From my first year of University.
Imagination is my favourite drug. Back in the day you couldn't go anywhere without someone slipping you a lovely little dose. It was an extremely social drug, so social that it was publically endorsed in primary schools. I've taken my dose religiously for 28 years and not one dose have I missed. Hell I'm taking it right now, it helps me write you see, makes the words visible before the hit the page. When I was younger I'd take it with my brother. If we had some spare time to kill before dinner it was the perfect remedy. We'd heat it up, close our eyes and inhale it. Then we'd be transported, my brother and I would no longer be two siblings playing in a room, we were now two fishermen on a miniscule white boat with an upper fishing deck. We were in shark infested waters, a risk we had to accept if we wanted to capture the legendary El Zetsubo Anguila, an eel of mythical origins. I dared to fish on the lower deck, feeling something large pulling at my fishing rod. This could be it, I thought, this could be the day I make the best catch of my life, the day I have been waiting for. I climb downwards, my younger brother cautiously following after. He'd warn me about the sharks, how they had devoured many other fishermen, ripped them all to pieces within seconds and kept swimming their sinister circles within the dark azure abyss. I'd shrug off these fears as I reeled in my catch, 100 metres from me now. I could feel it wriggling, squirming, fighting to get away from me. Not today, I thought as I leant further off the edge of our vessel. My brother had long since abandoned his own line and grabbed onto me, pulling me away from my catch. I batted him away, claiming to be in control of the situation.
How wrong was I?
There was a terrible heave on the other side of my line and it dragged me into the dark depths. The last thing I heard was my brother screaming as thirty sharks surged towards me without hesitation just as my mum called my brother and I down for dinner. The furniture would morph back, I would be laying in the centre of a brown carpet, my brother hanging off of his bunk bed reaching towards me before we both run downstairs.
When I turned eleven, imagination was banned from schools, two new drugs called maturity and responsibility were introduced to my generation. Most people lapped them up, we were in big school now, we didn't take the same soft drugs as the little kids. I couldn't give up imagination as easily as the other kids. For the first few years there was a resistance, we'd play games and take imagination during lunch and between lessons but once we hit thirteen it was condemned further. No one acknowledged imagination anymore, and imagination takers were wasting everyone's time. You couldn't openly take it anymore, the few of us that were holding onto our imagination addiction were the kids who weren't in on the days M&R were handed out. The benefits of taking imagination was that we could pretend that we had our M&R dose, and no one would be wiser, so long as you didn't openly voice your discontent. We'd pretend to be high on M&R whilst knowing that the warm familiarity of imagination waited for us back home. Passing through school on this pretense was easy, though ultimately saddening. When my brother moved up and dropped the addiction we shared I contemplated giving up all together. Harder drugs like family, work, love, hate, contributing to society, were all the rage now and being forced down my throat. Even now the words are becoming less visible, they're just words.
No one was taking imagination anymore. Now I am condemned as junkie living in the past. My kids were offered no drugs at school, any stimulation they received was from an interactive screen. Their father and I would argue about this a lot. Do I let them follow society of give them part of my stash? There isn't enough in my stash for three of us, and its not like either of them have any interest in it, one wants to be a midwife, the other a psychoanalyst. Apparently I should be proud.Proud of my cold, contributing to society, technology ruled children! Its an sentence to make any mother proud.
I cling to my addiction, the only lifeline I have left. The only escape from this well managed world, an escape that society had encouraged but attempted to control. I stare at my stash, its slowly decreasing, I have to manage my doses and conserve my resources. When it runs out... Oh God when it runs out what will I do? I can't live off those other drugs, I can't go cold turkey. I need this. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. I need it. I fucking need it. I fucking need it. I fucking need my dose of imagination. Can't they see what they've done? They implemented this and then cut me off. Where is my support now? I can't deal without it! It's all I have left please! Where is my support group who pretend to care? I fucking need my dose. I need it . Give me more. I need it! I need it, because this world is a piece of shit without it.
