manifest #29 - this is fiction

when I was a kid in middle school, one night my primary-care teacher and the principle of our school came to our home to see me, my dad, and my mom. that was the first (and last) intervention by my parents  (and teachers) in my life.

reading this and looking back it sounds sureal if not comic. but it's true; they wanted me to stop living in imaginations so much and when I'm at school understand the reailities around me. they told me they understand me. they told me they knew more, that they knew better. that it was not safe, nor healthy and most important of all not accepted, not good, not okay. that night my dad told me you are no different from anybody else; he asked me to be normal.  

I don't want to take this note to remind myself of how sarcastic it is to repeat that quote and how my relation with my dad changed over the years but I know I trusted him. I respected them. and I was scared of them. you know when they teach you something for the first time you accept it specially coming from your parents and your teachers. you challenge new narratives you hear later as you grow up because you always trust your first narrative more, subconsciously. I was a proud and stubborn yet extremely insecure kid. I was afraid of home. and I was alone. but I accepted that intervention. I agreed to give up dreaming little by little and take reality more seriously or be punished for that, implicitly. 

years go by and I'm normal. I beilieved in that. interestingly, I believed in God, and it crushed me and my world, when I gave up on that. not only I lost all the confidence I could posess, all the certainty I grew up with, but also my imaginary world -- the acceptable one. looking back, now I know, that was my slippery slope. suddenly I feel, everyday, that I don't fit. I have no place, no faith, and no home. slowly and gradually I recreated my alternate universes around myself. that, initially, was my subconscious defense mechanisms in action. later it became my hobby. and later ... my life. the difference was, then, I was coming from a real world I'd already engaged. i taught myself to separate my time dreaming from my time interacting with people. i managed my time, and my passion (which I was always ashamed of). it was not like I could take time off five times a day and say my prayers (!!) but it was like taking minutes and hours off here and there.   above all, I could read .. books, fictions, and magazines. I don't know when was that I got clever, but to survive my new addiction, or obsession, or chronic pain, or thirst, whatever I name it, I chose to sacrifice my reality again. i picked pieces of everything and put them in my alternate universe and treated people through my alters. I'm no different kid -- I believe I'm normal; my dad could be proud of me [sarcastic laugter!]. I just opt to choose an alternate religion. I was never fixed. I was never broken. 

now i know why I keep to live in denial -- and to my parents, and my teachers I have to say, this is safer. this is better. this is, for me, okay! if you don't believe me look what happened to my siblings. you don't have to fix a genetic disease, you just need to manage it.  I am not giving up on my delusions, and my alternate narratives for you, just because they're not real. I live in my imagination and i need you to accept me for that. don't save me, observe me. please.