Stories From Ekam Eveileb

I just recently read a book called 'If You Could See Me Now' by Cecelia Ahern and it got me thinking about make believe, I reviewed the book here if you want to know more. I don't recall a lot of my childhood so I can't say if I had imaginary friends or made things up and I don't really recall my children doing this either but I did kind of live in a fantasy/make believe world at times. I grew up in an alcoholic home with a lot of yelling and fighting and as most children in these situations I wanted to be somewhere else. I lived most of my life 'daydreaming' so to speak.

I tried to imagine my life as a different person or living in a different place. My daydreams always had some basis in reality, like my father would be some guy my mother dated before marrying my father. I had never met these men or knew anything about them so I could mold them anyway I wanted in my 'daydreams'. Of course they were the father I always wanted with lots of money to let me do the things I wasn't able to do in my present family. They had great jobs, lived in great places and were wonderfully people. I lived in big houses, was popular at school, had lots of friends, great siblings (of course in my 'daydreams' I had a sister) but my life was one that fairy tales were written about. Unlike real life if something happened in my 'daydreams' that I didn't like I would just rewrite it and start over. Once I had gone to the limits of one daydream I would start over and create something different.

Living in these daydreams helped me through some rough times in my childhood but they didn't completely help me. I had sleep issues as a teenager, mostly because I would rather sleep and live in my 'daydreams' than face the reality of my life. My daydreams were so much better than the life I lived that I never wanted to wake up. Instead of trying to make my life more like my daydreams, reaching for the stars to be more of that kind of person I would just sleep to take myself to that make believe world where my life was wonderful. Now as an adult I have a hard time seeing the good in my life. I have a hard time not feeling that things couldn't be better. After many years of escaping to a better life in my daydreams it was hard for me to live the life that I have and not wish that like my daydreams I could just pick and choose the parts I would like to change. If my husband wasn't wonderful I couldn't just change him. If my children misbehaved I couldn't just go back in time a bit and change the way the situation played out.

So I think the land of make believe (ekam eveileb) is a wonderful place to visit I think that you really have to watch that you don't stay there too long, it is easy to get lost in Ekam Eveileb and not be able to find your way back :)