I'm scared of my own imagination.
A childhood memory reminds me that it's okay to dream--even when it's scary.
Hi. I’m Katie. This newsletter is a place for the woo curious to explore spirituality, culture, and humanity in an intersectional way. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week…1
Last week, I stood next to a fence and watched the lolling tongue of my new friend Mikael’s dog, Wheezy, as she licked her paws lazily in the morning sun. Mikael and I had just finished a private yoga session, and we were chatting about, well, everything, as tends to happen when I am with someone as interesting as she is.
As we talked, bees floated in and out of a nearby trellis covered with the thick vines of an ornamental grape plant. The conversation meandered towards the topic of moving, which seems to be all I can think about these days.
Mikael told me that, before arriving in St. Louis, she and her partner had sold most of their things and had lived in a van. She said it breezily, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to offload all of your worldly possessions, give the middle finger to conventionality and ride off into the sunset in a Winnebago.
“It makes life so much more meaningful when you live differently,” she told me. “It’s possible.”
I was fascinated. Here I was, bemoaning my own impending move and how difficult it seemed to imagine a scenario where I would be able to effortlessly curate my belongings, pack up my two cats, and walk into my new life on a small tropical island. I wondered, often, if I was delusional to even consider an alternative path, one that moved me away from the conventionality of the place I have always known.
Yet Mikael made it sound so easy to imagine something…different. After all, she had done something different many times. And she was still here, standing next to me in the Missouri humidity, telling me that yes, it was possible to think much bigger than the narrow story I had constructed for myself.
I looked at Wheezy, who was now snoring loudly on the sun-warmed concrete, and I wondered when my world had gotten so small. When had it gotten so difficult to turn my head, look around me, and let myself truly see all 360 degrees of life?
When had I become so afraid of my own imagination?
The first time my imagination got me in trouble, I was three and convinced that the light on my bedroom ceiling was talking to me.
I was afraid of the dark when I was a child. Each night, after my parents kissed my cheek and tucked my hot air balloon baby blanket tightly around my body, I dreaded the moment that the light would leave the room. Because when the world was dark, my imagination had unfettered freedom to go where it wished.
And most of the time, it chose to run towards fear.
Every creak of the settling house was the tiptoe of a masked villain, ready to steal Beezabuh2, my beloved stuffed rabbit, out of my hands. Every tap on the glass window panes was the long-nailed hand of a witch, desperate to spirit me out of my bed and to a waiting cauldron.
Each night, after the house grew quiet, I lay in my bed as if it were a coffin, arms stiffly pressed to my sides and my gaze fixed on the ceiling. I refused to move, believing that fear couldn’t find me if I stayed still.
It didn’t work.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, shapes began to appear at the edges of my vision. I refused to look at the twisting shadows dancing across the walls or the empty eyes of the window, a portal into terror. Instead, I chose to stare hard at the ceiling—specifically, at the diamond-shaped light fixture that I knew, with one flick of a switch, held the power to wipe away all of the scary things in my room.
I pointed a finger at my imagination and told it to stay. I pinned it on the ceiling and forced it to stay with what was small and safe and known.
It didn’t work.
I know now as an adult what I didn’t at three: imaginations don’t tend to listen well. As I stared, the innocuous light transformed into an angular mouth that opened and closed grotesquely, whispering my name, over and over again. I lay there, paralyzed in fear by the now-spiraling story that my mind was spitting out like an endless receipt.
The light was not a light at all. It was a demon, an alien, a foreign creature. I named it, inexplicably, The Crack. My fevered imagination told me that The Crack was here to possess me and everyone else I loved. In fact, perhaps my parents were already victims, evidenced by their confusion when I eventually came flying out of my bedroom, crying about the light, of all things.
Recounting this story as an adult is equal parts funny and endearing—after all, the idea of a benign, frosted-glass light fixture from the ‘90s secretly being a soul-sucking demon seems like a failed pitch for a Kids in the Hall sketch. I’ve blamed the origin of The Crack on my brother, who swears up and down that he did not say my name in the creepiest possible voice because he knew my imagination would do the rest.
But when I was three, The Crack was real. Everything my imagination dreamed up was real. And more often than not, it was scary.
It was better to think small. It was safer that way.
31 years later, I am still thinking small.
I say goodbye to Mikael and begin to drive home. My mind is racing as I have one of those lightbulb moments where I suddenly “get” what I’m supposed to understand about this part of my life. I realize that my anxiety and fear have worked in tandem to confine my endless imagination to a small, known space—sort of like an orca being kept in a tank nothing like the expansive ocean it’s meant to be in.
This is not to say that my life has been wholly unimaginative. I have traveled, I have created, and I have dreamed—a little. Even trapped orcas can do beautiful flips and toss water droplets into the air as they arch their glossy backs over their tiny pools.
