Time is soft there

I got a chance to read a sampling from the upcoming Don Miller book. There was a sentence in the chapters I read that was as follows:

What is so sexy about a life of fantasy is its greasy subtext, namely, that life can be experienced cheap and easy.

When I originally saw the title sentence: Time was soft there; I had a totally different idea of what I wanted to write about based on that phrase. I wanted to talk about a life that was commitment light, or more specifically, life that was lightly tethered to only a few things. I've thought for a few days about different times in my life when time was soft, unimportant even. When we were all in the Keys this past winter, time was very soft. Time was almost suspended in a sense. We slept when we were tired, we awoke when our eyes opened. We ate when we were hungry, swam lazily, played in the sand, strolled down the street and just existed with each other.
Each time I stayed with a host family in France, in 95 and 97, time was soft there. A lot of time in Europe is soft to me. It's just more enjoyment and relationally focused, not so much the run run run that I'm so accustomed to in my every day walking around life.

I wrote down these two things on a post it note, to remember to write about later. I talked to Bobbie tonight after dinner about the Time was soft thoughts even. But when I got home...when I pulled the post it note out of the heap of mess on my sofa to ruminate on...I saw them together and realized the connection, at least for me.

I've joked before on here, or on a survey somewhere about this fantastical life that happens in my head. It's funny, it's entertaining, but it's true. I tend to have an entire fictional dialogue going on in my head almost all the time. I find myself lost in the shower in the morning, daydreaming, zoning out, whatever you want to call it. But it's not about reality. There are multiple occasions in a day in which I will have entire two sided conversations with people in my head. I've joked that I talk to myself a lot, but I do.
One of my many memories of ellenjane is that she used to talk to herself a lot. She was very hard of hearing, nearly deaf, so often she didn't realize that she could be heard. Mom has said that she was talking to her brothers and sisters that had died, but I really wonder. One of the things that I wish so deeply it's part of every breath is that I wasn't a silly 15 year old when she died. I wish I was old enough to want to know her more then I did. I wish I was able to talk to her like I did with Gma in my 20s.
I do that a lot. I have conversations with strangers, with friends, with family members. With people that I don't speak to anymore, people that have long passed through my life and are wandering around in their own soft time.
Why?
Why is it that I do this? I can see sometimes, that it is an outlet for me to be sassier then I feel I should be, other times I say really snarky hateful things to people that I know I can't, won't, shouldn't say those things to in real life....grace and love admonish that sort of thing and all.
The other times, I mean...there's so many different conversations that I have, it's like a second life happening just below the surface in my mind. Fantastical really.

Time is soft there. There are no consequences. I'm not socially awkward there. I often get so lost in that second world that I have occasionally gotten it confused with reality. I've found myself fighting anger towards someone because of a conversation that didn't really exist or happen. Sometimes...it's enough to make me think I'm outright crazy.
But it's very sexy, very alluring to me. Because it's cheap and easy.
When time goes soft I can be witty and entertaining, funny and irreverent. I weigh whatever I want and am not encumbered by this body that I'm losing control of, I say the right thing, I'm no longer socially awkward. When time is soft I am fully known. But when time is soft, I am fully known by no one that is really there.

It ebbs and flows, and some days it's worse then others. I've taken to literally shaking my head to stop the conversations. But with the rest of this evolution of my heart, it's a hard break up. These conversations that often comfort me are really only further reasons to hide from conversations in real life, they are merely reasons for bravery to end at my front door.
I don't really have any answers, and I think that's ok. All I'm trying to do is crawl out of the greasy subtext and into a costly, difficult, and extravagant life.