reveriehub

[reveriehub]

Ancestors and Escapism

ruminations, insecurities, fears, 3am thoughts 💭

I created this space because of my ancestors, my father’s lineage holds a lot of escapism tendencies, it is freeing for me to have this awareness. Every time i feel my lack of impact, its both painful and liberating

I’ve spent years on a hamster wheel trying to catch up with time, to make everything count, everything as in: making my life valuable

But these little pieces of joy, pride and accomplishment have not happened from trying to realize what my mind fantasizes about, these moments of unforgettable memories have been challenges and opportunities presented where I fully decided to be present and act in the moment

Only then I’ve touched paradise

And yet, fantasies of what I haven’t experienced have drowned sometimes these joyful memories, I’ve become less human and more hamster the more I age and the fear of having an existence with no reputable career takes over.

My ancestors have impacted me in such a way, that the pain I’ve felt finding the similarities in our lives without having ever heard their stories, has made me more scared of continuing the patterns. But at the same time it has reminded me how many times I’ve changed course and how much I can change from now on...

Or could that be another fantasy?….

[reveriehub]

The guilt from disconnecting.

My lack of presence as a shield...

Hello, I'm Dens, and this is Reverie Hub. 

I wrote this a few months ago, at a moment when I allowed myself to summarize the guilt I feel whenever someone points out my lack of presence in certain moments. It doesn't happen often, but I feel guilt and resentment when it does. There's a contradiction where I want to defend myself and assert my boundaries regarding the privacy inside my mind. Still, I also feel bad for making someone feel like they don't deserve my trust, for not offering a safe space within my world, for denying, without words, an intimate space with me.

Daydreaming offers infinite space and possibilities, as I've mentioned, but it doesn't alert you of how long you've been there. A few years back at work, my boss was frustrated because she thought I didn't care much about my job and how much more I could do, even though I felt exhausted and burned out. She assumed that because I wasn't trusting her with details and stories about my personal life, I had none, and she had the right to take that extra space and fill it with her purpose. These types of dynamics cause me to get resentful. I feel like the other person wants to shape me because they don't think I have my own goals, only because I've decided not to share them. I believe this resentment comes from my lack of trust in others. Their lack of interest, questions, and the safe space they're willing to offer me so I can be honest and tell them what I truthfully envision, instead of a short and cutting answer that makes me look as if I have no goals, no ambition. But what I failed to see was that this external safe space I so much ask for is my job to create, my responsibility, and no one else's.

Nobody has to create a safe space for me but me. I must face this lack of trust head-on, piece by piece, peeling the onion of lack of safety around others. Examining my lack of confidence to be myself when surrounded by strangers. To accept myself without shame, without anxiety. To instead, embrace the odd parts within me, those parts that are trying to protect myself because of the triggering past. If I feel confident enough in my achievements, potential, and self-esteem, I can expand that safe space from within without the fear of judgment or my subconscious feeling threatened. 

Our inner world as a shield

Our inner world can act as a shield, a boundary with the promise of safety, our subconscious' way to protect ourselves. Since we started to cope with daydreams, it was most likely due to not feeling safe to open up. We created this inner world of fantasies to rescue ourselves from what we were living; therefore, this place is also a resource, a unique trait to guide you and remind you of your wants and needs.

I see daydreaming as a resource because it allows you to connect to yourself by bringing to the table this conscious act of imagining possibilities, and putting yourself in a comfortable and safe environment, a pathway to making the subconscious conscious. Again, this is your safe space. So, being able to externalize it, opens the door to feeling safe to share our fantasies, and getting ourselves used to practicing daydreaming as a vision strategy instead of a coping mechanism. Doing this more consciously, makes us aware of our focus to understand our needs based on what we daydream about, because we get to see our inner world as a mirror of our internal state and not just a safe space to unplug. 

But again, before externalizing it, this safe space can allow us to be present within us. To use this inner world to understand what is holding us back from authenticity and trust. Daydreaming can also serve as a place to heal by imagining the circumstances we wish to experience and then trying to understand why we can't access them in real life. Why are we so resistant to being part of these narratives outside our minds?

