I spent much of my childhood alone in a world enhanced by my imagination. Some days I whiled away hours with an imaginary friend, or with a book in a tree house made from scrap wood precariously angled in the branches of a mesquite tree. Other days, I spent as an adventurer, exploring the pasture and canal behind the house. I had a special explorer outfit that consisted of a fishing cap that reminded me of a safari hat, despite its obvious 1970's lime green and pink color scheme, a pair of Keds that I pretended were hiking boots, and a walking stick. In this uniform, I would set out across the pasture in search of wild animals, looking for footprints in the dry, cracked dirt between scattered clumps of grass and weeds. Then I headed for the lush grass, weed, and brush-covered canal at the back end of the pasture. I used to pretend that the canal was a river, and I would spend hours winding my way down to the water, looking for wild animals, birds, frogs, and fish. When the water was low, I waded in to explore parts of the canal bank that weren't accessible otherwise. Ironically, though I spent most of my time in a make believe world, I was very grounded in a sense of my self. I was spiritually connected to nature; I knew who I was.
Then came adolescence and suddenly I was supposed to outgrow my imaginary world and become interested in boys, clothes, hair, and fitting in. I tried to resist, but the price for being myself was too high. So I desperately tried to become the person that I thought my peers and family wanted me to be. I still remember looking at my 8th grade picture and hating the girl that I saw smiling back at me because she fell so short of the standard of her peer group. I saw a girl in a homemade blue and white striped terry cloth t-shirt with short, flat hair, parted roughly in the middle and a zit on her chin. I thought that she was hideously ugly, awkward and stupid. I rejected her and the girl that she represented, just as my peer group and family rejected me. I spent the next ten years rejecting myself and trying to be who I thought people wanted me to be. I failed miserably, and in the process, lost myself.
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