Escaping Deep Into Fantasy Right Now

I guess my ability to imagine things creatively came back just in time… I need it pretty bad right now. (As you can see by yesterday’s entry.)

I know that what’s to come won’t play out all at once. Things will happen over weeks and months. However, right now, I’m just trying to digest it all and still be functional.

Sharn is not my mother, but she IS like family. She offered me a safe place to spend a great portion of my youth. I spent the night at her house more than any other place besides my own home, often almost every weekend. She took me on family vacations so Cat would have companionship. She gave me more contact with normalcy at a critical time in my development. Cat and I stayed friends, so we’ve known each other for over 35 years!

In truth, I’m going to be hit harder by her illness and death than by the death of my own mother.

My lifelong go-to response to stress is to escape reality by diving into made up stories about characters and settings and plots. I may watch shows or read books, but my favorite thing is to get paper (or laptop) and just start imagining and writing. I think a lot of my stuff is trite Mary Jane ego-soothing silliness, but it does the job: I feel a little better and my mind is distracted from real-life issues that are too often over-whelming.

Already this week I’ve noticed I’m ‘going away’ into my worlds and not wanting to deal much with real life. I had to see my pain doctor and adjust medications (still can’t get Lyrica because I can’t pay for it and Joan didn’t offer to help me with that just yet.) I feel very unmotivated to push myself just now. I’m sure I’ll be better in a week or so after the news has had time to ‘settle’ in my my mind. Right now, though–? I just do not want to deal.

Which makes me feel selfish because I’m not the one really hurt by this. I think I’m freaking out a little because I don’t know that I can step up and be a good friend– or at least the kind of friend I want to be. A part of me feels like walling off her heart and not letting myself ‘go there’ because I don’t feel strong enough to handle it yet. I will likely be more supportive if I stay at least a little disassociated. I hate the circumstances that gave me the skill to ‘check out’, but I have to admit that it can come in very handy at times…

Enough dark dread. Back to my stories.