But eventually, they bump their heads against the concrete walls of the too-small space they are held in. They swim to one end, turn around, and swim to the other end. Over and over again. When restricted, it becomes impossible to dream of a wild, breathing ocean, filled to the brim with beauty and terror and, most of all, the unknown.
As I drive, I think about my tightly-confined 20s, when it was easy to simply stare at the ceiling, so to speak: to fix my gaze on the things that society told me were the safest. Marriage, a house, a traditional career. I stared at these things so hard, hoping that locking my eyes on the prize would keep my muttering, chaotic imagination at bay.
But eventually, despite my attempts to hold them in place, the safest parts of life turned scary and broke apart. My marriage crumbled. My house was sold. My job is now no more. The adult version of The Crack is a lot less funny and just as scary—but it still has a lot to say to me.
I am home now. I park my car, open the door to my apartment and toss my keys on the wicker end table in the same way I always do.
It is quiet. The refrigerator hums. My cat runs his claws over his scratching post. I lie down on my couch and stare at the ceiling.
Underneath the loud quiet of my home, I hear my name whispered seductively, that same old siren song calling me towards the impossible, the fantastical, the fearful parts of life. This time, I push past the fear and listen to my imagination.
It repeats my name like a mantra, reminding me that no matter how far I let my imagination take me, I will still be here. It tells me that it’s okay to look somewhere else, far beyond St. Louis, beyond St. Croix even. It tells me to look up at the stars, to let my imagination build my spirituality up to new heights, and to trust that the ground will still be there to catch me when it’s time to turn the light back on.
I close my eyes and enter the darkness of my mind. My imagination greets me like an old friend.
And I begin to dream big.
What are you dreaming of these days? Are you, too, the owner of an overactive imagination that you’ve tried to lock down? Tell me all about it.
✨Cards for Humanity: ✨ The Page of Cups
Whether you’re into tarot or not, here’s a few things to consider about this weird thing called life.
For such a dandily-dressed fellow whose hat looks a whole lot like a fish, The Page of Cups looks pretty uncomfortable with the fact that he has a literal fish in the cup that he holds. In fact, he doesn’t seem to want to make eye contact with his scaly friend at all—his gaze is sort of like mine when I let my eyes glaze over after watching a few too many episodes of Stranger Things in a row.
Truth be told, I think most people would be surprised if a fish popped up in a place as unexpected as a drinking cup. After all, the cup itself is much too small for such a lively creature to spend much time in. I’d like to imagine that the next frame involves a catch and release sort of situation: all the Page needs to do is turn around and return the fish to the wild, expansive ocean that is mere steps away from where he currently is.
It is significant that the Page does have his back turned to the ocean—as an archetypal court card in the suit most connected with the element of water, the Page of Cups is naturally drawn towards the emotional waves that create a home for his imagination, represented by that odd little fish that peeks out at him. But because of his youthful inexperience, he’s not really sure how to handle the whole situation. Is it better to keep the fish where he can see him, safely sequestered in his (admittedly too small) cup? Or does he dare to dream a little bigger and let the fish swim freely to the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean?
When the Page of Cups appears in a reading, the energy he brings is that of curiosity, imagination, and the ability to dream…even when it’s hard to look his dreams right in the eye and know exactly what to do with them. It is likely that you, if you are represented by the Page, are being called to look more closely at a message that is coming through to you courtesy of your imagination. And it’s dying to be set free and allowed to grow into something big and unconventional and different than the small little slice of life you’ve been looking at so far.
What you discover once you start to dream may, in fact, be scary. If the Page does choose to let the fish go, he may have to discard some of the parts of his life that he held closely (those fancy clothes aren’t exactly suited to deep sea diving). The Page is young—he is still learning to navigate the power and intensity of his ability to imagine and dream.
But he is willing to try. Sometimes, it’s scarier to choose to stay small than it is to walk into the water of possibility.
✨Prompts | The Page of Cups✨
Meditate. Journal. Pull some cards.
☀️ If you let your imagination run wild, what direction would it go?
☀️ What limits have you placed on your ability to dream? What would remove them?
☀️ What could you discover by looking closely at the unexpected moments in life?
☀️ Where would fear lead you if you listened to it closely?
✨Weekly Mantra✨
Write it down. Say it out loud. Share it with a friend.
I am unafraid to dream.
I had my wisdom teeth taken out on Monday, so I hope this newsletter makes sense. As I type this in my drug-addled state, I’m not so sure.
In perhaps the most “raised in the Baptist church” move possible, I named my rabbit after the literal devil (Beelzebub) but couldn’t quite say it right. Aww?
Very useful explication of the Page of Cups. Thank you. I hope your mouth heals up well. Lots of salt water rinsing helps.