I Could Stand To Revisit Such Things…

I should warn you that this post has some ups and downs but it is not light. Childhood memories of formative events tied to adult choices are like that. If that is not your jam or if you have synchronous trauma you may want to bail on this one.

Were you prone to fantasy as a kid? Did you ever play-pretend roles in different scenarios through imagination (by yourself)? I certainly did. As a child I think I had an overactive imagination. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” hit home with me. I had the ability to imagine I was a captain on a space ship, seagoing vessel, or an airplane with great ease. I made my own sound effects and required few props.

I Could Stand To Revisit Such Things…

If you added in some social or entertainment influences I could adopt or mimic them. I was more of a Star Trek (TOS – the good one, not Next Gen) fan than Star wars when it came to play but that could have been connected to lack of space to play (pun intended). I was a fan of Jules Verne, Walter Lorde, and of course James Thurber. I was fortunate to have some kids my age near me in the early years of my life. Although my closest 3 friends at that time (actual direct neighbors) moved away by the time I was 8 or 9.

My friend Sara lived immediately next door and we were inseparable when school was out. There is no implied love story here, we were just kids and playmates. We spent 4 solid summers playing together. She introduced me to the Beastie Boys. I introduced her to Sci-Fi. She went to public school and I went to a Catholic school. We only had playtime when school was out. And this was 80’s play so we were riding our bikes miles from our house. Those were great days. When her family moved I didn’t get a lot of warning, a few days at most. I never heard from or saw her again. The same goes for the other neighbor kids that moved – nothing. My old neighborhood was in a “transitional” state at that time and while the rent was great the conditions were not for everybody. Even with the modern capabilities of things like Facebook I have never located these people.

This is important to the post because at the time I was also struggling to make friends at school. I never have understood why but I chock it up to 1980’s being the bullying decade. I got more than a fair share of it. It was isolating and the years following would prove more formative than I wish they were. The following year my 23-year-old brother died suddenly and it altered the entire family. Gone were the days of a loud and rambunctious house filled with jokes and noise. Instead it became quiet. My older sister had been away at college and she decided to move out full-time.  Mom really wasn’t able to do much of anything but be catatonic. Dad worked 80+ hour weeks. I found some solace in my imagination. It allowed me the outlet to create things. I wrote, began writing music, and developed an interest in live theater. But the perpetuation of imagination continued beyond simple output. You see, when you are 10-11 years old with few people to talk to you find ways to get by including cognitive dissonance. It even means creating scenarios of what the perfect life would be. You can practically feel it. So you build these narratives and they don’t really go away. Coping mechanisms are so pervasive in our species and this was one of mine.

Here is the part where I reassure you that I have a point to this post. I probably have a few.

You see, it occurred to me that imagination isn’t always on our side. Consider a scenario where you take a job because you imagine it will be great but you ignore the warning signs that it is actually terrible (lawyers do this a lot I hear). Or another where you adopt the imagined promise of a romanticlove that is not congruent with reality – the love that COULD be. Can you love hard enough for two people? Trick question, the answer is no. You just give love twice as fast until yours is depleted and you have to develop new coping mechanisms or reframe the entire situation. I have done both and both have been costly to my heart and soul.

Discovering and processing this connection has been quite cathartic. I also realized that over time I have become more analytical than emotional in tough situations. My friend Rachael tells me it is a learned trauma response. I suppose that is better than it being a product of aging. But in some ways it has taken the lighter (happier?) parts away and left the denser ones in place. I miss it and I am working on relighting it. I miss the feeling of just living in emotion sometimes and not have to analyze it. This is my new self-improvement project. I want to reduce the analyzing to some degree. But getting there takes some vulnerability and that is going to be a lot harder than I care to explain. There is a trust necessary for whomever is in my atmosphere at that moment that I don’t know how to develop. I’m kind of hoping maybe they will know how in the right circumstance. Granted, I talk a lot of s**t for a guy who is timid in situations requiring vulnerability. I have definitely learned not to allow fantasy to cloud my judgement in matters of real life.

Don’t stop dreaming and don’t stop playing. Nothing is worth sacrificing that joy. But don’t let these things allow you to cosplay the life you want in lieu of actually living it.