Just thought I owed anyone out there who may be considering reading this a word of warning before they decide to begin to follow me down another of my blathering rabbit holes.
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Wow- 5 years, eh? It's been a while since I made an entry on this thing, hasn't it?
I would love to blame my absence on some exciting, colorfully bizarre event like I've been traveling the world on horseback taking pictures of rainbows for no other reason than I wanted to, or that I was abducted by aliens & taken to their home world where I have spent the last couple of years teaching them the ins & outs of playing city-building strategy games, but the simple truth of the matter is that I am notoriously scatter-brained & have an annoying tendency to start something, get distracted, & forget about the thing I started until something suddenly makes me go "Oh, Yeah! I had that thing I was doing!" & try to remember what I was doing with said thing in the first place. The reminder could be something as simple as walking by a shop & seeing an object in the window ("Oh wow- a drum! Hey; I still have a drum I need to finish painting!") or something as seemingly silly as listening to a song on the radio ("Hey, that's 'Meet Me Halfway Across The Sky'! That was the first song I heard when I drove my very first car home from the dealership. That's right; I need to get a hold of my uncle & see about that wash-n-wax session he wanted to do on my car this month.")
Or it could be something as horribly unsettling as finding yourself suddenly falling.
I'm not going to go into any further depth right now, because I still can't fully come to grips with it myself just yet, & every time I try I only make myself sicker & sicker at the terrible idea of what I used to proudly call My Country has apparently become seemingly overnight, so in deference to my remaining shreds of sanity I'll skip on the gory details for the moment. Anyway my sister TB (aka "Dream Lurker") has already said it all much better & far more succinctly than I am capable of ever doing in her own blog, Musings of a Lurking Dreamer (the link is set to open in a new window, if you want to take a peek) so instead I'm going to try & do this in my own usual disjointed, rambling, semi-stream-of-conscious, way-too-much-information-at-times way of doing things, & hope like hell it makes me feel a little bit better than I have been feeling these last several of days. Heck, maybe I can finally get some real & actually restful sleep after this.
Worth a shot, right?
Well, here goes nothing...
Some time ago one of our local papers used to run (& still might, at least online) a comic strip called "Rose is Rose." It wasn't a strip I ever really followed - not only because it wasn't in the newspaper we used to have delivered so I only ever saw it if I read it while visiting my late grandfather (before he died, obviously) but because it was sort of a silly innocuous little thing & I tend more toward satire or dark/odd humor & such in the comics I like - but even when you don't follow a comic strip daily you can't help but pick up on the general cast of players & basic plots, so I still had a semi-grasp of the strip despite being such an infrequent reader of it. The main character in the strip was a woman named Rose (duh, right?) & she had a daughter (who's name I don't remember) & a husband (I'm pretty sure) & a cat (who's name is also a blank) & she spent a lot of time in her garden & did stuff like grow flowers & other homey things I think (like I said, I never really followed the strip very closely) but the thing I do remember clearly was that Rose would often envision herself as her personal secret super tough "alter-ego" whenever she felt the need to do so. For instance, one strip I remember had Rose out tending to her yard when a bee appears in the first panel, the next two panels depicted Rose in her badass leather-clad biker-chick form as the bee casually flew by, & the last panel Rose was back to her usual sweet self & was clearly feeling rather proud that she had survived her Big Scary encounter. I think the thing that stuck with me most about that particular strip wasn't so much the "silliness" of privately envisioning one's self as a tough-as-nails biker just to stand your ground against a little bee, but the realization that the idea of doing so was apparently so immediately understandable to many other people that the strip didn't feel the need for any dialog or even any subtitles (like many strips resort to when doing "fantasy" sequences) to explain what was going on; just the drawings in the panels. It meant that I wasn't quite as alone in using that type of "survival" technique as I had often feared I was...although with me the "standing-my-ground-fantasy" was never limited to my personal alter-ego, but also included the other characters in the particular universe said alter-ego was currently inhabiting.
As a child, a teenager, & even as a young adult I never fully understood what "FanFic" (eg, crafting your own stories about an already existing fictional world you really enjoy) was, even though I have been doing it all my life. I mean, I clearly understood the concept of obsessing over various fictional TV/book/movie worlds I had seen/read & imagining myself taking part in the action - in some form or another (more on that odd comment coming soon) - but I never had the idea to either write down the things I was thinking on actual paper (I lived in my mind; who needed to write stuff down?) or that this sort of thing was being done by lots of other people all over the world, & likely had been since virtually the dawn of humanity. I honestly won't be surprised if one day we find some ancient tablets out there containing some long-ago person's fantasies about a character in a play or ballad they they saw at the local playhouse or heard from the local bard (What if Ulysses had another crew member - me - on his journeys?) or even that some of the primitive cave paintings we admire as being depictions of tribal life at the time were really just some cave-teen's way of dealing with a personal moment of teenage angst (Stupid Oohg said I was too dumb to make fire! Me think I will draw him being trampled by herd of wild horses!) or something similar. So while I may not have known there was an actual word for it, it was clearly something that I have always been quite adapt at doing...even if my own mental FanFic adventures were anything but conventional at first.
