My landing in Reykjavik is very different from what I had imagined. I imagined unloading the boxes of my life into a home. Instead, I unloaded them into a garage.
But...hey...that's what life is all about: we work with what we have.
There are different battles open at the same time for me now, all of them requiring a big amount of energy. So, after every battle, after every step conquered, after every meeting, or call, or discovery, no matter how big or small, I retreat to my headquarters and escape with my mind, maybe not to think in how different my landing in Reykjavik has been, maybe not to think about the boxes in the garage.
Some years ago, while living in Barcelona, I coined a word to describe this state: "to park oneself".
I used to park myself in any public space, like parks or promenades, where leisure activities with people would take place. I would sit on a bench, in a nice spot, not to stand out from other people around me. Only another weirdo would have noticed a person sitting for hours in the same place in the same position looking at the horizon as still as dead.
I would park my body there, like you park your car, knowing it was safe surrounded by people. And my mind would just leave.
In the train of my imagination I would just travel for hours to stories that had a detailed development, complex characters with elaborated motivations...stories that could take place along the years in different locations, stories that filled with imagination the gaps that disappointment had created in my life.
I am not parking myself in outdoor benches here. Ending like Jack Torrance at the end of The Shining doesn't appeal to me. But I do park myself at home, which leads me to wondering which gaps of my life is my imagination filling now, which painful realisation am I coating with stories in my mind, the pain of which disappointment I want to numb.
I have the blessing and the curse of imagination. It is my shelter and my addiction. So, I park myself and fly away from the tiredness and the effort, from the pain and the fulfillments, from the bridges to build, and the ones to burn. Like a junkie of escapism.
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