Candy Land

On the way to taking my son to work early this afternoon, taking the same route we do each and every Tuesday and Thursday. The traffic steady and predictable, the lanes clean and pleasant on this sunny early May day, but also hypnotic and numbing. Suddenly, the game Candy Land came to my mind. The game where, as the rules explain, "the players never have to make choices, just follow directions". This seemed to mirror my mindset today, as I not just emotionally, but also intellectually, felt controlled, programmed to just follow the routine road to where I needed to take my son. Visually, the cars started looking like toy cars to me, on a toy track, like a life sized set of the game Candy Land. That the game is a game designed for small children only reinforced the emotional helplessness I was feeling. Yet, as the imagery connected to my reverie was tied to very pleasant memories of playing the sweet board game with my son and his friends when they were so very young, there was a certain amount of comfort, not unlike the drowsiness before a nap, that filled the visual fantasy. I was just in this large cardboard game, on this track, with these life size toy cars, all bright and shiny, along these pleasant streets with pleasant buildings, in my pleasant toy car. There was an innocence to the delusion that held at bay some of the hidden shadow thoughts of how a different angle to this emotional construct would be a nightmare in broad day light. A lament of disconnect, of a survival story having to try too hard to make sense of what is left of its dignity, where the mechanics, like putting clothes on a skeleton, are the only thing that make me still believe I am not in some play gone wrong, but part of a life that will break free from the wicked witch's spell. A spell brought on by the disintegration of my family and its shattering effect on my sense of identity and purpose. I am on that recovery road, cautiously, slowly, and today is another one of those days where the spell's strong pull was all too close and I had to make a concerted effort to break its hold. I got home, took a deep breath of the sweet spring air, and smiled. My parked red car had stopped looking like a toy car, now that it was sitting in our driveway. The spell was broken, for one more day.