stage. I was so worried that maybe I was supposed to be up there with her instead of down here caring about boys.

Please excuse the Katie Cruise- I also know where she came from. Yesterday, I had been thinking about how Katie was doing theater in high school and flew out to Hollywood and happily booked Dawson’s Creek immediately. Katie quite represents how I thought my “Hollywood” fantasy would play out when I used to dream awake in my white single bed. Instant success.

So it seems nowadays, not surprisingly, my literal dreams are flooded with unfulfilled desires and I think that’s why they replay these things over and over and over and over. I mean seriously, do I care about high school? No. I never even once think about it in my waking life let alone ponder how it could have been different. I am so thankful that it was so difficult and humiliating because it kept me grounded, gave me plenty of reason to be humble, built my resolve, and above all, to an embarrassing degree, kept me out of trouble.

It’s not always easy to say, but I feel the same for my career. It has generally been incredibly hard, demanded every ounce of faith in my heart, stolen tons of money, torn me from my east coast roots, and kicked my butt until I couldn’t sit down. However, I can’t help but fully believe it will be exactly like high school. That once I look back I’ll see how the timing of my blooming was impeccable, ordained, ideal, and divine.

So, I think I need to let my adolescent self know, baby, we are letting these fantasies go. I used to fall asleep every night with headphones on and dream up scenarios to please my soul; Oscar acceptances, or figure skating championships, or Jordan Catalano being in love with me, or what it would be to move to LA. Nothing, and I mean nothing I ever fantasized about came true.

One has to be far more openhearted than that. To dream of success or love is beautiful! Pray about it day and night. But to be oh-so-specific, doesn’t seem to serve one well.

How interesting though that they would constantly replay themselves at night? I wake up and laugh thinking, “I don’t want that anymore. Where the heck did that even come from?” I think I just trained my brain wrong and it’s time to consciously let it all go.

My ship has sailed on being popular in high school, I don’t want to make out with anyone new, and I will never be a teen-early 20s movie star. That window of opportunity is gone! And best of all, I’m sure it’s best of all.

Me, pretending to be cool for www.wildfoxcouture.com