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Chapter 2

Hi ForeverGardenia,

Thank you so much for this first chapter. It's just amazing! Reading it, it feels so real!

Can't wait for more!

SurferGirl60

X

Grace re-read the first chapter. Yes, this was ok, but where was it going from here? How many more of these could she write?

She told herself that the girl in this particular story was SurferGirl60, but of course, every time, in every story, she was writing about herself. She didn't understand this compulsion to write about him over and over again. To rewrite his history so that he didn't die of cancer at 51; to write for him a long, happy life.

Still, this was a better alternative to the dreaming - that had to stop. It was high time, at the age of 56, to finally acknowledge reality, tough though it was at times. For Grace had been living a large part of her life in her dreams for as long as she could remember.

She had been a sensitive, shy child. Her childhood had been happy, with her mother and grandmother. She had definitely felt loved. Not demonstrably so; both women found that difficult. Living through the war, they were part of the British 'stiff upper lip' generation.

For her mother and her family, living on the outskirts of London during the air raids meant you never knew when things around you would just.....cease to be.

Classmates for instance. One day they would be sitting at the desk next to you, the next day....gone. And you didn't dare ask questions- you'd get short thrift from the adults if you did. It wasn't as if you needed to ask really. You passed by the pile of smoking debris where yesterday stood their house on your way to school. But once they had gone, it was as if they were some kind of dirty secret no-one mentioned. To be erased from your memory forthwith, as if they never existed.

The same, years later, with Grace's father. When she was little, she'd ask her mother from time to time what had happened to him, why and how did he die. Her mother would try and tell her. But the event of his death had been so traumatic, so unexpected, so tragic, that she wouldn't get very far.

"I don't want to talk about it any more," she would say to Grace, trying to disguise the trembling in her voice. Because she wouldn't cry in front of her sensitive daughter.

So Grace stopped asking, because, young as she was, the thought that she was upsetting her dear mother made her heart break. After this, Grace couldn't help but feel distressed and somehow responsible whenever her mother was sad, which, as she struggled with depression and the stress of single parenthood, was quite often.

The lesson Grace learned from this was that it was best to not show your emotions, in fact to not really feel them either. At least, not the troublesome ones. You kept them all inside, buried so that they didn't bother you. And, when this wasn't possible, you abandoned reality altogether for a better place - your dreams.

Grace could remember the first dream she conjured up at a very young age. It all centred around the cupboard under the stairs. This was a magic place. You wouldn't know it, but inside there were steps leading down deep under the house. Sometimes there would be a skating rink down there, where Grace showed off her perfect skating technique to friends. (She'd never set foot on ice). Sometimes down there there were Grace's pets - an elephant, a monkey and a parrot, again for friends to admire. Grace went to this place during the day sometimes, but more often at night in her bed, before she went to sleep. Some days she couldn't wait to go to bed so that she could return to this special place.

As she grew older, Grace's shyness and sensitivity started to become problematic for her. She found that she sometimes didn't feel comfortable with other children - they didn't seem to think the same way she did, and they could be cruel and unkind. And Grace hated that. Not that she was a victim of it, well, not often - she was well liked, probably because she always fell in with her friend's plans. She also had a great imagination, and would invent the best games. Nevertheless, she preferred her own company; sometimes if her friends came calling she would get her mother to tell them that she was out.

Around this time Grace's dreams changed from the magic cupboard under the stairs, to dreams where she was admired by her peers for her acting and singing skills. She loved Hollywood musicals and would watch them avidly with her grandmother on a Saturday afternoon. She would then incorporate them in her dreams - transforming into Judy Garland or Debbie Reynolds.

Grace lost her beloved grandmother when she was 12 years old. Her mother was as devastated as she was, but they could never comfort one another or voice their grief - they didn't know how. Grace pretended that her grandmother was still alive for some time to her friends, as she didn't want to break down in front of them. That's not what you do, admit that you're sad. Sadness, like anger, was an emotion that took away your control, and Grace always needed to be in control of herself.

With puberty came a change in her dreams. Grace introduced some love interest for herself. In reality, she couldn't fathom boys. Coming from an all female household, boys and men were a mystery to her - loud, brash, scary and often silly. She told herself that when she was older she would find the right partner. In the meantime, there were so many dream boys to choose from - Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, Michael Jackson. After Zefferelli's 'Romeo and Juliet' was shown at school in English class, she decided the actor Leonard Whiting was the one for her, and he remained a principle player in her dreams for many, many years.

Eventually though, she conquered her shyness and distrust of real men enough to start having relationships. And at first it was always great. No need for dreams then. But somehow, after the initial euphoria wore off, or when things were less than perfect and the relationship had become stale and boring, rather than discussing her feelings (she couldn't discuss them as she didn't understand them herself), she resurrected the men of her dreams. Those men were perfect. Always said the right thing, always loving and attentive. Never did anything gross like scratch themselves or fart.

Grace always stopped short of adding sex into her dreams, chiefly because she didn't feel the need for it. Grace quite liked sex, but try as she might, she couldn't associate love and romance with it. Frankly, she found it rather ridiculous - all that thrusting and panting, two people supposedly coming together as one, but both desperate for their own, individual gratification. A selfish love.

So, when things became rocky in her relationships, back would come the dreams.

And, after two marriages, here Grace was, alone with her dreams once again. And her latest object of affection was Carl Wilson. Nevertheless, Grace was old enough now to know that nothing good comes from living half your life in a dream like state, and at first, tried to rid herself of the habit. She tried not to think of Carl Wilson, not to watch him on You Tube, not to join in the Facebook Groups. She tried meditation, the complete opposite of living in your dreams, living in the present. All to no avail. It just made her miserable and - she could not help herself. The habit had been formed early in her life and it was too late to change.

Maladaptive Dreaming, it was called. She'd looked it up online. Although it was called that when it was out of control, when it took over your life. Immersive daydreaming, if not. And she was still in control, or so she told herself.

She decided though, rather than live her dreams in her head, it was better to write about them, make them into stories. And that's just what she did, even publishing them on her own blog. Under a pseudonym of course - she didn't want her friends to know just how weird she was.

Soon she drew quite a following from the real person fiction community, who wrote the same sort of stories. And other Carl Wilson fans, for whom she wrote stories tailor made for them - Carl Wilson encounters, she called them. They proved popular, and soon she had fans of other idols requesting that she write stories for them. These she found challenging, as she didn't feel the same affinity to, for instance, Elvis Presley, as she did for darling Carl. But she did her homework via the Internet and came up with the goods, which, more often than not, were met with enthusiasm.