In Which I Give Up On A Dream

Once upon a time there was a woman with a dream. Well, she had lots of dreams actually.

She dreamed of a happy home with a loving husband, safe and healthy children, fuzzy pets -- and a beauty product business. Along the way, shit hit the fan in the shape of her husband's fist on her body and all the dreams were shattered. The one person she and her children should feel safest with was now the very thing they feared. Life changed in many ways -- in nearly every way -- and the beauty product business was put to the side in favor of other ugly matters.

Years later, many other issues have been settled or at least have been moved past the critical stages and there the company sat, just waiting for an influx of resources to bring it to life again. (Money and some hard work, that is.) A new life with a real loving husband and new dreams and ventures began.

But the old dream of the beauty product company still remained in her heart.

I always intended to re-start GlamKitty. It was the sort of dream that carried with it a resurrection to my old self. It was the one last thing I swore wouldn't be lost; he couldn't take that away from me too. Brighter days, living well as the best revenge and all that, GlamKitty was to be my phoenix rising from the ashes reinstating me and all my old dreams to their former glory.

But in clutching the old dream to my chest, I carried a burden. Tied with this dream was the past and the losses. It was a reminder that just as the company was starting to grow, I was slapped down. This both fueled my desire to continue it (for anything less than rebuilding it was a like saying that I deserved to lose it too) and affected my ability to carry other things. In carrying this burden, I had less ability to carry other things.

Because you cannot fly forward when you are chained to the past.

They say you cannot go home again. That's not quite true. You can go home again, but you aren't that same person who once lived there. You know that person, remember her, but you aren't her anymore -- at least you no longer are only her, simply her. After all that has happened I can no longer pretend to be the same person.

Where once GlamKitty was about accentuating the positive, a rosy outlook to match those cheeks and glossing things over, it's now more like covering up more than a flaw; it seems like hiding from the ugly darkness. I still wear makeup; it's not like I stopped believing in its usefulness or beauty itself. But it no longer has the appeal it once did.

My new dreams are about helping others be heard. I/we publish so their thoughts, dreams, experiences, fantasies do not perish.

In a superficial way you could say I care less about the outside than before. But it's not that simple. When devastating things happen in your life (not just the incident, but the aftermath), you turn inward. At least I did. I not only delved into myself, but I dwelled there. At first, it was out of fear, and then it was comfortable there, but eventually -- now -- I have a richer interior life.

Reading is a large part of this. Reading for escape, reading for comfort, reading for knowledge -- I've always been a reader. A bookish sort. It was something he hated too. He couldn't share it, he didn't want to; and if he didn't like it, you knew about it. Falling in love with books again was wonderful but when the new man in my life, now my husband and partner, was also bookish, well... we do more than read side-by-side in silence, we talk about books. We talk about the ones we're reading, the ones we've read, the ones we buy and add to the piles as if simply placing them in our home means something (through the miracle of osmosis we 'know them' and have them at the ready) -- and we talk about the ones that don't exist. The stories that folks tell, in person, on paper or in this digital environment where you are reading. After time discussing what was missing and what was wrong about the business of publishing, we started publishing.

But I still held onto GlamKitty. In my heart it still resided, like a childhood fantasy where that inner girl-child still hoped for her future to one day unfold as she had dreamed it. Knowing I couldn't ride two horses at once, I focused on Ephemera Bound with energies and funds but I still kept visions of GlamKitty alive in my heart -- a giant sunny One Day. It's true my actions were votes for the new business, but I didn't feel I was turning my back on it; I simply was waiting. But I no longer want to wait for someday, or hold onto things that are not 'me' now.

It's time to say good-bye, wave a fond farewell with the glint of tears in my eyes for something that was once dear (for even breaking up with a business is rough), and move forward putting my heart completely into this new land of dreams.

Now I am finally ready to say that yes, the old dream has been replaced by a new dream.