There were days where it was easy to let life pass you by.
You'd wake up after a good night of sleep – then immediately lay back down again. You weren't tired. That wasn't the point.
I liked to imagine things. Lives. Lives that were unique and better than mine in their own way, at least in my mind. I could get so lost in them that I'd feel physically there with my own creations, in my own land of fantasy. It was addictive.
Such days where I would become the most lost were weekends. My brother talked to me a lot during those times. Each day he was off on adventures in the real world, doing things I could only dream of. One day it would be a movie, the next he'd be riding off for a night alone in the city. He had every freedom imaginable – yet still went home with an emptiness in his heart because he didn't have someone to share it with.
Meanwhile I was here – surrounded by everything he had been lucky enough to escape. Imagining kept the demons at bay. The birdcage that confined me became an open door. It was my personal necessity to living the way I did; to staying sane amidst the slow progress of my situation.
It made the clock tick, and that was all I needed: dreams, a piece of paper, and a pen.
It was what motivated me to get out of bed and walk to the bus each day.
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