IMAGINARY FRIENDS

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 

As the opening days of December approach, I am helpless against the memory of this same time of year two years ago. My mind is cast back to Palm Harbor on the west coast of Florida where my kid sister Susan was coming to the end of her two-year battle with cancer. My sister Sherri and I were gathering our reserves of spiritual, emotional, and physical strength to fly to Florida from our family’s home base in Columbus, Ohio to spend what we understood would doubtless be Susan’s last days. As it turned out, Sherri and I were able to make our way to Susan and were with her through a good part of December and right up to her final moment three days before Christmas.

            Susan was many things. She was talented, smart, gentle, kind. And she was physically beautiful—a Greta Garbo lookalike as well a double to the famous Swedish-American actress in other ways. Like Garbo, Susan was shy and reclusive, qualities she fought against for the entirety of her life. And in important ways, she was triumphant over them. But even with that, Susan lived with a profound kind of loneliness that no actual friend was ever able to alleviate entirely, perhaps because she needed too much, or not enough. One of the most remarkable things about Susan was that she was a prolific writer of journals. In the days following her passing, the task fell to Sherri and me, along with our sister-in-law Dorothy and our nephew Leland to sort through Susan’s belongings and to determine their dispensation. Of course, we were aware of Susan’s hobby of journaling but were shocked to discover the extent of it. There were chests full of them; book shelves lined with them; journals dating to her teenage years. Susan was three months into her 63^rd year of life when she died.

            While I have turned to journaling during specific periods of extreme trauma and/or stress as a means of releasing the stress and getting a handle on my experiences, I have not found it useful or justifiable as a consistent practice. But yesterday, I saw it from an angle I hadn’t considered, and which makes sense to me for some people. I saw it as a way they can, and perhaps do, communicate with an imaginary friend. It solves for me the mystery of Susan’s attraction to it. I am convinced of it.

            I owe my new awareness to my friend, British author Carol Browne. Currently, I am reading her novel REALITY CHECK. The novel itself appears as a journal written by her protagonist, one Gillian Roth, a middle-aged woman who lives alone and works at a dull job. She has few friends and little excitement in her life. Her journal speaks to an imaginary friend. And not only that, but her house is full of other people whom she sees and with whom she interacts. The problem is that the people don’t actually exist. Or do they? With time, her surreal home life spirals out of control. Determined to find out the truth, Gillian undertakes an investigation into the nature of reality itself. The mystery lies in whether or not she finds an answer to her dilemma, or if it pushes her over the edge before she works out what is really going on.

            I find it a fascinating concept for a novel. It is capturing my attention and taking me away from the realities of Covid-19 for much needed breathers. I highly recommend REALITY CHECK to readers.©

                                                                                 

Purchase Link: https://www.amazon.com/Reality-Check-Carol-Browne-ebook/dp/B07XBND96W  

 

#Greta Garbo, #journaling, #Carol Browne, #REALITY CHECK, #Linda Lee Greene