Places I've Been - Posting Challenge, Day 5

I snagged links today! Also follow along with Tina, Jean, Krista, and Tambo as they say much more sane and less esoteric things than me. :)

Today's demand is a picture of somewhere I've been. Give me a minute.

I'm back.

Here you go:

 

Not what you expected?

Well, I could tell you about my life in one of five different states or around forty different cities and small towns. I could talk about the six or seven other states I have visited. I could speak of mountains, forests, scenic highways, oceans, swamps, fields, and deserts. I could talk of famous cities, of festivals and events, of clubs and nightlife, even of places that have briefly been home to me as I passed through area after area.

I won't. I'm not travel guide, and besides, you've probably already been there too. If you haven't, Google it.

I want to discuss something a little more...mythic. More surreal. Maybe even crazy. I want to talk about the place where I grew up.

Somewhere in the mind of every lonely child is a friend, just waiting to be imagined. And somewhere in the mind of every abused child is a still small place, a place they used to get away. And that a child suffering both, a creative, lonely, frightened child might create a populated world to flee to...it makes perfect psychological sense.

But it was real to me, real enough that it altered my entire life. It was a land where, in dark corners of the forest, trees bled and screamed. Where unicorns--real unicorns, not these pansy ass, horse-with-a-horn-Jesus-myth-virgin-loving-wanna-bes--were rare, beautiful, intensely magical...and were the terrifyingly vicious fighters of myth. (Seriously, I don't care how you depict a unicorn, but if you are drawing a horse with a horn, you're DOING IT WRONG.) It was a land with dangers around every corner and magic that was just a little too chaotic to be trusted, a war-torn land where children were disposable and people were suspicious and frightened even of familiar faces, and yet was also a land of incredible, awe inspiring beauty and endless, boundless potential.

I tried to write about it, in fact, spent most of my childhood locked in a battle with myself, trying to depict this inner world to my satisfaction. I eventually put that story down and moved on, after thirteen years of trying. I came to realize how difficult it was to capture, and if I succeeded in my dream, if I managed something so well that it could be published and shared but I made a mistake in that world, it would be cemented in print forever. The very thought felt like a betrayal. So I moved on to write stories about worlds that I cared about so much less. I still loved them, mind, but they weren't Home.

I suppose no one can capture the spirit of their home very well, even if they are writing pure nonfiction, and not about a world that lives in their head.

Maybe I'll take it up again, someday.

In the meantime...if you are following me through these posts, you'll recall I mentioned that I am a weirdness magnet. Let me leave you with a little weirdness that is--probably, maybe--all in my head.

But, you know? Maybe not.