Something you need to understand at this point is that growing up I was never a "person" but always some kind of dog - usually a wolf - whenever I put myself into the different fictional worlds that I would go into as a child. While other children imagined themselves as being, say Batman or Robin or Catwoman or a super hero/villain of their own creation, I was always Batman's faithful wolf companion. Or at least I would have been if I had grown up watching that particular show. That was just an example - using characters I figured where fairly well "universally known" - of how my mind worked when it came to these things. So when I watched shows like The Dukes of Hazard or Battlestar Galactica (the original 80's version, not the more recent remake) for instance, I never envisioned myself as human character on those shows, but always some kind of canine companion to the heroes; a sort of just-over-to-the-side observer of the main players as they outran crazy souped-up cars all over Hazard county & foiled that greedy Boss Hog again, or fought the evil Cylons in spectacularly epic ship-to-ship space battles. Not that my various canine selves didn't get into the action - they were fiercely loyal supporters of the heroes, after all - but the "main players" were always the same ones I watched week after week, show after show. For whatever reason it just never occurred to me to make myself a "normal" member of the main gang (likely because I was never exactly what anyone would have ever called a "normal" kid, obviously) so I was happily content to keep on creating new wolf-characters to help me escape into whatever the latest fantasy world was I was currently obsessed with.
Until Star Wars - or more precisely, a reckless young Tatooine moister farmer turned brave & noble Jedi Knight named Luke Skywalker - came along.
Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "The hell? The first Star Wars movie came out in 1977 & Battlestar Galactica was an 80's thing, so just how the heck does that make any sense?" but what you have to understand is that:
A) I was only 5 years old in 1977 - & my birthday is in July & the movie was released in May so I was actually only 4 at the time - so I never saw A New Hope on the big screen when it first came out (a situation I've since happily rectified with my incredibly accommodating & patient sister many years later when the digitally enhanced versions of the original trilogy were released) likely because my parents weren't the kind of people who thought taking a hyper little not-yet-5 year old kid to something that required a concentration span longer than 33 seconds was "fun" in any way.
B) I actually never saw The Empire Strikes Back in theaters either (again, that has been quite happily rectified now) & both it & Return of The Jedi (which I actually did get to see when it originally hit the theaters) where 80's releases.
And finally,
C) My "great alter-ego transformation event" wasn't an instantaneous thing, but sort of a gradual shifting in the way I thought.
So after seeing Return of The Jedi on the big screen with my family & being totally, utterly captivated (especially by Luke Skywalker, for reasons I was just on the cusp of truly understanding) & eventually catching up with A New Hope & The Empire Strikes Back (let's hear it for VHS machines) I happily created yet another escape-from-reality fantasy world for myself, where once again I was a loyal canine companion to the main crew. Did you know that Luke Skywalker had his faithful wolf companion by his side all during the Battle of Hoth? Well he did - in my world at least - & that same loyal wolf fought bravely with Princess Leia & Han Solo & Chewbacca & the Ewoks & the whole Rebel Alliance at the Battle of Endor too. Just like all my other alter egos this one was an outside observer as well as a partial participant to the action, & just like all the others she was a faithful wolf/dog & not an actual person, so she never spoke or interacted with the main crew on their own level, & of course she never really "starred" in any of the main storylines.
Then somewhere along the line things slowly began to change.
I can't remember anymore exactly what the "trigger moment" was (I do remember a particularly vivid dream I had at one point, but that happened later so I'll cover that when I come to it) but I slowly begun to find that being a loyal, non-speaking, non-human observer & companion to the main crew wasn't quite as much fun as it had been up until now. Was it the shear high-octane, no-holds-barred thrill ride of pure adrenaline adventure that the Star Wars movies presented so damn well that made me want to be a real part of the action instead of just a bit player? That was likely a big part of it, at least at first. But looking back on things now I know that the main undeniable factor for my shifting feelings was in the timing: I was growing up. I don't mean just in the sense that I was getting taller & needed bigger shoes & was mastering all sorts of cool new things like cursive writing & beginning algebra concepts in school; I mean in the sense of growing up mentally, emotionally, & yes, very slowly, hormone-wise. Somewhere along the line it wasn't enough to stand loyally by Luke's side & growl warnings to those nasty Stormtroopers as they took aim at the brave Jedi hero; it was more exciting to be a fellow Rebel fighter who could shoot blasters with the best of them. A fellow Rebel fighter who could shoot blasters & fly cool ships & actually talk to Han or Leia or Lando or Luke as they all stood their ground against countless armies in battles of impossible odds...& if sometimes while they were fighting side-by-side that brave young Jedi found a moment to flash a quick little friendly smile in her direction, that would be okay. I mean, she was a fellow Rebel fighter, after all.
