The World In My Head

I don't remember how old I was when I read "The Little Princess", but I remember it had a profound impact on me for the rest of my life. The protagonist, Sarah, was a rich girl who was sent to a boarding school that was strict as hell, but she brought the place to life with her imaginative stories, which the girls would gather to hear. When her father died in the war, however, Sarah became a servant at the boarding school. She survived life's sudden harshness by returning to her stories, by living in her imagination, by transporting herself far far away from her reality.

Luckily I was never sent to boarding school nor did my father die in a war, but certainly- like most people- I had to survive the events that, one by one, took childhood away from me. And after I read "The Little Princess", I became my own version of Sarah, living in my imagination as often as necessary. It didn't take much to send me there- I was an extremely sensitive child- and my mind soon had a world of its own.

In my head lived endless possibilities. When my parents fought- which was always and never nicely- I could go be the most beautiful girl in the world, a princess, who lived somewhere beautiful and safe, where I could walk through jungles with giant waterfalls and have pic-nics with koalas. When I would see starving children my own age begging for money on the streets of Sao Paulo, I could disappear and go to a ball where I could wear long romantic lilac gowns and have curls in my hair and satin gloves. When teachers lost their patience with my shyness, I didn't have to sit through a lecture about social skills, I could go off and run through vast green meadows while the wind gently hit my face. I could do anything. I could be anyone. It was intensely freeing.

I would say I lived in my imaginary world quite often, and I would say it served me well sometimes. But it also worked against me. I was so used to detaching myself from anything difficult that I didn't know how to be present anymore, even when I needed to be. I couldn't focus, it became difficult to study for tests, I felt like a bad friend most of the time because I didn't really know how to listen, and I didn't know how to sit through or with any kind of pain. If I had grown up in the U.S., I probably would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and given drugs. I don't know if the drugs would have helped me though, because I was very attached to my imaginary world. But by the time I got to high school, I recognized it was getting in the way, and I was afraid I would soon be failing all my classes.

I went to an English teacher I kind of liked and told her of my "problem". I explained that my imagination would get the better of me, even in my favorite subjects, like English, and I couldn't bring myself back down to earth once I was off in lala land. She suggested that every time I start to drift off, I take out a notebook and write down where my thoughts were going as though I were writing a fiction story. I was a little disappointed to hear her say that- I was hoping she would just tell me I was normal and that it would pass. But I was desperate to find some solution before I simply failed out of school, and so I took on her idea.

You may have guessed what happened. The girl who lived inside her head brought her head to paper, and a writer was born. Journals upon journals were filled with stories, observations, images, poems, thoughts, essays, dreams and, ultimately, my pains. And once I had a place to put my thoughts, they started to get out of the way.

I still have a tendency to detach from anything painful, but I catch it quite quickly and try to breathe through it instead of run away from it. I still write things down though, but I don't have to, I can usually focus when I need to. I have learned that our painful experiences are our fuel. That which makes us feel weak in life can be our weapon in creative outlets. A paintbrush, a pen, a piano- those are all important tools, but without our life, without our pain, without our willingness to access it, we can not create.

I am really grateful to have had Sarah, that wonderful imaginative little princess, for helping a shy, overly-sensitive child find a world she could live in, then to have found the teacher who guided me towards my voice, and now to have the courage, every day, to face the reality of every moment, with a present mind and a working imagination. The World in my Head is not so much an escape now, but rather a way to understand reality and generate a creative force which gives me power, freedom, and presence.