Real

© Unholy Vault Designs / Shutterstock.com

Real. Reel.

Real to Real.

Real to Reel.

Reel to Real.

If my life were a movie, no-one would believe it.

They say art imitates life but in my experience life imitates art. That's why no-one believes the seemingly plain and ordinary woman in front of them is a tortured soul with a dark past, a rock and roll past, a fly by the seat of my pants past.

It doesn't matter. All stories come from one place. All discovery comes from one place. Whether an equation written by a mathematician, an hypothesis proposed by a scientist, a painting by an artist, a tale by a writer, a song by a musician, the source is the same. It is always about connecting with, and exploring, the universe and life as we know it.

I often reel from life. It kicks the stuffing out of me to remind me what is real. Pain is real as is loneliness. That's OK. I see where it began. It has taken me most of my life to realise it wasn't the events of my teens that screwed me up. It started way before then, back when I was too young to know what was happening. A seed was planted, a seed that would be watered and fertilised over the years by my mother's constant negativity and disapproval. That child who was born to be loved and celebrated would learn to live without approval, without real love. She would learn how to survive alone and find her own answers from a very early age.

Not that all the work I have done on myself over the years has been for naught. Far from it. I have prevented myself going over the edge many, many times. I have healed most of what I knew was damaged. It has only been when faced with the certainty of mortality that I have understood I still have much to heal.

For the first time, I have asked for help and received it. I am beginning to believe that love may be real, not a tool of manipulation. I have come to accept that my talents are real and many. I can say I am a writer, that I am a scientist. Even that I am a musician. (That one is a little more difficult as much of my musical exploits were in the past and I barely touch any musical instrument nowadays. Still, the musical heart beats the same as it did all those years ago when I lived to play, yet could not say 'I am a musician'. Perhaps it is time to reacquaint myself with those two guitars, moaning softly in their cases and waiting to sing.)

Most of all, I feel ready to step into the life I was meant to live, the one that little girl was born to live. Everything prior to this time has been my apprenticeship, my journeyman years. I am ready to step into mastery.

That is real.

Inspired by a prompt from Jill Badonsky in The Muse Is IN Writing Club.