No, scratch that. Not just a fellow fighter, but a Jedi Knight!
Yes, that was it! She was one of the new Jedi apprentices that Luke took on after the Battle of Endor & she learned to wield a lightsaber with deadly precision. In fact, she was so good that she was the best apprentice in the class. So good that she got to go on exciting new missions with Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, & those two crazy droids. So good that Luke would even take her along on missions without the other characters, where they faced impossible challenges & always managed to scrape through because they were both so skilled & so clever & so strong with the Force & because they made such an unstoppable team. A team that fought together, flew X-wings together, exchanged witty dialog together, & spent a lot of time together. A lot of time alone together. And maybe, during some of that "alone" time it would be kind of not so terribly bad if maybe Luke sat a little bit closer than he might usually sit next to someone, & maybe if he happened to sort of accidentally touch her hand or something then that would be kind of okay too. I mean, good friends & loyal comrades in arms do that sort of thing sometimes...right?
But wait! What if she wasn't just another potential Jedi, but she had an actual backstory herself!
All my previous alter-egos had just been unexplained canine companions; loyal pooches who fought heroically beside their human counterparts but who never had any real story of their own. But that was no longer good enough for my newly evolving human alter-ego, so now I was faced with the task of coming up with some kind of history for her in order to explain how she found herself not only fighting along side the usual Star Wars crew, but joining their ranks as a legendary hero of the Rebel Alliance. My first crack at creating a character backstory was - looking back with more than a little embarrassment now - pretty much a checklist of Serious Teenage Pseudo-Angst Masquerading As What I Honestly Thought Was Drama At The Time, but then it was my very first experience, not only with human alter-egos but also with trying to explain said alter-ego's existence, & I was a budding young wannabe teenager (pseudo-angst, drama, & all) at the time, so I like to think that I can be given a "pass" for the incredibly schlocky mess I originally came up with.
Just how incredibly schlocky of a mess?
Try this: She was the sole survivor of dozens of offspring of Emperor Palpatine via one his many nameless concubines who had been subjected to all manner of various incredibly painfully & overly elaborate tortures in an effort to make her a "Dark Jedi," (no, not a Sith Warrior but a "Dark Jedi") yet she had somehow (& I never recall explaining exactly how) managed to escape her horrible life of awful imprisonment & had somehow (& again, I remember no explanation for this) managed to get wrapped up with Han, Leia, Luke & the rest of the gang, where she spent pretty much all her time & energy trying to keep everyone from uncovering her Big Terrible Secret because holy hell how could they ever be expected to forgive her terrible, awful genetic origins & see her as anything but the terrible awful horrible thing her father had been; especially Luke Skywalker because - OMG! - he was only the bravest & the best & the coolest Jedi Knight in the history of the galaxy, so how could he ever accept the daughter of the man that made his father a Sith Lord - & had tried to kill Luke himself - as a trusted member of the Rebel Alliance? Plus there was that whole thing where his father had killed hers, which just ramped up the pre-teen pseudo-drama to almost lethal levels of brooding. Never mind of course the glaring fact that if anyone in that whole damn Star Wars galaxy would have had zero problems understanding the concept of dealing with one's less than stellar paternal origin's it would have been Luke Skywalker (because friggen duh, right?) or that there is no such a thing as a stupid "Dark Jedi" anymore than there would ever be "dry water" or "hot snow" or that the entire the-bad-guy's-kid-isn't-bad backstory itself is likely one of the oldest fiction cliches ever...but like I said, I was an angst-ridden young budding soon-to-be teenager still coming to grips with this whole crazy "growing up" thing, so to me at that time this was some seriously awesome dramatic stuff I was creating, & I was pretty damn proud of myself for coming up with such a "great" backstory for my very first human alter-ego.
