beneath the pain

As a child who suffered her own share of abuse, I have managed to live a second life through a constant daydream. I used to sit in my room and imagine a perfect life, a perfect husband, a perfect job, and an atmosphere of constant love and happiness. Sharing a bedroom with an older sister (and often my younger sister as well) made it hard to have a quiet time, but I did. I managed to close my eyes and pretend that everything was perfect and that dad wasn’t arguing with someone upstairs or that I wasn’t nursing emotional and/or physical pain from being hurt the day before. Instead of dealing with life and people about problems, I hid them behind a constant series of dreams. Of course, there are signs and I can’t say that I had it as bad as some kids and maybe many people have it rough once in a while through life. But it seems that I can’t escape the dreams that I am still stuck living in.

The series of dreams was always the same; I went from dating Prince Charming to being married to him to having three kids with him. Always two boys and a girl. The length of the series deepened on how often I got bored of the story line. With age, the series and the steps between dating to marriage to kids has increased. I know more of what being an adult is all about and enjoy more adult type stuff now. I don’t make dreams perfect because I know there will always be hard ache, these story lines often contain aspects of illness, finical difficulty, and once in a blue moon, death. I’ve always been too embarrassed about my daydream obsession to talk to other people regarding whether a series of dreams is common, and when people refer to daydreaming, are they talking about having the same type of exodus from reality that I am. I don’t mind these dreams; I like how they put me to sleep at night and how they occupy my mind at 4 am when I find that I’m unable to sleep. But I’ve entered the phase where my dreams are real. When you break my heart, you interrupt my series. I’ve gone from day dreaming about Prince Charming to dreaming about my current crush. Not necessarily as a marriage partner, but in the dating phase.

Maybe it’s possible that since I live in the country again I am plagued by these dreams to compensate for my lack of transportation and lack of relationships. But I’m finding that I am tired of these dreams and want my life back. I want my mind to be filled with what could be and what I want rather then what I think I have or what would be if I wasn’t me, if this wasn’t my life, if the steps taken to get to that point were actually really taken and not just imagined. I want to be happy about life and not just happy at night when I have time to dream. I want to know what its like to have a clear mind. I want what I’m dreaming about but I will never get because my dreams are stopping me from living.

But I don’t want to be hurt anymore, I want peace, will it only every just be a dream?