Quarantine Dreams: Reality Versus Imagining

The election of Donald J Trump, lifelong confidence man with a long history of mafia ties, came as a huge shock to me.  So much so that within a short time post-election, I came to believe I was in a coma.

Near the end of 2015 I grew ill and this illness advanced to the point that in October 2016 I had to undergo a seven hour surgery.  I was very frightened, and one of the last things I remember is being in preop and one of my doctors asking if I wanted the tv on to calm me a bit.  I said no because I was afraid the last face I'd see was Trump's.

And then I looked at her;  I had startled myself.  I mean, you don't want to tell someone about to cut you open that you hate their politics.  But she laughed and said she didn't want to see him either. 

I had two surgeons that day, and after the operation they came in to tell me the surgery had gone well, I did not have cancer, and I would be fine.  

Or, supposedly after the surgery they came in to tell me it had gone well and I would be fine.

It didn't take long for me to wonder if I had never left that hospital and I was in  a coma dreaming all of this.  Hillary Clinton a woman I've admired since I first heard and saw her in 1991, a singular woman, lost an election to the obvious conman with a reality television show???

Things went from bad to worse as our alleged President spent his term tweeting things like:

"THE FBI IS KNOWN SCUM! SCUMBAGS!"

And bullying, mocking, and insulting female reporters, especially black women.

I would tell people all the time that I don't believe any of this is really happening, and I am pretty sure I fell into a coma during this surgery I had in October 16.  No one seemed to believe me, and isn't that exactly how people would react if you were coma-dreaming telling people you think you're in a coma? 

Then came the coronavirus and New York Pause...a clever (?) way of saying "shut it down, shut it all down, do not leave your home, danger danger danger."

And I was sick the first few weeks, though likely not with the virus.  I wasn't sure though. I couldn't even see my mother, I was afraid to expose her.  Seeing anyone else was out of the question as the rest of my family are MAGA and don't wear masks.  My apartment complex turned into the Walking Dead.  It was brand new, and nowhere near full occupancy to start with.  Now, many who were here, left. 

Possibly lost their jobs and moved back with parents, or...I really don't know.  The staff sent around emails that they would no longer be in the main office, but rather hidden throughout the buildings and if we saw them we were not to approach them.  And some would be working from home.

The only human contact I had was with the Target delivery person, during our hurried and guilt-filled exchanges of goods for cash.

Filled with dread I turned to fantasy.  I've always lived a vivid fantasy life, even when my real life was fantastic.  I guess it comes from having an active imagination, or maybe not. I don't know what separates those who live active inner lives from those who don't.  My best friend is unable to do this, and so she is doomed to always be present.  With no relief.  A truly terrible way to live.

But me, I'm different. I escape into all kinds of alternate reality. I always have, but during NY Pause this became a lifeline.  I called it Quarantine Dreams.  And these quarantine dreams were often more real than the hellish reality I was physically but not mentally living in. 

My business was dead during the great Pause of 2020, and so I had nothing else to occupy me but my carefully constructed dream world.  

Was it really a dream though? Who knows what's real.  Can any of what people tell me is real, be real?  Is it really possible that the host of The Apprentice, quoted as saying "Women, you have to treat them like SHIT" was elected President and then we had a once-in-one-hundred-year pandemic this malevolent buffoon presided over?  And did nothing about?  And killed hundreds of thousands through pure negligence? And then garnered millions MORE votes than he had four years earlier? 

You're gonna tell me that's real right?  

Well, let me answer that with this:

"I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality... There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is." Eugène Ionesco.

Yeah, so, I'm sorry, but my lying on my couch while Eric Northman bites my neck and we make slow, languorous, body-shaking love, is a far more likely reality than the one you claim. 

And that's only a small q quarantine dream.  More of a fantasy really.  My real Quarantine Dream life was so much more.  

For instance, I first began watching The Big Bang Theory long after it had first came on.  It was during the wait for my surgery that I really discovered the early seasons on TBS.  And night after night I watched it to calm my nerves.  And I found Sheldon so funny!  I was shocked when I discovered on the internet that some people don't like him.   I will always be grateful to Jim Parsons for making me laugh during a time I was filled with dread. 

Anyway, during Pause, maybe I was a theoretical physicist working at Caltech, living in the same building as Sheldon and Leonard.  I had a fabulous, hot boyfriend, because the men on the show just aren't fuckable, other than Parsons really.  And Sheldon isn't bf material.  But I love Penny and Amy and Bernadette.  I couldn't hang out with them all the time because pre-Bernadette, Howard would be stalking me and Raj would be stalking me forever.  So I add in a hot bf who never appeared on the show.

In alleged real life, I'm lonely and isolated in a near-empty apartment building.  In my dream life I have 3 funny and smart best girlfriends I'm always with.  Oh, and I'm a genius.  

And that's just one silly one, that I barely spent any time on.  I never could get hooked on it.  I actually invented much deeper fantasy worlds, filled with magnificent lovers, and oh, I was even more magnificent in them.  Those I would never reveal.  They are too telling.  They would tell you every secret about me.  They would allow you to know me better than any real lover ever has.  I will take my Quarantine Dreams to my grave.  But in many ways, I did live them. 

And they were so much better and more realistic than the reality show "reality" that America put on after I supposedly came out of that surgery.  Doing fine.

You're fine.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.