So my angst-riddled cliched alter-ego continued to take part in various quests to vanquish evil from the galaxy, & she continued to stand bravely beside Luke & Leia & Han & Chewie & Lando & the droids, & she continued to struggle with her angsty cliche past as she continued to become a valued ally & trusted friend to the "main crew," & I continued to create fictional challenges for my fictional self to take part in in the fictional universe I was having so much fun exploring.
Now I'm not sure how much you know about the "rules" of FanFic, but one of the things that seems virtually universal (at least going by my own experience & observations) is that everyone has their own personal "key points" that they find important to touch on in their fictional worlds, for whatever the reason. It might be a certain way one likes to describe their character ("smoldering blue eyes") or a particular detail that always makes its way into one's character backstory (the "tragically orphaned" thing is always popular) or even a special scene/dialog exchange that plays out between one's character & the other inhabitants of the fictional world(s) said character inhabits.
For whatever reason, one of my personal "key points" seems to be what I have now come to refer to as "The Heroic Catching Scene" sequence.
No matter what fictional world & alter-ego I am currently tinkering with - & they run the gamete from Sci-Fi to Fantasy to Real World based (I have a long standing love for "cop" shows) - I always seem to script a scene in which my character gets herself into a situation wherein she finds herself in eminent danger of falling to her untimely death, only to get saved at the last possible moment by one of the other characters in the given universe. Each scene has personal significance (to me) based on the world in question, & while the details are always different (the who, what, where, when, & why varies greatly depending on the particular world/characters) the universal thread is that of total trust: My character's trust in the character doing the saving, & the saving character's trust that if the situation were reversed (& it always is later, in one way or another) the action would be reciprocated without any hesitation...& of all my various evolving fantasy worlds & of all my various alter-egos, the "catching scene" that always hits me personally as the most dramatic is the one I always work into my Star Wars universe. Of course it involves Luke Skywalker in the role of designated "catcher" & of course with him being the most powerful Jedi Knight in the history of ever it features a stunning midair catch via the Force, in which the intrepid Skywalker snatches my falling alter-ego from what appears to be certain death by using his unequaled powers to freeze her in mid free-fall, just seconds before she lands on the jagged rocks or burns up in the molten lava or drowns in the sub-zero water or falls into whatever the heck nasty-ass thing I decide to put at the bottom the the pit/ledge/cliff she is currently falling from. (BTW, another of my personally observed FanFic rules is that one person's emotionally poignant drama is another person's "WTF is that overblown garbage all about?" so I'm not excepting anyone to ever "get" the previously described scene the same way I do; but that's not the point here. The point here is that Luke - like all my designated catchers - always manages to save my character in the nick of time. That's all you need to remember in order to continue, if you still want to do so.)
So my budding almost-teenage angsty self continued evolving a personal Star Wars world to escape from reality into, & my ever changing (if still cliche) alter-ego continued to take part in all sorts of bizarre, seemingly impossible missions, & the usual cast of Star Wars characters continued to grow more & more impressed with my alter-ego's skills as they took her further into their confidence & allowed her to not only stand by their side as a trusted fellow rebel, but also officially become part of their "inner circle" as a truly respected ally & an unquestioningly loyal friend. Those fictional friendships with Luke, Han, Leia, & the rest of the gang helped me cope with the usual pre-teen emotional roller coaster of feelings I was going through, as well as giving me the "courage" to deal with the various day-to-day issues I needed to face. I was always the shy, quiet kid with glasses who liked to read & draw more than keep up with whatever the latest popular trends were, which was sort of like tossing raw hamburger into a shark tank when it came to attracting kids who seemed to enjoy being jerks to other kids. Being able to image myself as a brave Jedi Knight surrounded by my circle of secret Star Wars friends - like the comic strip Rose would do when pretending to be a biker chick when confronted by bees - helped me cope with a lot of "schoolyard" bullshit, as well as allowing me the wonderful freedom to escape from the drudgery of reality by simply slipping into my own private fantasy world whenever I felt the need to do so. How could you ever feel completely helpless when you knew that Luke Skywalker - of all people - was waiting to catch you if you fell?
Then seemingly out of the blue I had a dream that threw everything into chaos.
I'll skip the nitty-gritty details for reasons that will quickly become apparent, but the general plot of this unexpected nocturnal adventure involved my alter-ego & a certain brave Jedi Knight finding themselves hiding out in a cave on some unnamed planet in order to escape capture from yet another group of those pesky Stormtroopers who were forever pursuing them. It was dark, & stormy, & all sorts of cold & rainy outside (my lordy; even my damn dreams are cliche, eh?) so they really had no choice but to hold up in that nice, safe, warm, dry cave & wait until their fellow Rebels found them in the morning. The new "twist" was that for the first time they didn't pass the time plotting their next adventure or exchanging witty dialog like they always had before; they passed the time...well, they passed the time doing the kind of things that grownup-type people do when they graduate from being best buddies to something much, much more than best buddies. (Aren't you glad I decided to skip on the nitty-gritty details now?)
