#SoCS March 26/16 – Real or Imagined?

for Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Prompt: Real

I have a confession to make – sometimes I don’t know what is real and what is imagined.

I could blame it on an over-active imagination. I definitely have one of those. Or, I could blame it on mental illness, which I also have. And yet, I wonder if it is either of those things. Perhaps I am just meant to live in a world of my own creation.

Now that’s not to say that I don’t recognize reality when it smacks me in the face. I’ve survived real situations throughout my life, some that have left deep scars upon my soul. I know what’s going on in the real world as I actively read and watch the news. And I am not schizophrenic, or at least not visually – I do hear voices.

What I mean by my confession is that when I get in that space, that creative place, I am there, in that created world. I am transformed through space and time, shuttled through some wormhole or cosmic tunnel and plopped down as an observer into that which exists in my mind. While I am there, I see all, hear all, become all. I lose track of time. I lose focus on my surroundings. It’s as if my mind has left my physical body. The real world is a million miles away.

Some say that this is what all writers do, but I am only me, so I don’t know if this is true. I’ve been told that I talk to myself, but maybe I am working out dialogue. I am told that I make funny gestures, but again, maybe I am acting out the scenes. I think that is what I am doing. It is the only explanation I can give. I don’t remember doing those things. I only remember the results – page after page of written work. Words that I barely remember writing. Whole passages of time wiped from my memory. At times, I don’t even remember sitting down to write.

And when I do come back to reality, I feel a sense of loss. Like I’ve forgotten something or left something behind. Something incredibly precious. And it makes me stop and wonder which world I really belong in – the world this physical body was born in, or the ones my mind has conjured up for me.