Hi friends,
I apologize for the double post if that offends anyone somehow but I needed to do this right now because it’s troubling me a lot. I’m here to talk about a topic that’s different from most of my other posts and it’s slightly more serious. Do any of you ever have problems with your imagination..? Let me clarify:
I love fiction–you can see it in all the books that I read. It allows and encourages the reader to imagine, to be transported to new and different places they could never find in the real world. It’s an amazing concept and it’s extremely helpful when you need new ideas. It builds up the highs in your life–perform in front of a crowd? You’re performing for Madison Square Garden, man. Maybe not really, but my imagination builds it up that way. Speaking in front of class? It used to be fear for public speaking in front of suddenly a huge number of people, but now it’s become holding a press conference about your views which in your head are somehow breakthroughs and important issues. Reading a book? That world becomes real in your head, you feel, see, and hear the scene playing out, you can feel the tenseness, the love in the air–all the emotions. Sometimes, it can be great and exhilarating.
…but sometimes it can get the better of you and feed into the darkest parts of you.
Fear of the dark? Your imagination creates the monsters living inside your head and makes you think that they’re there. You know they aren’t, because your brain knows, but your imagination doesn’t care and makes you think there’s a murderer hiding seven feet away in that black hole of space. Fear of heights? Yeah, there’s ground at the bottom, but your imagination plays it up to be so much more scary and so much more everything. “What’s the worst that can happen?” According to my brain, nothing serious. According to my imagination, everything serious.
Watching a movie, everything is so real in your head–deep inside, you know it’s fiction, but in that moment, everything that you just saw is real in some universe. Watching a play or musical, same thing. My high school did Legally Blonde this past February and I was in the pit band playing keyboard, my boyfriend was the lead male role–Emmett Forrest. Believe me, he did great and as much as I say I hate tenors, I still love him. But seeing him kiss the lead female role, and having to fake love–yes, it’s fake, my brain knows, but my imagination doesn’t care. In that moment, everything is real in some universe. And my mind can’t take it. Most of my friends are involved with the arts, theatre included, and they see it as acting, it’s fake, it doesn’t matter. I know it’s fake too, but does all of me think that? No way in hell. I wish I could fix that, but I can’t. Because my imagination gets the better of me. I can never watch the Emmett & Elle scenes on the DVD of my high school’s production, I have to skip over them, because my imagination sees Emmett & Elle, but my boyfriend is always Emmett. Emmett isn’t always my boyfriend, I can watch a different production and be fine–but this is my boyfriend on that stage and my imagination goes into hellish chaos.
Pit band friends have sympathized and realized that it’s still him even if he’s playing a character and I still have to watch him physically do these romantic gestures, and it’s helpful. But it’s hard. I feel so bad when my friends bring up happy memories of the musical and I can only think of spiteful memories. Besides happy pit band memories, bring in the cast and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
Am I being crazy? Am I being overbearing? In realistic circumstances, yes I probably am, and I’ve had the conversations from my other “theatre” friends. But once again, my imagination has it’s own mind.
Does anyone else relate? Does your imagination ever get the better of you, whether you want it to or not? Or is it just me? This is the only way I knew how to vent about this problem.
Sorry for the rather dark outburst, I just really needed to get this issue out of my system because maybe talking about it will help? I promise I’ll be back to my usual positive self soon. I believe there is a post scheduled for this Wednesday so expect that soon. Please keep negative comments to yourself if you’re thinking of posting them, you can see that my imagination obviously doesn’t need it, heh.
Thanks,
Hannah
July 20 2015
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