Dream

 I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life. My worst sorrows have evaporated when I've opened the window on to the street of my dreams and forgotten myself in what I saw there.

  I've never aspired to be more than a dreamer. I paid no attention to those who spoke to me of living. I've always belonged to what isn't' where I am and to what I could never be. Whatever isn't mine, no matter how base, has always had poetry for me. . . .

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 92

This passage brings up so many memories and so many emotions. One of the most obvious is my Dad famous/infamous judgment that I "was never there" when I was growing up. He didn't mean physically, but rather intellectually or maybe emotionally. In that he's probably correct. I was always someplace else, lost in a dream. It meant that I didn't complain much or involve myself in active confrontation, but it also meant that I didn't pay that much attention to what was happening around me in the family. Sadly, it also tends to explain why I'm not "there" now.