I won't ever say that this was my first real "sex dream," because my child/teen memories are really muddled (likely because I spent so much time living in my own mind rather than in the real world) & given that I had already done the whole sex education thing in elementary school & I was a young wannabe teenager at this point (so the concept of sex as a thing was no shocker) it most likely wasn't; but it was the first dream like that I remember having in such - shall we say - vivid detail, which was also most likely what upset me so much. All of the sudden my nice safe little fantasy world where I could hide from nasty icky old "reality" wasn't so nice & safe anymore. All of the sudden those friendly little flashed smiles & innocent exchanges of witty dialog & sweet little hand-brushing moments that my alter-ego & Luke Skywalker had shared for so many months weren't so friendly or innocent or sweet anymore. All of the sudden the realities of being a human being (& who wanted to be one of those when they could be a mighty Jedi Knight?) had invaded what used to be my personal private sanctuary; my secret hiding place to escape from being...well, from being me. Icky, nasty reality had found my safe little harbor of tranquility & torn it all to pieces; which was horribly frustrating & scary & disheartening & not the least little bit tranquil at all...& yet, at the same time, somehow sort of exciting & all kinds of "forbidden" & so tantalizingly adult (& wanting to be an "adult" is most definitely a trait of the typical angst-ridden pre-teen) which is also likely what added to my confusion. As much as part of me - a lot of me - secretly couldn't wait to be treated like a real live grownup type person, there was another part of me that seemed to know that Big Changes were soon coming down the pike & desperately wanted to go back to a time when hand-holding & little peck-on-the-cheek kisses were as much affection as two people ever needed to engage in to prove they were "in love," & it was that part of me that so dearly longed to stay a sweet innocent little kid forever that it kicked up such a fuss about this new Big Scary Change that it wasn't long before I finally abandoned my Star Wars fantasy world & moved on to other hopefully less threatening mental escape pastures, where it likely figured it could keep me an innocent little carefree kid forever.
The plan didn't work of course. Not by a long shot.
No matter what the new-found mental fantasy world my stay-innocent-forever part tried creating, it didn't take long before my other part - the part that found this whole "growing up" thing rather exciting - managed to get involved & make darn sure my new alter-ego & her latest "love interest" didn't stay contented holding hands & gazing at sunsets & smiling sweetly & other such innocent things for long. That ship had sailed, the proverbial cat was out of the proverbial bag, & there was clearly no going backwards...but for whatever the reason (fear? embarrassment? I'm still not entirely sure why) I never went back to my beloved Star Wars realm as a kid, & simply walked away from Han & Leia & Chewie & Lando & the droids & - especially - Luke Skywalker.
But while I may have walked away from Luke, he wasn't about to do the same to me as I discovered quite unexpectedly several years later.
Flash forward now to 1991/92. I had been out of high school for a year or so (graduated in 1990) & was still trying to come up with a plan of some sort for what the heck to do with the rest of my life. College wasn't an option for a multitude of reasons (not the least of which was that I had hated high school so damn much that the very idea of spending any more time with the same people who made it such a hellish experience was beyond inconceivable to me) so I was currently on a sort of a mental hiatus from everything as I attempted to come up with some sort of a plan for what to do next with my newly discovered "freedom." Then one morning in February I was awakened by my mother standing in my bedroom doorway telling me that her father - my grandfather - had just called her in a state of confusion because he had just found my uncle Ron - mom's youngest sibling - dead.
And just like that, I was falling.
My family isn't much in comparison to what it always seemed to me that other people had. I don't mean they are crappy people, I just meant that unlike pretty much everyone else I know there just aren't many of us. While "everyone" else talked of holiday get-togethers & family reunions involving masses of cousins & second cousins & third-cousins-twice-removed, my extended family unit consisted solely of myself, my sister, our parents, & my mother's family - her father, sister, & her two brothers (her mother & my father's parents had died long before I was more than a little lump of human flesh called a "baby," so I never met them) - so growing up my holiday memories are likely lightyears away from the kind of memories most other folks have. It wasn't that sis & I didn't have cousins & such running around in the world because we actually had boatloads of them (many of my relatives are Mormon if that explains the "boatload" reference) it was just that due to various factors we never grew up knowing them. So my family celebrations consisted solely of sis, mom & dad, grandpa, aunt Barb, uncle Bob, & uncle Ron, (plus the addition of soon-to-be uncle Scott, my aunt's fiance at the time) so that was how I always figured it would continue to be...only to find nasty icky old reality once again being a heartless bastard as I clawed my way out of bed & started rounding up clothes so I could drive mom over to grandpa's house & see what there was for us to do. Dad had long since left for work & my sister had been unceremoniously ushered of to high school after mom received the phone call (which I always sort of thought was pretty crappy but I've never really asked her how she felt about it for some reason) so it was my job by default to drive my mother over to my grandfather's house because at that time for reasons of her own mom didn't have a driver's license.
