Only Make Believe
Make-believe is a golden place, a space where dreams begin. It’s where the childhood rainbow begins and ends and everything that comes after it has the handprints of it as a reminder.
In particular, it’s for the teenage years when we find that having put aside such ‘baby-things’ we want to roll around on our backs in the freedom of that place again and years later too, as an adult, when it seems we’ve forgotten what it’s like to dream, we want to nestle in its [make-believe’s] embrace for a single joyous moment. I know, I do sometimes.
On the occasions we find ourselves having make-believe conversations between us and someone else, the conversation, to me, is real enough. Whether as a lone siloloquy, out loud as an outward show of our inward rebellion or to a safe but imaginary friend. It’s a way I’ve found to externalise what’s going on inside. A healthy option in my opinion.
These days, as an adult, I find it a great way to sort through issues that need my undivided attention. I simply have the conversation out loud, with myself. It’s not really what you think, that old stigma of ‘the first sign of madness.’ I think that’s merely an often-repeated adage that’s been easier to say than has been to prove. It’s worn thin with me over time.
Hearing yourself speak your mind, well, if you asked me, I’d say that was a good thing, wouldn’t you? The thing about it, is that, we don’t often get to speak our minds, not really. Not without feeling like we’re hurting someone. And we can and do feel that way sometimes.
It’s like we do this bad dance that invariably sees one or other of us stepping on the others toes. Each one of us pretends we didn’t, then hobble off the dance floor vowing never to dance publicly again.
This way, talking out loud to ourselves makes for a more peaceable discourse, a hugely supportive audience and no toes get stepped on in the process and actually you feel like you’ve been heard. Isn’t that last one the one we’ve been aiming for all along? Sure it was.
And the interesting thing that happens is that sometimes it’s enough to simply have had the conversation with ourselves to know once and for all whether it’s worth going to bat about. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t and at least this way the body count is lower than it otherwise might have been.
Like I said, make-believe is a golden place. And it’s okay to go there no matter what your age, it gives you (having come back from there) a better context from which to live your life and as importantly, it can help you reframe it if that’s what needs to happen.
