A fantasy plays in my head. It tickles my ears and soothes my mind for a time. Breeding a false hope of things I desire to come true. Allowing me to live in a delusion that holds on and breads pain and not peace.
These fantasies play and I get lost in them as if they will come true. A part of me believes I can think them into reality. Delusional and lost is my mind. Thinking I’m living but missing my life as my mind travels to places that don’t exist with relationships that will never be.
There was a time I lived in this place consistently. I didn’t even know I was there. Now I know I am there and yet I still indulge sometimes. Making a choice to live in it for a time. Knowing it doesn’t serve me but using it like a drug to escape my reality for just a minute or maybe a few.
These fantasies I think save me but instead they bring me pain. At some point my mind is torn away from the fantasy it is living in and reality comes back to smack me in the face. Realizing once again the hurt; that it was all made up in my mind and never true.
Realizing that attracting good things into your life and trying to fantasize them into reality are two different things. Idealizing people and situations as if on a pedestal that no person or situation could ever be. Creating desires that can never be fulfilled and only leave me forever empty.
Oh how these fantasies help to deny reality! But the fruit this time bears is rotten and ugly. There is no joy to be found in an empty world of make believe.
“Open your eyes!” I tell myself and snap back into this world. This moment is the only place that I can create my life from. When I deny it, I deny myself and any chance of fulfillment. As I snap back to the moment this pain rushes into my chest and I get it. I know what I was running from. The fantasy served to avoid the pain. Knowing now the only way is through, I embrace the heaviness that is caving in my chest. The sadness and hurt I desired to escape from.
May I feel it all so in the next moment I can move forward to something better and something real. No longer lost in my mind in places and with people who never were and never will be.
Remembering the first fantasy that played out in my mind as a little girl. Unable to sleep, lying in bed already burdened with so much stress and a heart full of pain. I had a fantasy about a hot air balloon. It was beautiful and colorful and bright. So much hope and freedom to explore as the balloon lifted off the ground with me held safely in its basket. Finally escaping the smallness of my reality and seeing the big picture from up above.
For those minutes I escaped my reality, and I was free. I fell asleep. And every night after another fantasy entered my mind. Each one someone or something to save me from my pain. A fantasy of love and safety and being cared for.
Sitting here today I know that although I slept, I also didn’t heal or live. I just escaped. I may have had freedom from the pain in those moments, but I always had to wake up again to live another day. My reality never changing because I wasn’t changing. Running from the pain instead of allowing it to strengthen me by feeling it all.
I am so grateful I can walk in the reality of this moment and face my life. Growing and strengthening like never before.
And yet, even if only for a moment, there are days like today I find myself indulging once again.
Until Next Time,
Jill
