The Addiction of Fantasy

​Once upon a time.  The Serpent of Eden. 

Time as been blurred for me recently. My current existence feels out of touch. Everything seems to be in conflict. I’ve achieved a new level of peaceful but lonely isolation.  

I’m a failure. That ever looming thought. 

Tears want to pour but the well is dry. I wonder if we are allowed only a certain amount of tear drops in a life time. Perhaps I’ve used mine all up! But yet the cause  survives. I want a peace that’s just that. Peace. 

It starts with a wish. Then it becomes a daydream. Then a want. Then a desire. The final form is fantasy. Fantasy is desire on a high. It’s a drug with side effects. And even the side effects don’t hinder the experience of the high. An escapee away from the world. From responsibility.  From actual life. It’s also a safe place. 

It’s home. 

I got home not too long ago. Thursday desperately wishing it was Friday. It was hard to breathe today. Not by flesh but by spirit. I am quite unhappy with my reality at the moment. 

I called my best friend and a soul mate. I was completely down, exhausted, and lost. It brought be joy and a light in my heart to hear her voice. We vented, expressing our frustrations with the worlds and our lives. Within the conversation I found myself seeking so desperately for answers. How are we to define ourselves? I realized my exhaustion may in fact be fueled by my energy to answer this very question. The very first fairytale we learn is to chase purpose. It is purpose that gives our lives meaning and value. For without it we are nothing. 

Oh how I want to fly away. 

There was a pile of clean clothes still left unfolded in my laundry basket in my living room. I decide to finally move it to my bedroom to fold tonight after having been completed for almost a week now. This followed a light dinner of watermelon and ginger ale. I for once found myself without much of an appetite.  I don’t know if was because of the state of depression I was in or from the junk food I snacked on throughout the day. Either way, my appetite and thirst was stronger than the needs of my flesh at the moment. 

I needed to work on some very important tasks tonight. Apart from needing to find some stability in my current career, it was so ever apparent that I had to face reality if I was going to have a future. I’ve been putting off many decisions for a long time now. I kept pushing back goals I wanted to complete this year. With the year on its way to winding down, I had to make some decisions not only for the sake of a future but of my very sanity. 

Having opted for sleep instead, I awoke this next morning still burdened. Though I did have a pretty good sleep I was mentally exhausted. I was definitely not going into the office today. After hoping in the shower and paying my cellphone bill, I head out get a iced coffee. 

A cigarette and coffee. My freedom to breathe. 

I’ve been feeling a strong interest to seek my purpose, to define me. I was beginning to realize that who I thought and portrayed myself to be was not me at all. I was living in two different worlds: the world in front of  the mask and the world behind it. The world in front was for presentation, the world behind it my safe haven and dungeon. 

I’m tired of this fucking mask. 

I had a meeting regarding a new career opportunity later in the day that I still planned to attend. For most of this year, I have been exploring various options by which I could progress in my career, making more money and harvesting a stable lifestyle. The results yielded not many favorable paths and it seemed the only option I would have is to become independent and start my on business. The opportunity enthused me but risk cautioned me. 

I had a lot to ponder over before the meeting. It would basically offer nothing more than my current position, save perhaps higher pay. I’ve particularly progressed fairly quickly in my field since my humble beginnings and found myself plateaued. I’ve been working my ass off, sacrificing my goals and ambitions for the sake of employers only to have nothing in return. I was still not making wages I wanted. My life was consumed with work. Days off are far and in between and even when I am, I can do nothing out of sheer exhaustion. Work had become my life and my life belonged not to me anymore. It felt like a nightmare. It is an nightmare. I realized that my current state of emotions and exhaustion come from the fuels of my fantasies running close to empty. It was fantasy driving a survival rather than an existence. Reality, the point between the front of the mask and behind it, blunted by the force from both sides finally cracked. The waves of the two worlds clashed and I was finally drowning. 

I quickly glance over some notes to a project I was working on for my professional development. I see the knowledge, the skill, the opportunity. I pace my kitchen, feeling a bit of anxiety yet drive. It’s like somehow, the those notes were the break through for what I wanted and more. Somehow, someway, I could use this project, these notes, to perhaps make my fantasy my reality. The vision is there but it’s blurry. 

But the heart knows what the eyes do not. 

I send off a few texts to my colleagues at the office before retiring to my chair by my living room window. I still have a few hours before the meeting. I can’t help but feel it to be more ultimatum on not just the future of my career, but my life. Would I simply tape the mask up and put it back on, falling back into fantasy? Or can I build a new order in the chaos of it all? 

I again sat down to look over the project’s notes and the professional research I had been conducting for a few months. Looking at it, I recognized my experiences coupled with my knowledge was fueled by a passion. A passion that had been buried long ago only surviving in fantasy. A passion that wanted out and out now. I looked at the clock on my microwave. The time was winding down. It would be time for me to leave soon. I clean up my apartment, finally folding and putting those clothes away at last. I decide to jump back in the shower. I want to get myself together not for this meeting, but for myself. In a ways it was almost like the real meeting more more so self to self. 

 

For the first time in a long time, I saw myself in reality. I was present. 

About 30 minutes before the meeting. I arrived an hour early of course. Sitting in my car, I do some quick research on the organization that I would be meeting. I decided do a little analysis of my own noting pros and cons, important information I found in my research and reviews regarding the organization’s background, and questions I wanted to ask. I was admittedly anxious and ready to get this over with. On one hand because I was concerned it was nothing more than the same bullshit I’ve experience before. On the other, a sense that even if it all turned out well, how would that work in my the rediscovery of my passion? For it is this passion, that thread of thought, that my purpose fills knitted. Even more, I possessed the power to just drive off and just ghost the meeting. Either way, I had to wonder it was just more or less me escaping. Escaping my life. Escaping reality. 

Let’s get this over with. 

The meeting never occurred. Upon arrival I was expected to complete paperwork with information they should already have plus I didn’t want to complete or give any more information until after this meeting Furthermore, the person whom I was suppose to be meeting with wasn’t even there and then I got told it would be 15 minutes. I got up an walked out.  At first I felt like my time was wasted as I left but as I got to the car I discovered a new resolve within me. I was tired of the fantasy for it wasn’t false hope but misplaced conviction. My attention was focused towards the wrong things. Time lost, time stolen unable to truly be reclaimed. I stood facing reality, this time refusing the mask. 

No more.