I am a daydreamer

When I was little I would stand at my grandmother's back door in Guyana and watch as the Atlantic and the sky merged. She taught me that was the Horizon. I would watch the horizon for hours. This was my signal that the world was ok. I was an interesting child, a loner really who dwelled in my imagination. I pretended to be whoever I wanted and daydreamed most of my days away. I became engrossed in my play so much that being interrupted with the call for lunch was too much for me to bear. As I sat through lunch I already knew what I would be doing after my required afternoon nap; daydream and pretend some more. As I got older, I added a new joy to my hours of daydreaming pretending, writing. I was the only child in my family that kept a diary, so every night as became engrossed in recounting the days events, and my family honored my strange practice. Throughout my teen years I kept a journal, which I then realized that once shared, it's pretty much like being found naked beneath your covers, when you didn't want to be. Yet still, I wrote my teen life away. I had very few friends in high school and many in my imagination and continued to daydream. Then I entered my adult life. I had lovers then children, I worked full time and became what I thought was the lifetime goal for every woman, independent. I still day dreamed. I missed my journaling practice but became so afraid of the exposure that I stopped.

Then my most eventful relationship began, I can't remember ever being able to write what I was feeling the entire time, the feelings were too intense to put in writing and this is the beginning of how I became lost. I became lost in him, lost in the role I played as mother to my children and partner to a man with a large consuming personality. I couldn't remember who was the girl that stood at her grandmother's window. That was until I experience heartbreak. The kind of heartbreak that feels like your soul is ravaged, when you pray for night because the daylight is not meant for the brokenhearted. I know you know. I was broken, so I began journaling. I journaled morning, noon and night. I was living alone with the children and felt a trust that I would never be exposed and laid bare. And so I wrote, I wrote about all the things in my adult life that I could hardly stand to express even to myself, but now it all came out on these pages. Through writing and daydreaming, my version of mediation, I made a life changing decision to move across the country. And so I was born again. I was born again because I was able to learn to love and value the delicate girl who I was as a child. I began to return to a time that I was not molded by what everyone else desired for my life. I now know that I am free to return to that girl who daydreamed and pretended her life away. This is not saying that I don't have any responsibilities. I am a mother of three and I work full time, so of course I do. But I am able to daydream each day even if it's for just a few minutes, and recently I read an article that said to daydream a few minutes a day can add such an improved quality to your life. So dream on, pretend that you have the life you desire, let it become real to you and it will!