Her Own Wings

Imaginary World

When Liz was very young, she created her own, private imaginary world. When things got to be too much in the real world and she needed an escape, or needed to figure out how to handle a situation, wanted to recall a memory or play her favorite mind game "Worst Case Scenario", she would retreat to her imaginary world. She couldn't remember when she first created her own world, for as far back as she could remember, her world just existed for her. As she got older, her world changed to reflect her current needs, but it never left her.

Nothing bad ever happened in the imaginary world. This was a magical place. It was a place of peace and happiness; it was a place where she could feel safe and content. Here she was not yelled at, she never felt scared or sad. It was safe to explore her imaginary world without fear.

At first, when Liz was a young girl, it was a magical place, full of unicorns and other magical creatures. The creatures would play with her, take her places, and take care of her, talk to her. They would do anything she could imagine. Her world was beyond magical. It was anything she could dream up. There were no rules for what could happen, no prescribed order. It was always whatever she could dream up happened, the way she imagined.
When she was very young, she remembered lying on the ground outside at her grandparents' house watching the clouds float by in the sky. She was imagining the clouds as different objects. She started seeing all the birds flying in the sky, and wondered what it would feel like to flap her arms and fly like a bird, or just stretch her arms and soar through the sky like the birds did. She closed her eyes and opened them in her world and tried to fly like a bird. She flew in a split second, and loved it. She would sometimes just stretch her arms out and soar.

People never teased Liz in her world. Nobody ever was mean to her, or hurt her. She never had to be afraid. People didn't die. If she didn't need a person in her world, they would disappear for a time. But, as soon as she needed the person, they appeared, and it was as if no time had passed.

As she grew older, the unicorns disappeared. The mode of transportation in her world never changed. She would flap her arms like a bird, and just fly to wherever she needed to go. She didn't have to think about things, and it never felt like an exertion for her, it just was.
As she looked around in her world, everything she saw looked like a painting. She imagined that, if she ran through a field of flowers and tripped, she would mar the scenery. She imagined a field of flowers so she could run through it and trip to fall and see what happened. The field of flowers did, indeed, get tainted. It became a permanent part of that scene. The imaginary world had many different scenes. As more events occurred in each scene, more images and background items appeared. The only differences in her imaginary world were additions that she imagined, or, on the rare occasions, things that were removed. The buildings and scenes never seemed to age like buildings and neighborhoods did in the "real world"; she never questioned why things didn't age. She never was curious as to why there was a lack of people in her world, outside of the family she created. Occasionally she created a scene with a group of people for some purpose, but the people in those scenes weren't real and they disappeared when the scene was complete.
Liz loved being in her imaginary world. Here, she was free to do what she wanted, be who she wanted to be and not have to fear that Sir Father was going to embarrass her, scare her or hurt her. Here, she was free to be a child and use her imagination. She rode on a dragon simply because she imagined doing it! Anything she could imagine was made real here. She once heard a song about a candy mountain. She wondered what it would look like, and she closed her eyes and in her imaginary world imagined a candy mountain, and when she opened her eyes, there was a mountain of candy. She could eat any part of the candy mountains she wanted, it was delicious.

She created nurturing people in her world that she didn't have in her real life. People like strong, loving parents who were kind to her, and made sure she was safe and loved. Liz got lots of hugs, and played lots of games. She also imagined friends to play with, and they would appear and be her best friends. When she was done playing, they disappeared, usually. She would frequently have some of the same characters reappear in her world, but she knew that these were only imaginary people; they didn't exist outside of her imaginary world. She could bring any of the people back that she wanted, at any time she wanted.

Liz's world evolved, as she grew older. Her world, though, never lost the innocence of youth. It was a safe, fun place. She once visited the solar system, just by flapping her arms and flying. She flew once to an amusement park that was open and operating specifically for her. She did have lots of other people there, but she never had to wait in line. She loved going to the beach, and she imagined tropical, lush beaches for herself. She had such fun running and playing on the surf, floating the ocean that was smooth as glass and just sitting and watching the waterfalls. She built a huge sandcastle, and she imagined it was real, and it became real.
She dreamed of a family that loved and cherished her; a mother who was loving and caring, and loved to play with her, and was never sad or worried about things. She imagined a father who didn't drink or use drugs; he would play games with her, and loved to spend time with her. This father was kind, loving and intelligent and spent time teaching her things and wanted to know his daughter. Liz imagined that she and her sister were best friends, and did everything together. Because this family was so different and foreign to her, it made her feel sad, so she flapped her arms and flew away. She decided to let this family exist in her world, as a possibility that it could someday come to be, but she just couldn't be around that imaginary family.

She never once believed that this family was real. When she was very young, it was a fun place to go and play. As she got older, and became more aware of what was happening in her family, it became a way to escape the pain and embarrassment of her dysfunctional family. It became a way for her to keep herself occupied in her bedroom, and out of sight of her father. She knew that when he was drinking, if he caught sight of her, she would be yelled at for something, or lectured or given a never-ending list of chores.

When she got older, she would open her eyes, the scene unfolding as if she was watching a movie on a screen. Sometimes her imaginary world was pure imagination, as if she was watching a movie she had never seen before. At other times, she was able to watch scenes from her past, she felt as if she were directing a movie. She could zoom around and see the scene before her from different angles, zoom in or out, pause or fast forward and rewind. Other times when she visited her imaginary world, she was in the world and experiencing the events like she was living that event in real life right at that moment. In those times, she viewed the events like she was seeing them through her own eyes like she saw things in the real world.