I mentioned in the previous entry that this unspoken shame of this "passive state" comes from the secrecy inside our minds. Once we reclaim control over the intentions behind the desires displayed in our daydreams, we can shape this inner world without judgment from ourselves, and without feeling like we are victims of our subconscious due to the patterns we think we are protecting ourselves from. 

After facing our insecurities in our mind, externalizing this practice allows us to maximize our ability to retreat without avoiding confrontation and triggering situations that enable our growth. Allowing others to access this, is like extending our capacity to nurture ideas and channel inspiration instead of isolating ourselves with the excuse of needing time alone, thinking we are recharging. This practice allows us to be open about what hurts us and how to regulate ourselves when we face scenarios that are not in our daydreams. 

To me, this externalized inner safe space allows me to reassure myself that I am capable of achieving my goals, and capable of setting boundaries if I find myself in circumstances where someone decides to be disrespectful in their short temperament, disbelief, or lack of support. I think exercising this safe space outside of ourselves is the first step in breaking the pattern of only interacting inside our minds with no action to follow through. In this way, we do not outsource our potential to be valid only when someone else recognizes it. We get to experience these desires we imagined or, at least, get used to being comfortable dealing with whatever outcome comes along. 

Coming back to the guilt of daydreaming. Not being "present" has many layers. Still, I can assure you that "guilt" is less powerful when we know our daydreams can be canvases before we want them to be a real piece of something. That's because we're willing to show this inner world to others without feeling our vulnerability is playing against us, and therefore others get to feel less excluded from us. We become more authentic, and that's because we are willing to share what is really inside our minds, and this dynamic becomes part of our boundaries. We feel less guilty because we let others know our truth, and we don't betray ourselves and our safety in the process. 

I've been my own guardian until I realized I didn't have to be so defensive because it only drained my ability to feel comfortable creating outside my mind. Being ready for battle has poisoned my ability to nurture relationships that did not align with my desires at the moment. 

The creation of a fantasy

Part of this guilt I feel with others comes from a lack of attention to the present I share with them, “the common goal.” When I daydream, I pour my attention thoroughly into the creation of a fantasy. I’m the actor, director, producer, screenwriter, extras, audience, and so on of my mental production. When someone used to understand or managed to see this within me, they’d feel I could be and do much more. It’s like I became a maximized mirror of their daydreams, the perfect match of a hidden potential they also aspired to realize. 

As a recurrent daydreamer, you can water and nurture an idea to its full potential, so it’s most likely that you also carry this attitude within relationships and projects. This sudden creativity to imagine something aspirational holds the possibility of how life “can be.” However, our attention can also give roots to the growth of projects or relationships based on our need to feel accepted because these external sources provide a false sense of security. 

Ask yourself:

Where do you pour your attention? 

What fantasies do you nurture?

What is the most recurrent theme when you daydream? 

When you idealize a project or a relationship, what are the main feelings or emotions you explore through these fantasies?

Just like when we take from what and who inspires us to fantasize, when we are not externalizing a sense of safety and continue to be a mystery, others take from our capacity to nurture potential because they’re unaware of our true intentions. So when someone wants access to this, they don’t want you, they want the spark, and you do as well because you need to feed the void of inspiration. So if we’re conscious of this blurry contrast, we can externalize that spark without feeling taken advantage of. We get to feel safe creating and sharing along with others.

What boundaries are present in your daydreams? 

Are your boundaries protecting you or protecting your fantasies? 

How invested are you in someone else’s fantasy instead of your own because you get to experience something else you’re not giving yourself? 

It is crucial to recognize this, because when we no longer feel safe to display our inner world to others and instead feel depleted from their need to take from our imagination, there comes again that need to disconnect and space out. After all, we feel they take from us instead of creating a reality that can be materialized. Whether it is what is really happening or not, this is how we might perceive the situation, and the guilt arises from feeling we need space from those we decided to co-create with.

The cycle of isolation

Suddenly, leaving someone close to you outside of the daydream it’s like taking them out of your private space without a warning or a motive. Either way, everybody gets hurt, and again, that’s when the guilt comes, because you know your boundaries are playing against your own best interests and isolating you, and you’re also hurting the other person instead of being honest with them about your feelings and insecurities. You feel guilty because you’re betraying yourself by not being true to yourself and expressing how you feel without being afraid of the consequences of doing so. 