It was a long, hard drive (emotionally, not so much time-wise as we didn't live more than 20 minutes or so away from my grandfather's house) & I don't remember a lot of specifics; just my mother saying over & over & over how she couldn't believe this was happening (Ron had evidently just died in his sleep) & me trying to pay attention to the road so we got there in one piece. We finally arrived & mom & grandpa were hugging & crying & talking to each other while I sat there alone in the living room staring at the fireplace silently wondering why the heck I was even there. The paramedics soon arrived (or maybe they were already there, I don't remember anymore) & eventually my aunt Barb & her fiance Scott showed up at some point & Scott volunteered to go find my uncle Bob & tell him what was happening because nobody could get a hold of him on the phone for some reason. (Uncle Bob - like uncle Ron & my grandfather before he retired - worked at the local airport & it was sometimes crazy-hard to track people down there, as SeaTac was a ginormous airport even "way back" then.) So I sat there & stared at that damn fireplace while everyone else was crying & talking to each other - but saying next to nothing to me - & silently cried about the death of an uncle I actually had never really known super well but was still really upset about. My uncle Bob was eventually tracked down & even my grandfather's sister Margie showed up to do what she could do to help, as I continued to sit on that couch by myself. (I only met Margie a couple of times in my whole life & has always found her rather aloof & even intimidating; but I found out much later that she had actually been very upset about the way I had been left sitting there all alone while everyone else basically ignored me, which made me feel sort of good to know for some odd reason.)
The weeks that followed consisted of what I now know to be the "usual" things that take place when a family member dies; lots of crying & confusion & contacting funeral parlors & arranging for memorial services & the like. Add to this that sis & I where both hit with a major case of the flu or something & were unable to go to my uncle's memorial service (which really sucked & for which I still am angry at "the universe" for doing to us) & on top of everything else my aunt was due to get married shortly (reality is a serious dickhead, isn't it?) & you have a general idea of what it was like for me during those terrible weeks immediately following my uncle Ron's passing. It was hard to sleep & trying to get back into the swing of things - especially after being "cheated" out of even being able to go to the damn memorial service - & I really wasn't sure how the heck to ever get back to a normal state of existence...until one night, out of the total blue & without having really thought about anything remotely Star Wars related in seemingly forever (a little show called Star Trek: The Next Generation had hit the airwaves back in '87 & I had been gleefully buried in this new mental escape for quite some time by this point) I found myself suddenly dreaming of my old Jedi incarnation, & Luke Skywalker was right there by my side, flashing that wicked farmboy devil-may-care smile as we headed off on whatever impossible mission it was that my dreaming self had arranged for us to participate in. It wasn't the idea of dreaming about something so unexpected & totally not "in sync" with what was happening in real life that surprised me - most dreams can lay claim to those traits, after all - it was the way that particular unexpected dream (& the others that followed) made me feel when I woke up.
I felt like I belonged. Like I was needed. Like I was important & valuable & somebody out there actually truly gave a damn about how I felt & what I thought & what I was going through. I had been falling of that ledge called "reality" & was headed for an uncertain landing, when I was suddenly & dramatically snatched in midair by a long-ago comrade with a farmboy grin who had come to my rescue without even being called on. "Forget about all that stuff; let's have an adventure!" He seemed to be saying, "The galaxy needs us!" So we headed off to wherever my dreams sent us & we met up with all our old friends & we fought with all our old enemies & yes, we "hid out" in a cave or two along the way as well (which I was no longer the least bit embarrassed about & never should have been the first time either, but teen angst is a real bitch when it comes to such things) & we saved the Star Wars galaxy from the usual problems it seemed constantly plagued with, & it was like we had never been apart, which was incredibly comforting.
