Day Dreaming

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How is it one can miss something they’ve never had? How can one miss someone they have never met ? How can one’s obsession with a fictional character or fantasy relationship take over to a point where it feels so real?

She had been day dreaming most of the day today … having watched a collection of Tom Hardy videos her imagination had taken over to a point where it felt perfectly realistic to expect him to walk in the door any minute and ask her how her day had been.

She had not married the man that she had envisaged as a young girl. She had grown up with a desire for the traditional tall, dark and handsome .. John Travolta …. Johnny Cash … even Elvis. Someone perhaps a bit rough around the edges … a bit dangerous. Five o’clock shadow, a fighter … strong, muscular, with just a touch of romanticism. She’d had two serious relationships and married both of them. Neither of them came close to meeting that description. They both were blond, charming, educated and cultured – upper middle class English, not dangerous in any sense of the world. But they had swept her off her feet and she had fallen deeply in love with them and in return felt loved and cherished by them both.

Not that it was bad or wrong or that she felt disappointed with her chosen husbands …. even her desire for Billy Idol did not meet the tall, dark and handsome specification and he’d been an obsession of hers since she was an innocent but blossoming young girl … just learning about love and lust and obsession. Billy did perhaps meet the dangerous brief .. certainly he was on the wild side … she’d often day dreamed about him also, and he had always been top of her Hall Pass list.

Her Hall Pass list often cycled but always contained the same three …. Billy, Tom, Daniel Craig … all a little rough round the edges … all totally unobtainable…. all utterly and totally beautiful. All 100% beyond her reach … just daydreams. All missed for a relationship that would never be and a meeting never to be had.

Mr She of course knew and understood his place. Number four in line after the three aforementioned. He settled in to this space quite happily, knowing, and owning his place in her reality. And she hers … number four after his golf, his new car, his precious new lawn ….. he’d never really settled on a Hall Pass list…. Kylie Minogue perhaps as long as she didn’t sing, apparently …..

She thought it was perfectly human to obsess about an impossible life. Temptation being humanity’s biggest flaw…. it was about how one managed those temptations, knowing the difference between fantasy and reality, understanding consequences. Never missing what one didn’t have but rather letting those dreams and obsessions fuel the desires of reality.