How to explain what has happened, is happening, to me. It's as if my real life exists, and I can see it unfolding, and I'm alive in it...sort of...but I'm also observing it, as if from a great distance away. A continual out-of-body experience, every waking moment of my day. I can see myself folding laundry and doing dishes, walking the dog through the snowy landscape of Brooklyn, choosing apples in the grocery store, and Nutella on sale, and tomatoes and onions, and chicken for the soup, but all of this takes place in one realm while my mind wanders freely, intently, elsewhere.
Other lives I live, other scenes, possibilities, the characters from my book, the ones I invent, fleshed out more tangibly than the corporeal people who surround me.
Daydreaming has superseded living life, and I fear (hope?) that I'm becoming a spirit only half inhabiting my own world as my edges fade and an exchange is made: my form takes on substance in that other place, the one that exists only in my mind and on paper. Could that really be? Do people still see me, or am I truly becoming indistinct, haunting the edges of real life? The peripheries of the solid world? Am I becoming a ghost? Do they even notice that the woman at her chores and errands is fading into a blur, a smudge, a transparent wraith?
Occasionally something will bring me back: a voice. A look from Alex that pierces the eldritch mist, reminding me that I am there, that he sees me. In that moment, I exist again, outside my own mind. But it is uncomfortable; I am now better suited to the images of the half-world, where time is non-linear, where I can be and un-be on a whim, where everything outside the moment of intensity recedes into twilight.
No one can live this way indefinitely, unless they are truly mad, and I am not. So I try to pull myself out of it. It is quite painful, disappointing, like waking up from a good dream and wishing you were back there.
Ghost. Real. Ghost. A struggle.
note: I felt compelled to add, in rereading this: this post is about my overactive imagination, nothing more sinister! You all know that, right? Right?!
32 comments:
My reality is fog. Seriously. Fog everywhere.
It lifts though, doesn't it? The sun will break through eventually.
Sx
It does. I am sure of it. I know that feeling too, intimately. Unfortunately.
i am days away from the beginning of a new year/another birthday and i can honestly tell you that the fog will lift on its own accord. it always has and it always will for all of us. xoxoxo
You have nipped at the Borges again ...
Hold on tight to your dreams...
Some lyrics from a song I was listening rather intently to this morning,
"I'm becoming less defined as days go by
Fading away
And well you might say
I'm losing focus
Kinda drifting into the abstract in terms of how I see myself"
That last line of this post, wow!!!
Thanks for sharing this Leah. I really do love your writing.
Nothing wrong with daydreaming or feeling slightly removed from everyday life, just as long as your everyday life isn't going to pot in the process. In fact daydreaming can be a vital source of inspiration to enrich the everyday.
Nick has a point, you write about it so eloquently. No fog here, come and soak up some sunshine
Everyone needs a little sunshine to stay grounded.
is any of it really real...smiles. lovely write and i too have felt that...
Maybe you are in the limbo that happens between the holiday period and the new year. I know I am.
Good practice for when you are middle- aged. Then you truly do become invisible much of the time.
Hi Leah,
I have often felt that way and your writing explains it so well. I have often thought I was the only one who felt that way and that there was something wrong with me. It is like you are watching a movie and you have one of the starring roles, but you are also the only viewer who unwillingly is forced to watch.
Sometimes it can last for a few minutes and other times it can last for hours or days. It is almost the same feeling one gets when one has a feeling of deja-vu, only with this feeling, you do not feel like it has happened before.
I have never associated it with a ghost but maybe that could explain it, that when we have this experience there is the possibility that a ghost has stepped into our body and is showing us what they see. There are so many possibilities as to what could be going on, but now I am kinda liking the ghost one.
Sometimes you are just so amazing.
God bless.
Sometimes we get into just going through the motions of daily life, that it all seem like a blur. We go to the same job, come home, do the laundry, etc...all in a kind of a daze sometimes, because it's such a routine. I try to take a break and do something different to shake things up a little and rattle the cob webs, when I feel the need : )
It's the geist that counts.
Thank you, dear readers who commented (and of course anyone who read but didn't). These are lovely comments.
MrsU--thank you very much especially.
A reader expressed concern about me after reading this post! Anybody who drops by here regularly, though, should know that I write as I feel, and pretty much whatever crosses my mind at the moment. It can get a little weird up in here, but...that's me, take it or leave it.
xo
Happy New Year!
Turn it up to 11!
I'd leave a comment but I can't hear anything you're saying since XL cranked up the volume.
Did i ever tell you that i love weird! Oh... and wonderful writers...
your words are food for the soul... thank you Leah
Happy New Year to you Sarge and Hedgie
XXX
Oh Hai MJ, XL.....
Happy new year sweet Princess--you are one of my very favorite "finds" of the last decade!!!
