Okay, I booted it into single user and then ran through the fsck without using the journal. It made a series of recommendations that I agreed to by choosing y each time. After the first run through it still said that the system was dirty. So I ran through one more time without the journal. For the most part, it still booted the same as above, but this time it actually goes right into booting the config. Additionally, I am able to actually mount -w /, and make changes to necessary files. But the question still remains, how do we avoid this from occurring in the first place?