One of the ways I Cope

Well, maybe this writing is helping me.  I had a bit of a breakthrough with my last post on "How I Think".  It is kind of strange and I am not writing this down  so I can get a bunch of people feeling sorry for me.  I am writing this thought down because it is my reality.  That is very important to me. 

This is my last complaining post.  I did my wallowing and I am done.  I have to deal with the situation I am in and I have decided to let alot of things go.  I can be very stubborn, but I have to stop wishing for changes that aren't going to happen.   I can adapt.  I am just very unsure of how at the moment.

My way of coping through my whole life has been to make up stories.  It started with my dreams.  I used to have very vivid dreams.  They were so powerful that I began a dream journal in my twenties.  I had them from the time I was 6 years old and for a reason I can't explain they stopped within the last few years.  My parents took me to the movie Gremlins.  It was rated G at the time, but that movie really scarred me.  It was with that movie that I began to replay the pictures I saw in my dreams, only it was my family dying instead of the actors.  It was very traumatic for me and I became super careful about what I watched.  I was tricked into seeing Nightmare on Elm Street at a sleep over.  She told me about the bad words, but not the high level of violence.  Let's just say I was awake all night in an indescribable terror because every time I closed my eyes.  I saw myself getting killed.  I did not know how my friend could sleep after watching that movie, in fact I don't remember seeing her again.

I did not really have any playmates when I was younger.  The block is a child's whole life and I grew up in the busy city of Burbank, Ca.  I traveled along my city block from corner to corner during the day, but there were not any other girls my age to play with.  I missed out on the girls social structure from the very beginning of my life.  I don't think it would have really mattered, I found and still find girls to be very confusing.  If I wanted to play with someone it had to be with boys and they could only stand me(and I them) for so long, so I learned to play by myself.  I developed a habit of talking out loud when I played.  It helps me to form my ideas.  I believe that is why we are social creatures.  Talking aloud, even if the other person can't offer a solution, helps to define the emotions we are feeling.  It seems a bit crazy to talk to one's self, but I did not have anyone I could safely express myself to so I began to trust my own opinion.

My Mother went on a trip to England to visit a Sister living there and she left my brothers at home with my Dad, but since I had to get to summer school she had me stay with her friend, Alice.  I was about 8 at the time and Alice's children were much older than me, so I tried to be extra good while I stayed there.  Anyway, Alice had a pool in her backyard.  I had never felt so safe and happy as I did in that water.  I made up games and intricate stories of mermaids and princes.  I talked out loud and I remember feeling a blush of Scarlet when Alice answered one of my rhetorical questions.  I was so lost in my own world I became embarrassed that she had heard me.  But, this was about the time when I began placing myself into the stories on purpose.

It just has become more in depth as I have gotten older.  I use a TV show or characters in a book as the base of my story and then I make sub-plots with me placed in that reality.  I figure out a back story and how I can enter the show just as any other character.  I have my traits.  I have my normal problems, but in my head the other people act like I want them to.  They follow the script that I write, like they are suppose to, none of this unpredictable behavior that I just do not understand.  I don't have visions of popularity or riches.  I don't care about that.  I just have some one who  recognises my strange, but interesting traits and want to be with me, something that has yet to happen in real life. 

So I have a different feeling about actors then most.  I do not understand being obsessed.  Do not get that at all.  The character you watch is not that person, it is an amalgamation of that actors personal quirks and a writer.  That is why when I see an actor I like I do not want to know anything about him.  I do not want his own personal douche bag-ness to sully the character I like so much.  I really do not want to hear about his failed marriages and about how he was picked up for drunk driving because then it messes up his character for me.  What I find fascinating is that I tend to like the physical quirks and vocal intonations of an actor, so I like to research all the different projects they have been in.  With the advent of Netflicks I can have a movie marathon or a new TV show in the queue.

That is how I ended up writing a novel.  I really need to work on it, but the story came from a dream that came out of the blue when I was in college.  I was so taken with the images I saw that I started to write a story to explain what was happening.  I can still remember that original dream even though it has been close to 10 years later.  I never was able to write the dream down because I never had the ability to describe the images.  After I became home bound I decided to try my hand  at writing the pictures in my head down.  I am so bad at placing the commas in the right spots and the technical side of writing that I kind of gave up, but I wrote the First book down into the computer.  That process took more than 2 years.  I have always had a very active imagination and this has become my new way to cope.  I understand that it may never be read, but I realize I am fine with that possibility. I am grateful that I learned a way to cope with out drugs or insane behaviour.  This is terrible embarrassing to me, but through the stories I have been able to endure the lack of social interaction and loneliness.

So here is the kicker.  I do not have a need for a happy ending in any of my stories.  Why, when A). I had not experienced that in real life and B). my life is still in flux.  I do not know how to manufacture the feelings of a "happy ending".  and it took having to consider the ending of my book for me to realize I have no idea how to finish it.  I have found I can only write what I know and that is for the male character to say "no, I don't want you" to my female character, but I know that no one would accept that ending.  Hey, I wouldn't accept that horribleness either, So the book lays unfinished, until I can figure out a way for the two characters to be together without all the mushy gooey-ness that I have read in every book.  I may have dreams of fantasy, but they are nothing like the immature ridiculousness of a romance novel.  I have always been confused by that ideal.

And what is even more disturbing to me is that I don't want to think of anymore stories.  Now they just feel like a mean way of taunting me because I have not only lost the belief that I will ever be a function member of society, but I don't want to bend anymore and be a function member of society..  If I am honest, which tends to be a horrific mess, I do not feel capable of the sacrifice needed to be with another person.  Isn't that just a kick in the pants.  Ha!  That makes me feel better in an off kind of way.  I was in the screwed up category before I became sick, but now huge pockets of myself have shut down.  Moving to Virginia was the death knell for me and I knew it.  I fought for 2 years to stay away from my parents home because it is in the middle of no where.  I  just need more people to sift through and there is no single life in this area.  My fate feels so cruel, but I am trying my best to keep moving forward. 

What do I think of now?  My future has become a big blank spot.  The way I have cope since childhood has become a shallow fleeting exercise in futility.  I feel condemned to do the same thing over and over in a strange form of slavery. I am a very purposeful person.  I have always had my own distinct goals and wants to cling to, but now they are gone.  And I have to say to myself "Oh, Well." to survive.  I guess this is a form of mid-life crisis.  I learned along time ago not to judge myself with the yardstick of the world, but I chose instead to use the one that corresponds to my religion, the yardstick that measures family.  Well, that one is not going to work for me either, so I guess I can believe I can't be measured or I have to accept that in this world, at this time, I am a failure. 

Saying that seems like it should hurt, but instead it is strangely liberating, allowing me to be free of  my own expectations.