I was just telling someone the other day that I feel invisible to people! ha. Is this contagious?? :)
Lovely post. Love the minutae of everyday life vs the daydream.
love this post.S
I think this experience is there for all of us at some time or another. Your life is humdrum, you don't need to think about it, it can all be experienced on 'auto pilot' so you can 'drift away;' from reality and see it all as if you are having an out of body experience.
It's wonderful how you have been able to express it on words.
Hi Leah, my first visit her,e courtesy of a Tweet from Baglady - for which I'm very grateful - this was a great post, lovely fluid evocative writing. Think I'll be back!
Betsy--I am very sympathetic, and I have been hearing this same sentiment from others recently. It does seem to be going around! Xo
Baglady--thank you so much for the Tweet! I am touched actually. This post put me out on a limb a bit. But you are right--it is in essence creative writing!
Sarah--thank you so much!
Technogran--a very insightful comment--you've got it exactly!
Sharon--I appreciate your kind comment, and welcome to my odd neck of the woods!
Love the way you wrote this. Sometimes it's wonderful letting your writing world run away with you, not keeping your feet on the ground...
I've ever liked things like sand clocks, lava lamps, and the like to good of rightful dish out time staring at it as a formality of catharsis. In a route, it helps me with meditation, to free lay stress and just fantasize fro nothing. That's why since I was a kid, in preference to of dolls and cars I've eternally cool more of such pieces like sand clocks, lava lamps, dulcet boxes etc. So I was most charmed when I establish the[url=http://www.dealtoworld.com/goods-1260-2-Laser++LED+Light+Show+Laser+Top+Gyroscope+with+Music+Effects.html] 2-Laser + LED Inconsiderable Appear Laser Ace Gyroscope with Music Effects[/url] from DealtoWorld.com under the aegis the Toys section. It's like a melodic box, a spinning exceed, and a radiance verify all rolled into one. Which is prodigious relaxation! The gyroscope pleasure concoct after about a minute. The laser explanation manifest with accompanying music makes this gyroscope a pretty incomparable fiddle with that my friends be subjected to also been most amused with.
My dogs are also fair eccentric around the laser gyroscope I got from DealtoWorld.com. They always occupy oneself with the gyroscope as it spins, although at first place they kept barking at the laser insight show, and also because it produces music. But after they got worn it, they've stopped barking but virtuous watch over following the gyroscope whenever I start spinning it. Kids are also unbelievably amused by it. Off it's moral to possess diverting toys on all sides the ancestry so that you can desert the bit of frippery trifle with on while the kids are being amused or playing with it while you live prepare viands or fall heir to changed. The gyroscope is inseparable such fool with with this purpose.
The gyroscope I bought from DealtoWorld.com has a dragon as a design on it, and produces a light show with red, obscene, and green colours. Nick a look at the pictures I've uploaded of the gyroscope with laser luminosity show. The music produced from the gyroscope is not that great but allowable adequacy to consider any redone roomer to the house. The gyroscope is red and raven, making it look very cold, and somewhat virile with that dragon imprint.
The music light show gyroscope runs on 6 LR44 batteries, which are replaceable anyway. I've also euphemistic pre-owned this gyroscope to surprise my girlfriend during our anniversary celebration. I did the cheesy matter of decorating the hostelry latitude with roses and when I led her in, I started up the gyroscope as correctly so that the laser light show produces a dreamed-up effect. I also had some battery operated candles so all the light effects created a slightly mawkish atmosphere. She loved it, by the way, to my relief. I also bought the candles from DealtoWorld.com. These days it seems to be my non-performance shopping put for all gifts and ideas in behalf of romanticist occasions.
Since Christmas is coming, this laser radiance make clear gyroscope can perhaps be a talented Christmas give-away for the toddler or even the pet! Alternatively, the gyroscope can altogether be a kindly summation to the traditional Christmas decorations. I can fancy placing it adjoining the Christmas tree and maybe spinning it when guests reach in the house. Looks like [url=http://www.dealtoworld.com]DealtoWorld.com[/url] is getting my duty thus far again!
After that last comment, I have no idea what to say!
Meg, I was going to erase it but it's so magically bizarre that I can't bring myself to do it!!! I am, however, going to turn off the anonymous feature on the comments...
Bizzarre is the right word for this.
Leah, you are a true wonder! And a dear darling. :¬)
xxx
I daydream.....a lot. I love my daydreams as I'm a bad-ass ninja fighter, pirate hunter, and zombie killer wrapped up in one hot-assed, leather encased little bod. I can't wait to be pulled over for speeding one day and when the officer asks why I was speeding? "Zombie attack and they're headed right towards us!"
Daydreaming is one of those perfect gifts.....use it often.
Post a Comment