I Wish . . .

Ever since my earliest memory, I was always wishing. Wrapping myself up in a fantasy blanket to deal with whatever unpleasantness I was facing that particular day or week. It's something that all kids do at one time or another. ' I wish I could be like Jordan. I wish I was as popular and good looking as that guy in class. I wish I had a million dollars.' Coveting, projecting yourself into their worlds. But my wishing went deeper. Singular things that could instantly impact my life. And I had become pretty good at it. I found that if I focused on something I wanted hard enough, I usually got it. A certain Star Wars toy, a school closing due to snow, a bully at school getting sick and not showing up that day so I wouldn't have to deal with him. Obviously I really had no power over the weather, or if that bastard Billy came down with mono and gave me a 2 week reprive, or if that new toy ever came. But when they did come, those small victories just validated my attempts and drove me harder to believe that I could somehow change things in my life , even if it just skewed the eventual outcome a small bit. The more I realized that this thing I didn't fully understand would work if I just wished hard enough, the more I found myself obsessing over it. It wasn't always easy, and there were many nights wasted, expending all my energy and focus on something that I probably really didn't want or need to begin with. But I was getting better at bending reality just a bit, and reveling in being somewhere else, someone else. That's the pitfall of living in fantasy. Reality...the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all...can pass you by while you're navigating whatever waters that might contain what it is you think you want to happen. By the time I was in my late teens, daydreaming and fantasy were a major part of my pysche. Walking through real life was easy enough, I could fake it with the best. But my mind was always somewhere else, rarely in the present. The older I got, the more my fantasy wishing part of me became more and more synonymous with the actual things that were supposed to be done as a young adult. Get a job, get your own place, plan for the future. Even as I was doing all these things, the wishes and bouts of daydreaming were still there. I had been doing it for so long that it was now completely assimilated into my daily life. Whatever task at hand was dealt with, then every second of down time slipped me back into the pattern I had first developed years and years ago as a young insecure child. Once, during a particularly angry temper tantrum aimed at my mom, I said.. "I wish you would just go away and leave me alone!..I wish I wasn't here anymore!" She looked at me and very calmly said..."Be careful what you wish for young man, one day you just might get it". I was either unable or unwilling to give that piece of advice any merit, and it quickly went in one ear and out the other to be forgotten as soon as I stormed off to my room. Looking back now, she may have been on to something......