I'm A Bit Crazy Sometimes

To anyone who knows me that isn't really a shock to hear.

To those who don't, it's probably not the greatest of first impressions to make but, somehow, I think we'll manage. I'm not entirely crazy, I did say 'a bit' remember, and I'm not crazy all of the time, see the 'sometimes' up there... but, yeah.

"How?" you might ask. I'll try to explain...

For as long as I can remember I've had vivid dreams. Some of them are short, some are long but all of them are full of details: names, places, descriptions. Some of the dreams are about everyday things - going to school or grocery shopping, and others are different, they're fantastical. A lot of the dreams only come once and, I think, those ones are just dreams like anyone else's.

It's the 'other' dreams that have meaning to me.

Not in the "10,000 Dream Interpretations" sense either.

These others dreams are the things that make me feel crazy. Or part of what makes me crazy anyways. They repeat, over and over again, until the whole story's out. And whether it's just consciously thinking about them during the day or having to literally say to myself "so this happened and then she/he did this," I have to see the entire story. Then, just to make things a bit more nuts, sometimes I'll see the same story from different perspectives. I have to know it, you see.

Once I get it though, the story is always there just tucked away in a corner of my mind. I've always wondered why I remember them in such explicit detail. I've always been curious why I have to remember the story and why those details stay with me months and even years into the future. Now I think I know.

Some people are meant to be teachers. Or doctors, or scientists, massage therapists, farmers or dancers... I've considered being all of those things, I've deeply wanted to be (at least) three of those things, but the fit just didn't feel right. There was always something that didn't click.

And then one day I was sitting at home with my kids, playing on the computer and, sort of, watching a movie when I opened up a new Google Doc and started writing down my dream from the night before. The words came pouring out. The story building on the page, scene by scene just as it had in my dream.

3000 words later I stopped and stared.

Of all the things I've tried to be, all the things that I've considered doing, somehow it never crossed my mind to be a writer. I'd always been told that I was good at it - but that was for school, for essays and reports and research papers, things all firmly in the realm of real. It definitely wasn't for something that I was making up (or that my subconscious had made up), or something that I created.

So to be perfectly honest, it scared me. Not only because when I went back and read it, I thought it was good but because of how easy it came to me. Here was something that I'd never really thought of doing, and it felt right.

It fit.

Now I'm starting to take all those dreams out of the corners in my mind and I'm going tell them. I'm going to write them and, hopefully, publish them. Now when people ask me what I do for a living I don't have to wince and say "Nothing," or tell them that I'm just a stay at home mom (though I am that too and I'm damn proud of being able to be). Now when people ask me what I do, I'm going smile...

And tell them I'm a writer.

(And isn't that just the craziest thing??)