I have been in love with an illusion for about forty years. Here is my beautiful illusion;
She is small in stature and confidence. She is wounded, yet determined. Her hair is chestnut and it smells like apples and cloves. Her skin is soft and olive in colour. Her bosom is large and comforting. Occasionally, she allows me to rest my tiny curly-blonde-hair- covered head upon her chest. She shines like the sun and she cries like the rain. She is an amazing hostess and an accomplished chef, bestowing upon me both of these gifts. My favorite line in literature to describe my beautiful illusion is, "She walks in beauty, like the night..." She has shared with me the music that currently fills my soul and my head. She taught me how to read. One of the greatest gifts she gave me, as it is still an escape from my cruel reality...words. The most important and difficult gift my magical illusion gave to me is empathy. For me, it wasn't natural. It was a learned behaviour, gained from watching her and her magnetism with strays and her devastation when she caused the death of another creature (she cried for two days after hitting a pheasant while driving down a country road). This empathy has perhaps saved me from true sociopathy, which has allowed me to make the connections I have needed to make to survive. And when I lost her, it was not her fault. She was sick and she did it FOR me. She loved me so much, she died for me. This is my beautiful illusion.
Experts in the field of personality disorders suggest that if one is in love with an illusion, there is most certainly something wrong with them. Suggesting that being in love with something that is not real is a personality disorder, requiring therapy, and dopamine enhancing drugs, and tools to move forward from this. In fact, some of them might suggest that this behaviour is in fact delusional.
Allow me to define both;
Illusion: A mirage, an apparition, semblance, a thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses.
Delusion: Misconception, misbelief, misapprehension, an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.
Ah, an apparition, perceived, the senses. Perception is reality, and sensing my ghost my
way has literally saved my life. How can seeing my memories the way I need to see them possibly be delusional? Seems to me that's quite the smart thing to do. If I saw my beautiful illusion for who she truly was, it would serve me no purpose. What does serve me purpose, however, is the gifts she gave me that I, in turn, have passed down to my own daughter.
As far as delusion goes, perhaps there is a very fine line between the two. I, however, am quite practiced at being in love with an illusion. As I said, I have been doing so for forty years. Where the illusion ends and the delusion begins is here; whether or not your illusion is past (an adjusted memory) or present (an adjusted reality), there are rules one must follow so as not to cross the lines and these rules are pretty much the same in both instances. Seeing things the way you want to is a privilege that cannot be abused. That would lead to addiction, and it is very easy to get addicted to an illusion, as it is there to make you feel better, a drug to ease the pain. Consume with great care. Your illusion is not there to provide you a living wage. It is not there to take you to dinner on Christmas eve. Your illusion is not there to bolster your self esteem. That is your job as you grow and learn. Your illusion is simply a wicked poison, a potion. That is all you can ever expect from your illusion. If your illusion is a living thing, and you are involved with them, you have to learn to separate the humanity one would expect from another person from this illusion. You have to remember that while they are a real breathing, thinking human being, they are not there to fill the needs we have from other humans. This is different. Your illusion is just as practiced at playing this role as you are at being in love with a fantasy. Your illusion will make your dreams come true, as long as you understand that you are living in the moment. Ahh, you will hear the words you need to hear and you will be kissed and caressed and swept away. Because your illusion is a human being, you will have received the contact, the connection you desire, and if you know what you're doing, in terms of alluding addiction, then you are high for a week, or a month, or whatever, as time is irrelevant, and your hole, your void is filled, because that is what your illusion does best. It knows you, knows what you need. And that is what it is there for. The rules are very clear. For both of you.
While being in love with an illusion can be quite exhilarating, it is also a very lonely road. As I have lived in the shadow of my mother's suicide, I have been thought to be some sad waif whose mommy died. If people had just been decent to me in the years following her death, I would have been in a good place with my memories of her. Instead, however, I was ostracized for even remembering her. There were no photos of her in my home, or my attic, the idiot father threw them away. I was forbidden from mentioning her name and was most certainly dissuaded from having any good memories of her. "You're mother was crazy! I'm glad she's dead." It's no wonder I retreated to a fantasy existence. The more I loved my mother, the more I got back at those bastards who forbade me from thinking of her in the first place. And the more peace I found. When I expressed my particular thoughts in regards to my mother to other members of my family, they all tried to coddle me and explain their perception of her life and death. It was a lonely existence for me and I became my own best friend, surrounded by a circle of so-called imaginary friends with whom I have shared some of the most intimate conversations of my life. Funny, all of my imaginary friends, the memories I have of my mother and my incredibly deep well of creativity are still with me. All the other bullshit, the "real" bullshit, has fallen away. Maybe not so lonely, after all. Best advice: have friends that actually understand that these are the tools you use to navigate your life. There aren't too many of them out there, but they're worth keeping around because when you say something that only you usually understand and they really do, too, it is that moment of comfort those of us who live in an imaginary world world that we seek in everything we do.
