I’ve been to the fantasy world.
You know, that place you go to when the world around you hurts too much to take. It’s safer there. I can be whatever I want there. There’s no screaming or failure or pain. There’s just me, and I’m not so messed up or broken.
But it’s a hard world in which to make a home.
The walls aren’t solid and sometimes the people don’t have faces. The bright sky pours colored rain drops, and I think of that as normal. The houses are dark, lit by buzzing screens and flickering candles. Love isn’t real there. It’s just a wish, a dream– always just a little out of reach, always just swinging shut as I enter the room. It’s hollow there—a world built on wishes and not reality.
The journey out wasn’t easy for me.
I mean part of me didn’t want to leave. My little created habitat of the mind took me to places I was pretty sure I’d never get to in the outside world. But they weren’t real places. It wasn’t true love. It didn’t give me actual confidence. The fantasy offered me only an imitation of life, of love, of hope. And that is not enough.
So, I took the biggest risk I’d ever taken in my life. . .
