Thursday, January 8, 2009

A Lovely Distraction

Once upon a time and not that long ago when I think about it, I was a girl who loved to indulge in fantasy. Since my imagination is vivid and rich, they started out being incredibly fun, but I didn’t know when I come back to reality and would inevitably end up deeply hurting myself. It never occurred to me that being adopted by The Captain and Tenile was pretty ludicrous (although it was only a few years later I learned I had already been adopted so perhaps not as far fetched as it may seem). Nor did it occur to me to realize that I really couldn’t change the weather just by willing it to do so. I also considered it to be a perfectly valid question when I asked my mother if she’d let me go on tour with Journey as their backup singer.

During my formative years, I was heavily influenced by a woman who had a cursory grip on reality at best. She lived much of her life in a perpetual state of fantasy, most of which was unpleasant. Say what you will about my mom, she had quite the imagination on her. She would simply decide something was real and no longer be able to discern the truth from her fiction. That scared me about her and caused ungodly amounts of confusion and pain when I got out into the world. So much of what she had taught me was based on a seriously dark and twisted perception of life. I was constantly bitch-slapped by reality like so much Crystal Carrington on the receiving end of a Joan Collins special, and I stopped letting myself fantasize… about virtually anything. Consequently, as many children do, the things I found most unsettling about my mother are the things I took to the extreme opposite. Fantasizing was one of the first to go.

True, I prefer reality (even when it sucks the high holy one). Unlike most folks, I would rather eschew the disappointment of being blindsided by reality, than indulge in even a moment’s pleasure of entertaining the seemingly (or legitimately) impossible. I say “unlike most folks” because it has been my observation that a staggering number of people I have met, chatted with, read about, seen on television interviews or heard stories of all lack the ability to accept a fantasy as being nothing more and refuse to take responsibility for their own disappointment. Nevertheless, I get that it is not exactly something we are all taught to take responsibility for. By and large, the general populous tends not to do much of anything unless taught to do so. We are virtually programmed not to take that kind of initiative and that is not by mistake, I guarantee it.

Still, I have to say that it is nice when a pleasantly humming fantasy slips its way into my thoughts like a gentle breeze on a Spring afternoon and lets me take a little time off from all my self-enforced certainty. Today it is a man and that is one place I nearly never allow myself to go (because it feels almost exactly the same as rejection when my fantasy never comes to fruition). This is a man I cannot have and don’t need to have and I’m okay with that (for a change). Once in a while, we have moments that make me blissfully fluffy and floaty and I cannot seem to find anything wrong with it because unlike my past experiences with fantasy, I know when to stop and go back to reality.

Today, I found my mind drifting off to a place where I was wrapping my arms around his lean, broad shoulders, resting my face against his chest, and listening to him talk. When I realized what I was doing, I noticed I was quietly smiling to myself; calm and relaxed. When I snapped out of it, that feeling went with me for the rest of the day and for the first time in a really long time I had a fully good day.

It is a tremendous feeling to loosen the death grip I’ve had on my imagination and feel like I have grown enough to know how to protect myself. The trick is knowing when to let go and pull back; knowing how far you should let yourself indulge and not place icky expectations of where your daydreams will end up. But more than anything, it makes me happy to know that I have finally found a place in my life where I am not afraid of reality (no matter how bad it can be), and believe me… that sure makes it easy to come back from fantasyland.

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