Escaping My Nevers

Things get so busy during the summer I haven't posted as much, but I had some deep thought lately I thought would be post worthy.

As you may have gathered already, I am prone to self-evaluation and examination on a regular basis.  Sometimes this gets to the point of obsession and some people would probably see it as a bit exhausting.  But it's what I do because it's who I am.  I've seen it in personality types, actually.  So I was once again thinking about the way I think.  Which sounds incredibly dull but it's not, it's pretty deep.

I realized in recent months that I am a dreamer in more then just the sense of the words.  Usually when one says "I am a dreamer." People take it as a positive thing, like someone who has a great imagination or someone who thinks big things and does them.  But I haven't been that kind of dreamer.  I am trying to become that kind of dreamer because I see that kind of dreamer as much more healthy then the way I have been for the majority of my life.  I don't dream about what ifs.  I don't dream about somedays.  I found that throughout my life I've dreamed about alter-realities that I think of as nevers.  Because I have accepted within myself these dreams are nevers, I sort of contented myself with a lesser reality and escaped my reality by dreaming.

I recently read a phrase posted on Facebook that said: Your imagination should be used not to escape reality, but to create it.
True dat.

I looked back on my life as a hopeless dreamer and realized something rather tragic.  Because I dreamed in this way, I gave up on reality ever being at all dreamy.  I gave up the hope of a realistic romance or an amazing life.  I told myself things like that only happened on television or only happened to other people.  So of course they never happened to me.  This mindset made me settle so hard in real life and then I would live in my dreams because that was where I felt happy.  But it wasn't real, and I wasn't really happy.  So my depression grew with my disappointment with the gap between real life and my dreams.  But whoever told me my dreams weren't realistic?  Why didn't I think I was good enough for the dream-boat dark and tall to sweep me off my feet?  I think I saw opportunities sometimes and let them pass by because those things don't happen to me.  This mindset really messed up my dating life back in the day.

Over the last year or so I have been focusing on the real more.  I've escaped the dreaming for a while and it's like my head has been lifted out of the deep water.  I took a stroll down the street this summer and it felt like I was seeing my neighborhood clearly for the first time.  I'd walked down that street multiple times in past years but I always did it in a fog of dreams.  I also wasn't taking advantage of my children realistically either.  Instead of seeing the blessings right before my eyes I was dreaming about the blessings I felt I never realistically could have.

Then I opened my eyes to the reality of my blessings.  I am married to a great guy who not only helps cook and clean when he gets home, but he's incredibly responsible and a hard-worker and he cares deeply about me and our children even if he can't express it sometimes in the way I wish he would.  Men are being shaped into emotional cripples...it's an epidemic that must be stopped.  I could write a whole other post on that, but I'll stop there.  I love my husband.  When I get my head out of the clouds of alter-reality and nevers, I find the nows and the this-is-happenings and realize what I have been SO taking for granted like an idiot.

I am also the mother of some great little boys.  I thought I was investing everything into my children as a good mother should.  I feel guilty all the time as most mothers would because every single day something is not done that should be.  But I've got to learn that the list of to-dos and to-dones will always be lop-sided and priorities must be variable and what I didn't get done today can always be done tomorrow.  And life doesn't end because of my not-done-yet list.  What is most important is that I watch my kids in the now.  I see them today because of course everyone knows the cliche, tomorrow comes too soon.  But the first step is opening my eyes and stop dreaming about nevers because with my kids the possibilities are endless and I know of one never to embrace: I NEVER want my kids to think of their dreams as nevers!

This world I live in is a beautiful place with lots of good.  I'm going to start seeing it for how it truly is, because dreams are founded upon realities.  People really do great things.  Great things really do happen to good people.  Instead of losing myself in my dreams I can work for my dreams to be realities.  I'm going to create and stop escaping.  Because honestly what's real is too good to try to escape.