Can I miss my imaginary children?

I was watching Waterloo Road on TV this evening (you have no idea how compelling it is to Sam who is 9) and there was a scene where a boy was suicidal, but saved by a teacher.

All well and good, except for some reason those kind of scenes really affect me. I get upset and tearful, for no real reason (that I can understand) and have to go off and calm myself down somewhere.

But that's not the reason for this post, although god knows it may be connected. No, the reason for the post is that it reminds me of my lost, imaginary children.

Yes, you heard me right, my lost imaginary children.

I had a serious illness a few years ago, blogged here if you are interested, and as part of my recovery I spent 10 days in Intensive Care on a ventilator under anaesthetic and when I woke up I had all these memories that were as real to me as the rest of my life. And they weren't even in the same ballpark in terms of possibility, some of them really out there (the Da Vinci house that was recreated for one party on New Years Eve and burnt to the ground that night, on purpose and that's the explicable bit). Some of those memories involved having significantly more children than I really had.

At that time, I have two children, Matt and Sam, they were 3 and 4 at the time. And in my mind I had four others This was a surprise to Elaine and everyone who knew me. Two, who I adopted after an ex girlfriend (imaginary of course, and what's wrong with imaginary girlfriends huh) committed suicide and asked me to adopt them, and two others who I adopted after rescuing them many years ago from a pretty strange set of circumstances in Scotland.

Whatever. What is strange is that I really, really miss them. They don't exist, they never existed, they only exist in my mind (and over time they dim and fade out), yet I miss them. I don't want other children, I'm so happy with the ones I have, but I bizarrely miss the one's I have in some sense lost. I don't do it all the time, but maybe when I am emotional I lose the sense of family and community that they kind of brought with them.

Anyway, at the end of the day I miss them and wish they were still here.

Posted via email from james downes' preposterous nonsense