Some days are lucid and clear. My brain is quiet and I can function. Some days, however, I feel like there are too many conversations in my head and I can't keep them separate from reality. I remember instances of sheer lunacy - when I worked as a word processor for a law firm in NYC, and the keyboard keys were having conversations about how unfair it was that one was being utilized more than the other - and my fingers were taking sides! I kept on making mistakes because this key wanted to be used as equally as the other key.

Other instances: I make calls at work, and one day, for some reason, I was living a Dr Who episode - every move I made was in conjunction (in my head, anyway) to something the Doctor needed or the TARDIS required. I had to mentally shake that off (and it was hard) and make a definite, focused effort on staying in reality. Or, somehow, I'm not REALLY where I'm at - work, or walking, or home, or bed - those aren't real. Whatever schema my mind is working with at the moment (depends on what I'm reading or currently obsessed with) becomes the only reality and everything else I do just plays into it.

That Dr Who day, for example; I had finished watching the second season of the new series. I was truly breathing, eating, dreaming, thinking, talking and living Dr. Who. I could not make the separation between that and reality. Or recently, reading the Kushiel Saga; completely unable for a while to see that I WASN'T LIVING IN THAT BOOK. Because, in my head, I was.

I was reading a Michael Stackpole series; suddenly, everything was part of the story. Or LOST; I began seeing things and hearing things that I related directly to the show. Heroes, SG1, Steven Brust, Anne McCaffrey. I do this all the time. I have been doing this all my life. It scares me, that I can leave 'reality' so easily behind, and everything I perceive belongs in the fantasy world I begin to inhabit.

It's a form of disassociation, perhaps, or something schizophrenic. I stopped writing real stories when I realized that I was fully expecting them to be real, for something to happen as it was happening to my protagonist. I thought, today, that it was over, but then I got home and found I was living out yet another little fantasy thing based on the books I was reading. It's scary, and it makes me wonder if anyone else does that.

Nevertheless, it is also fun - and familiar. I am the heroine in my fantasies, even if the line between my mental landscape and the real world gets really indistinct.

Now I'm off to bed, to inhabit the worlds within my head, and enjoy myself. I'll wake up tomorrow eager for a new day, but also saddened at leaving the infinitely richer world I escape to every night. But I don't miss it too much; the lingering effects are with me all the time and I have to make a distinct effort to stay on target within the real world.

I dreamt last night about a group of teens. For lack of a better name, I will call them "Water Babies". The premise was that they were not fully human - well, they were human, but they had extra attributes. The dream started out with them arguing about a fifth person they had found, who might be like them.

Each had their abilities, but one of them accused this fifth person of not being human - and it flashed back to a meeting of their fourth member, a tall lanky young man who could identify, by breathing water in, all the chemicals and such in it.

They all could breath water, by the way; one could actually manifest gills. But the dream focused on the lanky tall guy, who looked like a young version of Jason Flemyng in "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". He was obsessed with trying to make people see what was in the water.

They found him, all gangly limbs and singleminded obsession, in and out of the Thames, detailing with scientific precision all the heavy metals and poisons and chemicals, both harmful and beneficial, to be found in each part of the River. The same boy (the one with gills, no less) who was initially calling the fifth member inhuman was also against this fellow, calling him an alien.

There was more to the dream, but as I lay there remembering, it also reminded me of the formulaic 70s and 80s shows on Saturday mornings. I would not want it to be that way.

Prior to that dream, I know I was enjoying one that was dark yet rich. I cannot remember it, to my chagrin. Ah well. At least, I woke up happy in having that sort of adventure, even if I dont' remember it.

I forgot about this blogsite. Well, got reminded of it in the fall school year of 2006, but couldn't remember how to get on until Google finally answered my email of 2006!!!! Anyway, lots of things have changed except for the fact I still consider myself a very lucky woman.

I still think of him as my darling Lord Dragon, but as a human, he had his failings. Not that I didn't enable them (that's me, an enabler). I hope he's doing well now; he's got a son and a woman who's focused on making the best life for her and her child as possible and I pray that they both do, now and in the future.

I left NY in the fall of 2004. I found out recently I totally failed my last semester at LIU. Okay, I started going to college in the fall of 2001 - when the Towers and the Pentagon were attacked. I frankly haven't been the same since. I wanted to move out of NY for a while, anyway. Early winter, 2003, I got hit with some really shattering developments and my grades in the spring of 2004 suffered mightily for it. So did my job. Life went upside down. Emotionally distraught and unstable, that whole jazz. Things with my eldest weren't good anyway (downhill into the horrible world of drugs) and my son was in jail and my youngest and I had clashed rather viciously. It wasn't a good time.

My dear Lord Dragon went off to raise his son and I was rather adrift. So my Spring 2004 was a total disaster - me, a near 4.0 gpa student, got a .89! it was awful. But in that time I met a nice guy, who I'll call Capt A - he's a fanatic about Captain America (WHO IS NOT DEAD!).

He and I got along enough for him to introduce me to his family. They liked me, I think, and his brother (he's a twin) and his brother's wife invited me to live with them when Capt A set down that he would not go to NY again, and long distance relationships aren't easy to maintain. Which I agree, and further, I wanted to leave NY.

So I moved down here to Pennsylvania. Nice historical town near the Maryland border. I transferred my credits, and found a job. Soon, in consideration of my wanting to bring my kids down, he bought a house (this is a HUGE thing, for me). We got my son down here within a year my son was kicked out - well, I did mention he's an asshole, right? I brought my daughter down, the youngest. She still isn't a nice person, but now my son has changed and.. oh, the difference in my eldest! She's done a full 180 and is now working, going to school (college) and struggling to be a mom as well. I'm so proud of her! Still, I wish she were here with me, but there aren't as many opportunities here as in NY. Ah well.

I graduated Summa Cum Laude in Spring, 2007. I wish I didn't ever have to leave school; I enjoy it so much. Capt A and I have strugged each with our problems and have managed to find a way through things together and individually. I love his family for their support and their adult way of doing things, so different from the drama-laden explosions in my family. I love him because he loves me, and he's truly a good man. Okay, a wee bit vanilla, but what would you expect from a three-color superhero? :)

So I still think I'm the luckiest woman alive. My children will screw up but then turn around and make good. I'm sure of it; I just wish I could skip ahead and not live through the screwups!

My granddaughter is in a school for gifted and talented children; she's going to be 7 and reads at a 3rd grade level. THAT'S blood of my blood, for sure! I'm happy. Life, as I've mentioned before, has it's ups and downs. Sometimes, to get rid of the rollercoaster life, you have to leave your life behind and start a new one. I like this one lots. I'm an adult, finally, in charge of a home and a job and part of a real partnership. I'm going to work to make it last. Lucky me, so will my partner. Yay!