It was sort of like firing up a dearly-loved computer game or cracking open a once-loved book after many years & finding that it still captures your imagination like the first time you remember hitting the "start" button or reading the first exciting words in the beginning of chapter one. Yeah, I know; a lot of once loved games & books don't exactly hold up so well when you go back to them after a long absence. Kind of lends some credence to the oft-repeated phrase about how you can't go home again & similar concepts (trust me; I've been in the "not as fun as it used to be" department many times) but while it is certainly true that many once beloved joys eventually lose their ability to deliver on their promise of fun & escapism, it is also true that for whatever reason some things seem to never lose their ability to capture one's imagination, no matter how long you have happily indulged in them or for how long you may "forget" about them in between revisits. I have since come to realize that for me one of those never-goes-away pleasures is undoubtedly the Lucas Star Wars universe; but it took a while to finally grasp what I know see as an obvious truth. (I'm a slow learner at times, okay?)
After Luke's unexpected yet wonderfully refreshing visits in the wake of me dealing with my feelings about my uncle's unexpected death, things - eventually - started to get back to normal. My aunt got married as originally planned a couple months after Ron's passing (a bittersweet event to be sure) & time marched along as usual. I found new hobbies & new interests & new worlds to obsess over to keep the "needs-a-reality-escape" part of myself content...but no matter what my current "mental escape of choice" was at the time (& I've got a lot of them; trust me!) whenever I found myself somewhere up that proverbial stream of excrement without a paddle handy & was beside myself with uncertainty over just how in the hell I was going to get out of my current mess, I would suddenly, inexplicably, & totally out of the blue find myself having another "Luke Skywalker adventure" dream & slowly start to feel a little bit better. I even started to occasionally revisit my old Star Wars world during my "waking hours" & begun making a few much needed changes to that world & my alter-ego there too. I never stayed long (like I said, I'm a slow learner at times) but little by little my Star Wars friends started to quietly re-stake a claim on what they once had sole control of many years ago...& no matter where I was in my life, whenever I found myself falling those loyal friends - led by that devilishly reckless Luke Skywalker - would somehow sense my fear & manage to catch me.
So when I was unjustly fired from a job I loved along with three other people because we all chose to stand up for a female coworker who spoke very little English & was almost raped by one of the supervisors (just one more damn reason I am sicker than sick about recent political developments in my goddamn country right now) & had no idea what I was going to do - *poof!* - there was that grinning Jedi Knight waiting for me in my dreams one night to take me away from things for a while.
And when my sister was dealing with what eventually turned out to be a 20+ pound benign growth that we didn't know was "harmless" at first because it could just as easily have been cancerous & she was having a terrible time getting any financial help because of our seriously fucked-up insurance system (one more reason I want to scream about my horrible, horrible country right now) & I was hit between the eyes with the awful possibility of losing my only sibling - *poof!* - out of the blue one night I found myself standing next to my Rebel Alliance friends as Luke prepared to lead us in battle against whatever nasty thing we needed to defeat & keep me from thinking about what that asshole reality was piling on top of my family in the daylight hours.
And when I found myself with no health coverage & seemingly nowhere to turn during my own health scare (as though I needed another reason to be so damn irate at my deplorable country, right?) & I was crying myself to sleep at night because every time it looked like somebody might be able to help me I was inexplicably turned away & I felt beyond worthless & I was giving up hope of ever finding help - *poof!* - I was suddenly wrapped tightly in Luke's arms, as he assured me that I wasn't worthless & did what he could to help me through one of the darkest times in my life.
And when my grandfather who had been going through a series of increasingly challenging medical issues for several years was hit with what we all feared was one challenge too many even though none of us wanted to say it & even the doctors seemed to dance around the subject when we asked & I was spending my days sitting in often windowless waiting rooms staring at paintings meant to make me somehow feel better & my nights driving home in the rain & as things became progressively worse & the outcome more & more obvious - *poof!* - Luke Skywalker to the rescue again with his farmboy grin & his strong arms & his need for my help on another nocturnal adventure of galactic importance (that darn galaxy was always in danger) to keep me from a total emotional breakdown.
It didn't matter that I was currently obsessing over some other FanFic world or some new computer game or some other new hobby at any of those (& many other) times; Luke didn't care. He had a job to do & he was going to do it. He saw me falling & was there to catch me, period. Never mind that I hadn't called for help or even if I hadn't realized that I was falling yet (it wasn't uncommon for me to only "discover" that I had been feeling lower than low for some time only after waking up from one of Luke's surprise nocturnal visits) he was going to catch me in midair & let me know that no matter what was going on in my mortal existence, I could always rely on my personal Jedi & our secret nighttime adventures to keep me from falling into total mental oblivion.
