My Dear One,

Freefalling.  An alluring proposition.  You’ve learned to stay away from the cliff, but there’s a compelling enticement in wanting to know what’s over the edge, what fairy tales await.  And not just wanting to know, but to experience it as fully as possible, to see if the fairy tale could be possible.  You may spend days pondering what’s down below in the depths.  Or perhaps only minutes … in truth, it doesn’t matter how much time you spend contemplating it; the moment you start deliberating, the decision to find out for sure has already been made.  Your imagination has already gone there and returned to share all the wonders with you; why not follow with your whole self?  After all, you have lived in imagination for so long that there is a desperation to experience the Real Thing.  That Real Thing seduces you … beckons you … with the sweetest voice imaginable.  A familiar voice, because imagination has made it a friend.  Answering its call would be like coming home; the safety and comfort and everything the concept of home represents.  Or all you had imagined it to be, because imagination is what drives you, fuels you, inspires you … tempts you.

Imagination has conversed with the dark side of your thoughts.  As you look over the edge, it gives you the ability to see miles ahead.  All the possibilities, stretching out before you in a sensuous siren song.  Consequence becomes inconsequential.  Desire becomes unquenchable.  Wanting to know becomes insatiable.  It’s too late to turn back.

What Could Be stands behind you and whispers in your ear.  Words of promise.

You jump off the cliff.

You’re falling through the air.  An exhilarating feeling.  No rope, no cords, nothing holding you to reality, but you don’t care.  The feeling is unbeatable.  Air rushes through the lungs, colors are more vibrant – every sense is fully functioning. For the first time, you know what it’s like to live in the moment, to experience life the way everyone else around you has always lived it, to not think further ahead than this instant in time.  As you fall, layer upon layer is shed from your being.  Constraints, filters, expectations and demands all fall away, unlocked and released to the air.  The weight has been lifted; there is a euphoria in finally letting go, on the way to fulfilling the heart’s desire.  You are you, out there in the open air, you are seen … no longer hiding.  You are gloriously alive.  You are finally free.

But you are not free.  Reality has accompanied you on your journey, but you were unfortunately blinded to its presence.  At the very moment you feel you could not be happier is when it leans in close, and whispers in your ear.  One word is all that is heard, but once you’ve heard it, you can’t unhear it.  It repeats in your brain in a never-ending loop until it becomes a shout.

ILLUSION.

The moment you actually realize what you’ve done in hurling yourself over the cliff, the moment you realize this journey is nothing more than an illusion, is when the ride ends.

You hit rock bottom.

You are not yet dead, but you wish you were.

You’re lying there, at the bottom of the canyon.  Every bone in your body is broken.  You can see the sky, so far away above; the place on the ledge where the journey had so magnificently begun. Everything in you is hurting beyond belief.  There is nothing to do.  You must lie there.  Nothing moves except your mind.  Your body can’t move, but your mind never stops moving.  Turning thoughts over and over … the regrets, the what-ifs, the what-might-have-beens.  An echo sounds off the walls of the canyon.  It’s the promise from What Could Be, but the speaker has changed its name.  What Could Be is now Never To Be Had.

Now, the loss is real.  You knew what you were missing before you plunged over the cliff, but you didn’t really know.  The loss only existed in your imagination.  It wasn’t real.  The trip down through the canyon was real.  All the feelings, emotions, thoughts – everything, tied up in what is now experience.  Lying at the bottom, you have experienced true loss.  Before, there was a melancholy painfulness in what you wanted, but did not have; a wistful reflection in what could be yours, but was not.  Now, you know, in full technicolored emotion, what almost was.   You tasted enough of it to know.  In taking the plunge, you have lost it all.

You are not the only thing shattered on the ground.  Next to you are the fractured hopes and dreams and all the fairy-tale longings.  It’s not possible to turn your head to look at them, but you don’t need to see them to know they’re there.  The destruction is felt in your heart.

Something else is lying next to the tattered pieces, cold and still on the ground.  It’s your imagination, beaten and battered, dead and gone.

You can still see for miles, but no longer ahead, only behind.  The miles above to the sky are clearly seen, but they are the miles which have already been traveled, miles which have already been experienced.  Lying on your back, you can no longer look ahead.  There is no imagination in looking back.  This is what your freefalling has cost you.  You can no longer live.  For you cannot exist without your imagination.  It gave your soul its eyesight, and without it, you cannot see.

Even though you are lying completely broken on the cold hard ground, you spend your final moments reliving, revisiting, and reviewing the journey, and the alluring beauty of it all … no longer imagining, but remembering.  It’s all you have left.  Living in the past … something that cannot drive you, fuel you, or inspire you.

If that’s not insanity, what is?

And so, my dear one, freefalling is not recommended.  If you can’t resist, tell your imagination to provide you a parachute.

All my love,

Your Never Sleeping Beauty

We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing them becomes too high … ~Ransom Riggs