ok so overnight it has gotten worse. I did find some info that said that erasing "Macintosh HD" was a good option. so I did that last night and now when I boot it up it goes straight to disk utility. I can't get it to boot into safe mode either and it doesn't even try to boot up normally. when I go to "startup disk" in disk utility, nothing is listed. also, when I go into the window to download a new copy of OSX, Macintosh HD is the only available drive to download it to. there is another one listed, "recovery HD" but it says that that drive is locked. does anyone know what comes next?