Without self-awareness and consciousness of our inner world and inner safe space, when we encounter someone else that we feel provides a safe space for us, we don’t realize we are only sharing what’s on our minds to feel less alone in our coping mechanisms. Then, we try to separate ourselves again because we’re used to controlling this “world” alone, and so we begin a cycle:

You create a fantasy based on a need or desire - You share it to get the validation of this fantasy and feel less alone - You feel drained from externalizing a storyline you no longer have control over its narrative - You isolate yourself due to stress and feeling unsafe - You take control by cutting the bond - There comes the guilt from cutting the bond - You start fantasizing a new need or desire based on comfort and security - Repeat.

Thank you so much for reading. Tell me, what thoughts do you nurture?

[reveriehub]

My garden

my room, every drawer, every book, every tab in my browser, my photo albums, my journal. they're all part of my inner world, and as part of my inner world, they are private, only for me to share. when i let you in, you are an honored guest. when i let you in, you should feel exclusive. nobody accesses here without an invitation, and when you come in, you might or not stay for the night, but i eventually close the windows again, and the curtains are back on display. black-out as i like them. 

i dive into my world alone. i do enjoy the company, especially from respectful guests. still, this place is my garden. every sheet, every pillow I've ever cried on or kissed pretending they're somebody special. every change of script in specific memories to comfort me from a painful conversation, my blanket holding my boogers from every heartbreak, they ask for my attention. they ask me to water them, to show love and presence. 

when i leave for long, i come back, and they're dry, the dust all over the leaves. and i feel guilty for being so reckless, for abandoning my private space. 

when i stay, and my garden has flourished again, everything retakes shape and form, and you can feel the love. i feel proud but disconnected, the details have glitches, and I can't lie to myself. i leave, and nobody recognizes me outside. i've been gone for too long. i feel guilty again, but this time is for abandoning myself outside my garden. 

my room. my garden. my mind. my garden. 

when someone i despise points out my lack of presence, i grow large and defensive, sending myself back to my garden. they don't know the treasure they're missing. they're jealous of my attention. when someone i love points out my lack of presence, i feel guilty and try to reassure them of my company by taking care of them, but then i become resentful and send myself back to my garden. 

how dare they make me feel guilty for my interests? 

why do they make me feel guilty for choosing where to display my appreciation? 

what's wrong with the way i nurture myself?

while these questions run around my mind, i look around. all of the pieces in my garden start to stink, and every bright color turns opaque, no appeal, no glossiness. 

my garden mirrors my mood. i feel betrayed by my own space. 

how dare my garden turn on me? to have thunderstorms where there were showers of cherry blossoms. wet mud over benches. no place to receive comfort. 

holding on to the need to defend myself, i hurt those who knocked on my door while i’m desperately trying to protect what’s behind it. 

i hurt myself, and i hurt my garden too. 

everyone feels my lack of presence, and I disappear out of shame. i hurt myself by ripping myself out of my private space, mistaking guests for intruders, making myself choose from what side of the door i should be in, making me choose at all, and feeling chased inside my garden but not enough outside of it. not knowing when to draw the line, and again, from which side of the door should i do that. 

i feel beloved for my inner world but also guilty for having one. 

my garden can be as welcoming as deceiving. whenever i choose it above everything else, every fruit has an expiration date. and whenever i decide to be outside of it, i'm not myself. 

no inspiration, no sense of feeling. 

either way, my presence radiates my dissatisfaction. just a piece of both might make me immortal. only the idea of having a bit of both sends me back to my private space, where i get to water the what-ifs of my happiness.

i whispered to myself: 

your greatest gift is not your capacity for your inner world, it is the capacity you hold to nurture what you love, just like you water your garden. always take care of it and give yourself the first bite of that fruition. when others recognize this within you, they might not be able to help themselves. but don’t create fences for your garden, just trust yourself to be the guardian of your roots. 

To read the entry related to this poem, visit "The guilt from disconnecting"

[reveriehub]

The endless chatter in my head...

Daydreaming blockers and not wanting to give up.

Why Daydreaming?

I created this platform to have a space to dive deep, get rid of the shame and guilt of my escapist tendencies, and uncover the possible negativity surrounding the act of daydreaming.

