Dear Gaia:

Because I was in that habit for decades, the habit of zoning out, spacing out, my mind disappearing into fantasy or “to nowhere in particular”, and I pretty much broke this habit recently, in the last few years, I will be glad to share with you how I did it. Maybe you can do it too.

First, what I mean by this decades old habit: I remember that I crossed a street(I was in my twenties) and I noticed that a bus, or some other big vehicle, drove fast right ahead of me, I guess I could have been killed. I didn’t notice the bus or any other traffic. I don’t think that I checked before crossing the street (I figure that if I checked, I would have seen the bus). I was spaced out, somewhere else, and when the bus flew by right ahead of me, feeling so close and loud, I didn’t feel fear. Instead, I was puzzled, still not there, on the street- still somewhere else.

In my teens, I had a movie in my mind in the morning, the setting, the characters, the plot. For the rest of the day I was in that movie, it was playing in my head.

I heard people say that I am spaced out early on in life, teens, if not before: “your head is in the clouds!”

Sometimes I was walking in the neighborhood where I grew up, and I forgot how to get back home, couldn’t recognize where I was.

A few years ago, in my home now, it was hot indoors, summer time, day after day, and yet it didn’t occur to me that I  could open a window. It just didn’t cross my mind.

I was relaxed in fantasy, lying down, doing nothing. But doing practical things, like washing dishes and other physical work was very uncomfortable, very stressful. So I avoided doing anything except lying on the bed, fantasizing to music. In my adulthood, I fantasized less and less, but still doing practical, physical work was distressing and doing nothing was relaxing.

Again and again, things happened to me. I didn’t make anything happen. I found myself in situations. I used to think to myself like a leaf being carried by the wind, or a ship in a stormy sea, the waves taking  me wherever they did.

–I will stop here. Let me know what of what I shared you can relate to and what you cannot relate to, and we’ll take it from there.

anita