Friday, September 26, 2008

Storytime

Ever since I can remember, I had a vivid fantasy life. Get your mind out of the gutter- I don't mean those kind of fantasies (although they pop up from time to time, of course). But the world of my imagination has always been an absorbing place I can escape to when real life is dull. I mean, I was mocked by a little "friend" when I was about 6 for walking down the street telling myself stories out loud. After that, I learned to keep my lips sealed, keep the stories inside. But they never went away, they just changed as I grew up.

"It really bites my ass when you answer me like I just asked the stupidest question in the world," J complains tonight. After a tense few minutes, I apologize, because he's right, after all. Tired and grumpy, feeling pulled in a bunch of different directions, I lash out at J because he's... there. Because he's (gasp) less than perfect. Because inside my head during a long shift at the kite store I was telling myself stories about falling in love (not with anyone specific, you understand. Or at least, not anybody real.) And then I went out for dinner with the real thing, this person who's spent the last 10 years loving me and arguing with me and cheering me on and not replacing the toilet paper; and it was hard, because I just wasn't in the mood for real life today.

Do you spend a lot of time "inside your head"? Do you think that living "with your head in the clouds" sustains you or distracts you from getting things done? Is a vivid fantasy life just a low-tech version of those computer games like "second life" or whatever they're called?

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