I sit here in silence having conversations with people in my head.  I imagine scenarios and then run with them until they become too silly, too dark or too involved and I actually start talking out loud and gesticulating.  I’ve always done this.  I’ve never been sure if it’s normal or not.  I think it’s just something I do to process situations and to try to prepare myself for certain possible (usually slightly odd) eventualities.

Eventualities like;

One day my baby daddy will marry a teenager and have a baby who he will love properly and I will get old and lonely and be single forever yet somehow have to rise above it all and be sagacious and benevolent.  Which, given the levels of malevolence I currently seem to be harbouring, may be a little difficult.

and

At this wedding I have to go, my ex from a long time ago will be there and will ask me if I have wizard sleeves for labia after birthing my baby and I will tell him he owes me more respect because we used to love each other and I terminated his child so actually, we could have been parents but I chose differently.  This ex is prone to inappropriate statements so this is actually semi-plausible.

and

Also at the wedding, an old friend, the one who got away, will sit next to me and tell me he thinks I’m beautiful and he always liked me and wants to see if we can have a future.  To give you an idea of the life fantasy levels, I first met this guy when I was 19 and the second I saw him, a little voice in my head said ‘that’s the man I’m going to marry’.  Bonkers. Unless we do get married of course…

When you say things like ‘I have an active fantasy life’ people tend to get a bit excited imagining some scenario where Snow White meets 50 shades of grey.  I rarely have sexual fantasies.  I have a certain couple of men who I do have sex dreams about but only as an afterthought to a usually protracted and puzzling, intellectually stimulating adventure. Sapiosexual?

There was a guy my friend dated for a while and I developed this crazed life fantasy around him.  I couldn’t even talk to him because I was so in love with this guy that I had never had any contact with other than passing a spliff at an after party.  He was really skinny, had some dodgy tattoos and may have had more than a passing whiff of a heroin habit.  Did I mention my taste in men is notoriously bad?!

My baby daddy is someone who I had a whole crazy life fantasy attached to without even meeting him.  I was lonely a few summers ago and he posted something on facebook that made me think we were meant to meet.  I knew my life would change when we met.  I spent a week or so walking the hills and imagining conversations, where we would live, where we would travel to and the friends we would make.

Needless to say, the reality is turning out to be somewhat different.

And therein lies the crux of the problem of blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.

I guess it’s akin to putting someone up on a pedestal except for it’s putting a whole relationship on a pedestal.  A whole relationship with someone you’ve never had a real conversation with.

Bonkers.

All the guys I have life fantasies about have songs attached to them.

The one who got away: Arctic Monkeys and Do I Wanna Know

My friends ex who I never spoke to : Madonna and Beautiful Stranger

I’ve actually forgotten the song my baby daddy had attached to him.  Maybe that’s what happens when you blow a fantasy out of the water.

I have also experienced the other side of things with my lovely ex.

When two people buy into a fantasy it becomes a reality and it’s so amazing that you keep searching for things that are wrong with it and in so doing you jeopardise the best thing that’s ever happened to you.  To be fair, I think he was as guilty as I was about projecting the life fantasy, he certainly held me on a pedestal that I did not deserve to be on.  But, who’s to say, we at least still love each other and perhaps, just perhaps, despite, or in fact because  of the other man’s child, we will still get to live out our life fantasy’s together.  Or maybe we’ll figure out how to live and love in reality.

To be present in our own lives.

I’ll keep you posted.