Now, think of the word daydreaming; right now, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Daydreaming, or Reverie. Only the word sends you on a loop of hope and dreaminess, right? So why would I relate it to negativity? There are many reasons that people who daydream don't realize. And I want to talk about it from my personal experience.

The thing is, I didn't realize that I was escaping so much through my daydreams. And I think the most challenging part of facing it was coming to terms with the fact that those daydreams were not going to come true because my actions were not moving toward those scenarios. I was frozen.

To me, daydreaming is a piece of heaven in my mind, a place to feel safe. This piece of paradise has the potential of what my life could be. They hold many scenarios where I could play and replay any potential or desire within me, not necessarily something I want to attain; it's just the possibilities. That can turn negative because I sometimes don't allow myself to bring those traits within me to expose them outside of my daydreams, act on perhaps not every desire, but learn how to live with some outcomes. To own the results of my passions instead of being passive in my decision-making. I can sometimes act more inside my head while stagnant outside of it.

In the past, I always struggled with whether I would see my daydreams or the core feeling of specific fantasies becoming real or not. I would always think that daydreaming was the first step, and I still believe that, but it is more clear now. Today I want to get rid of the toxicity of daydreaming as being a passive role only. I want to see it as my best ally to get to know myself and allow myself to be creative inside my head, and believe that I can achieve creative things outside my daydreams.

So much of the endless inner talk I have about daydreaming is about being here. It's about the world, the real world. And every time I say it, I feel this contradiction within me. Daydreaming to me can also be real-life because every thought, every scenario, feels real. I made it feel real. And that's the heartbreak. Whenever I stop daydreaming about something because I realize it might have kept me from pursuing what I wanted, I have to break the dream first. I have to see that it was a fantasy instead of a possibility, being able to discern between both. But the thing is that you are invested in this dream. It's not just some random storyline that you thought about today or three days ago. You were there for years even, years building something.

You search online for the word daydreaming, and you mostly see pictures around the idea that it is so angelic, pure, and sometimes even a kind of superiority with the slogan "I'm a dreamer." When we daydream, we feel alone, but at the same time, we feel comforted in our imagination. And what I consider harmful is that sometimes we don't get to act out our fantasies with the excuse that we are dreamers. That is why I want to destroy the concept of daydreaming first before I can build it again for myself.

Daydreaming also serves to cope with reality, but more than that, with ourselves. Daydreaming beyond its innocent essence can also become a void. If you identify as a daydreamer, you know how lonely it gets. I think this unspoken shame surrounding this ideal comes from the privacy when we daydream, comes from the secrecy inside our minds, and that if we give ourselves the chance to share it, it is crucial with who we decide to share it. Sometimes we have these ideas or these experiences we imagine ourselves fulfilling, and we don't feel we can accomplish them because we might share them and feel judged, ashamed of our expectations, or "too dreamy." Oh, that's when you get depicted as naive in a way that is no longer aspirational but instead foolish and innocent. That is the kind of stigma I want to talk about on this platform.

When we have a space to open up about this, we feel less alone. We get a chance to explore our inner world, desires, and weaknesses from a place of awareness. Whatever form it takes, such a space allows us to trust that we don't have to hurt ourselves to get the answers we need from ourselves and dive within without adding more pain to the existing wounds. And that might sound cheesy to some, it sounds cheesy to me, but I think owning it allows us to make bonds with other people by bonding with ourselves first.

Right now, as I mentioned before, I want to destroy the mainstream idea of what daydreaming is. So now, I will begin with the actual definition provided by Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia. Basic but straight to the point. Internet access at its best. I will read the concept and talk about it.

“Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction”.

That's it. Straight to the point. Something crucial to get people's attention to this word. But then again, whenever I look for the term daydreaming on social media, there's mostly the illusion of being a daydreamer. Now I end up with this uneasy sensation because even though I wouldn't consider myself a victim of these ideas, I see myself as somebody who had the wrong picture of what daydreaming represents.

What I mean is that I would romanticize myself in that role. After reading and seeing images of daydreaming and dreamers, while I was growing up and my escapist tendencies were rising, something would spark inside me, validating my need to feel special and the right to identify myself in this role. These images comforted me in my lack of initiation and lack of confronting my future.