Maya Angelou said, "We are only as blind as we want to be." She is right, for those of us who CAN do this, see what we want to see and be content with that. I am very thankful for the ability to do this. It plays a very significant part of who I am. If I had to see everything I actually have seen, I'd be dead, just like my mother. Blissful ignorance is a very effective tool in the art of survival. It's better than using drugs and liquor to mask the fear of life people like me come to know. This tool has also allowed me to recognize the people I need around me to advance my agenda. Not everyone will indulge you in such a request. This I have learned having hardly ever met someone who would. You have to learn to do exactly the opposite of what the aforementioned experts will advise; you have to actually seek out and attract the kind of person who will tell you what you want to hear, share with you their coping skills, bring out in you a passion you have always longed to bring to the surface. They will be happy to know everything about you, just so they can use it to charm you, impress you, retain you. You are looking for someone who uses words, not actions. The actions come when you use your own cult of personality. How you attract someone like this is to express your sadness in your loss, appear sexy and shy and needy and confident all at the same time. Right now, you are bait, seeking to co-exist with your counterpart. I will tell you, I don't think these two types of personalities meet up very often. Being in love with an illusion usually defines someone who was ill-prepared and devastated by a sociopath. I love my illusion a great deal, for every single one of the reasons I have described above. I am certain he is a sociopath, a result of his life, something I understand clearly. But I am not a victim. I am doing the same thing to advance the illusion of my life. I continue to dance with him because I choose to continue the dance. The more comfortable my illusion is with my relation to him, the better it gets. It's what brings me to share these words on the first day of the year. My resolution is to get better at this game, not stop playing it because I keep getting sidelined with injuries. Any good player knows, you do what you gotta do to play the game. It isn't even always about winning. It's about the players.
A word of the wise to all you folks out there, be you professional or ley, it matters not. Don't overgeneralize your diagnosis, prognosis or cure. Every case is different. A plethora of people have told me I am doomed, thought me mad, institutionalization-able. They are all gone. My beautiful illusion is still here and while most people would think one player in this game over came his opponent and she still keeps coming back for more, because she hates herself (stop saying this, assholes. To me, you sound ignorant, and to me, your opinion is worthless and mostly unsolicited!) too much to find a man who treats her better. I get exactly what I want from my man and this has all been of my own grand design. Not his. Or perhaps he has his own grand design. Again, matters not. I have said no to him only once, and I regretted it, not because he made me (regret it). I just regretted it. To the point of my telling him not to ever let me say no to him again, which I sometimes forget, and he never fails to remind me, because prior to my plea, he would have let me say no. In fact, he said, "It's not my place to tell you to say 'yes'." The whole control thing, real hard for me to give away, but I know so well that he will make me feel alive again when I feel dead, I don't want the ability, the authority to say no.
And here is my current beautiful illusion; he is tall in stature and charisma. He is creative and smart, about the things I need him to be smart about, anyway. He is wounded, yet determined. He is young, in his heart and in his mind, which makes him reckless, making him as about as far from perfect as I am. His soul is as old as mine and while he knows me well enough to say what I want to hear, he also says things that remind me of that which we have in common, like our concurrent and adolescent study of mysticism. It's probably a result of our childhood experiences that had us hating "God" and seeking something bigger, elsewhere, but we both did this and I know this about him from facts, not words. And our both having dated bookies and married Latin-American people. Our mothers, our fathers, We have allot in common. I am momentarily comforted while in his presence. He whispers how wonderful I make him feel, as he pulls my hair and kisses me so fucking hard, nothing has ever compared to that intensity. I lack what he makes up for and vice verse. We are a perfect yin and yang. Allot of my illusion consists of some very heavy reality, but it's a reality easily forgotten for a moment in the arms of our distraction. He is sexy and charming and a lover of the arts and a college boy and dark and mysterious and strong and controlling and passionate and handsome and funny and shy and sensitive and protective and in spite of his sociopathic indifference, he cares. The way he knows how. He is also probably the one person on earth who doesn't hold "crazy' against me. He gets it. He inspires me to write, he is my muse and he is, for many reasons, the other half of me. Illusion or not, sure is nice when I reach out, in desperation, to ask him to shine that buoy light for me, in the middle of my darkness, lost at sea, he responds. Yeah, like it or not, neigh-sayers, there is more comfort in that than anything else I have actually found to comfort my loneliness. He's what I see all day. He's the voice in my head when I wanna veer off course and, perhaps indulge in another of my favorite addictive past-times. He's why I know so much about myself and he is the best drug I have ever done.
I'm not giving up my illusions for new year's. In fact, I'm resolving to investigate them even further...
Happy New Year!!!
Deannalynn Arzola