Flash forward now to 2016 & things have finally come full-circle on a FanFic front. For various reasons my Star Wars universe has become my currently predominate obsession - at least for the time being - & I have logged many hours reworking, re-crafting, & rewriting (yes, as in actually writing stuff down this time) the new ideas I have dreamed up to hopefully help better flesh-out my old storylines & my alter-ego much better. No more of this "Palpatine's daughter" nonsense; she now has a far more dynamic (to me) family backstory that even ties into many of the events that take place in the prequel movies (which I quite enjoyed, despite the admittedly & inexplicably bad "acting" issues at times) & she has a much less teen-angst filled personality now, likely because I'm no longer an angsty teen myself anymore by any means. Heck, she even has an actual name now, which I never remember my original character ever having. (I think she was just me so she never had a name all her own.) Not that it matters, but I finally settled on "Azriadne" (that's "Ariadne" the daughter of Minos because I have a thing for Greek mythology plus a "z" thrown in to make it sound more exotic) & I also did away with that whole crazy "Dark Jedi" insanity (seriously, WTF was I thinking with that schlock?) so she is no longer something as ridiculously impossible as a "Dry Wet" or a "Bad Good" & is actually something that might actually conceivably exist, at least within the confines of a Star Wars themed universe. So my newly revamped Star Wars world continues to grow & I continue to tweak it, & I keep dealing with life's usual annoyances & I keep finding new interests (& revisiting old ones) to keep myself from getting bored, & life continues to march a long like it always does.
The point I am trying to make here (& I'm pretty sure it's all but lost in my barely coherent ramblings) is that I have a crazy-long collection of carefully cultivated "escape mechanisms" that I have always been able to rely on when I felt the need to hide from reality for a while. These escape devices include a myriad of computer games & a rotating world of FanFic universes, as well as my various "crafty" diversions like my love of Tie-Dye or my wood carving passion. In the past, whenever I was going through what felt to me like a Dark Patch on the road of life (even if it didn't seems that way to anyone else) I could always - eventually - find a way to pull myself through by distracting my often overly obsessive mind with one of my many "distractions" & slowly, little by little, step by step, I could usually get myself to see the light at the end of the long dark tunnel...& if none of that worked, I could always count on Luke Skywalker to swoop in before I hit rock-bottom & snatch me in midair to take me on some sort of dreamland adventure (cave "hiding" included) & help me forget - just for a moment or two - whatever that bastard "reality" was currently trying to break me down with.
And as I'm sure everyone knows by now, reality pulled a major gut-punch on the 8th of November.
The thing is, I don't seem to be feeling any better, even after a week of hiding from the world in general (even my friends) & that scares the hell out of me, because I should be able to find a way to get past this nightmare of deplorable proportions & bury myself in my craft projects or my computer games or my various FanFic distractions, but I can't - hell I can't even sleep well at the moment - so I find myself doing things like standing out in the rain in my sleep clothes (seriously) staring up at the sky wondering what the hell is happening to my fucking country & why I didn't see it coming & wishing like all hell that I can find something - anything - to distract my mind (which is a ball of turmoil beyond comprehension right now) & let me escape from this wide awake nightmare of hellish creation that I am stuck living in.
And that's one of the things that has hit me so blasted hard about the current shit-storm of events that has me tied up in knots of anxiety & is sending me in a major downward spiral of anger, frustration, & serious depression: My usual avenues of escape & coping aren't working anymore. The computer games that I normally find so enjoyable hold zero interest for me right now, all the crafty activities I can usually focus on for hours on end seem totally pointless, & - what is likely the scariest realization of all - even my beloved FanFic worlds seem to be currently inaccessible to me. I fire up Word & I stare at the page, but I can't seem to get past the bleakness of my current reality long enough to get any of the stories I have previously been happily crafting to come out. I don't know what to do, where to turn, or how to deal with the idea of how a man who exudes Palpatine levels of pure evil has been handed the keys to my country because of an outdated system that allows the candidate who actually received the most physical votes to still lose an election.
It's a joke right? It has to be a joke; because a man accused of child rape & who openly brags about sexual assaulting multiple women & condones racism & makes fun of veterans simply cannot be named Commander In Chief of my whole damn country, can he?
I wish I could wake up from this whole sickening mess & that it was still November 7th & that none of this was real. I wish that I could find a way to make it not be real. I wish that I didn't feel like this & that I was one of those people who just says "meh, whatever" & doesn't seem to understand - or care - just what the hell is facing us as a nation as soon as that horrible vile disgusting creature takes control. I wish I could find a way to escape this twisted sickening horror show, even if only for a little while & even if only in my dreams.
Luke? Are you still out there? I hope like hell you are.
Because your Azriadne's falling.