When you have this idea that daydreaming is something to aspire for but don't realize how you're doing it because you feel that you're embodying a fantasy, it's hard to face if you're escaping through it. Daydreaming is not something you can track yourself doing. It takes you in whatever moment it takes you. Every trigger is different.

To me, why I do it is the most critical question. When you daydream, you don't look cinematic or aspirational. You don't appear like a person immersed in a movie or a person that exudes a radiance about them. You are simply off, separated from the world. You drift away, not in a manic pixie dream girl way. You drift away, and you are numb. You only left your body here looking towards a straight point, and you are not here. Again, you are not here. Here? But what is here? I'll be talking about "reality" in another entry because it's a big topic to cover today.

For now, I want to stay in this daydreaming concept of stream of consciousness. Let's go over it again:

“Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction”

That is the most neutral way to describe daydreaming, not its nature, but the most straightforward concept. You can use this to awaken yourself and use this definition to question how you practice daydreaming in your life and how you own this passive role within.

Sit with me for this part…

I want to reassure myself that I don't have to give up on daydreaming. If we feel consumed by our imagination and try to stop ourselves from feeling what we don't want to feel, or on the opposite, to experience what we wish for ourselves, we don't have to give up on daydreaming. I want to declare that if we are someone who spends a lot of time doing this, we have the most incredible tool at hand, and we don't know it. We don't know it because we spend so much time unaware of our distortion of realities that we don't pay attention to the rest.

We are so busy coping that we don't realize if we are in pain from others' actions or ourselves anymore. But if we want to enjoy something that doesn't need to be controlled by our imagination, to feel safe by surprises, as scary as they may be, we don't need to give up on daydreaming. I don't plan to do that.

Even when I realized that I was daydreaming way too much, I tried something for a few days. It was to catch myself every time I'd do it and analyze the fantasy while it was happening. But being active in this function put like an ad-blocker on me. A daydreaming blocker, I call it. And I couldn't do it. I was so restless I couldn't sleep properly. I woke up, and I felt gray. I lacked color. Okay, what do I do with my day now? And that opened many options for me for sure. But I felt trapped in a box.

Daydreaming for me was getting out of the box and coming back to it, feeling I wasn't there, which is a relief and off-putting at the same time because we don't take our actions towards ourselves seriously. I didn't realize I was hurting myself the most because a certain sadness comes every few times, a sadness that reminds us that what we are imagining cannot be sustained outside of ourselves.

Sometimes when we're too tired to daydream, we realize that we can't have that hug from somebody that we so much expect or have a conversation regarding something that we don't talk about with anybody else. And after thinking that, it no longer feels like a trigger to daydream. It's just a trigger that drags you into a rabbit hole of despair.

After realizing that I was mentally blocked, I contemplated how I wasn't allowing myself to daydream. I wasn't allowing myself to do something that I naturally do, only to make me feel mature, an adult, whatever that means. However, there I was, still disconnected from my environment. That sparked something within me, and it was that giving up would not work because I was too aware that my happy place was not the real problem.

So from time to time, I would go to another type of daydream where I'd feel I wasn't losing my ability to connect to my imagination. This time was daydreaming about something specific, on purpose. That was the most challenging exercise and still is. Sometimes I want to imagine something in particular, and I have such a hard time because I realize it isn't aligned with what my subconscious craves and needs to dive in. And forcing this doesn't allow anything to come out of it. But there is a message underneath this resistance, a message we are ignoring and is asking for our attention. That's what I realized I needed to focus on, and that's how Reverie Hub was born.

I hope that whatever it is that you read here today allows you to see at least two pathways to this:

The first pathway is that you feel related to my experience, maybe question if you do the same or not. And the second pathway is that you learn about the inner world of somebody else and compare it to your inner world. Do you know somebody that does this sometimes? Someone that drifts away, someone that doesn't appear like they're present for a while.

Honestly, I just wanted to allow myself the time to talk about these things publicly. That's another daydream of mine. I'm talking about so many things in my fantasies that I never open my mouth and speak about them; therefore, I never allow myself to fail or succeed, and I feel vulnerable yet motivated to publish this. I just want to come across as somebody who wants to talk and share a personal point of view, someone who doesn't want to give up on something I find truly inspiring, the only thing that makes me feel connected to my inner me.

Until next time, thank you for reading.

Bye-bye.