User blog:Cartoonprincess/Somnium: Chapter 1 Phasing Out of the Ordinary

''' NOTE : Yep, it's finally up! This is more of an introductory chapter. It's based on an actual experience I had recently. It's also extremely corny, so be warned. xD'''

''Somnium ''

Chapter 1: Phasing out of the ordinary

           It had started out as a typical Sunday evening for Isabel Garcia. She chatted with her online friends, had dinner, and spent the rest of the night listening to music in her bedroom. Not feeling particularly inspired, she turned the music off after a half-hour or so. As she lay wide awake in her bed, as always, her mind began to wander.

           Her thoughts brought her back to the better days when she was younger and more creatively fertile. Back then, as soon as the TV flashed on, she immediately entered a world where anything was possible and she could be anyone she wanted to be. She could create an original character for a show after watching just one episode and then entertain herself for hours, days and months on end, creating scenarios for the characters and acting them out in her head.

Music was another major trigger for her. The second a tune started to blast through her eardrums, it inspired her to create plotlines and characters at an exhilarating rate. A common theme she imagined was everyone spontaneously breaking into dance along with the music, with her in the center, enjoying it all and even sometimes singing the lead.

Constantly living in this fantasy world meant constantly being distracted. Isabel was well aware that her behavior wasn’t normal and for that reason, she withdrew and became very shy. She always felt out of place in the real world, and never quite felt like she fit in. To her, it was more fun to seclude herself in her own mind than it was to spend time with actual people. In fact, real people generally annoyed her. Whenever Isabel shut herself from the real world, she knew she could be whoever she wanted to be, and more importantly, whoever she wasn’t in real life.

However, on that fateful day she joined the iCarly wiki, her life was changed forever. Suddenly, she had become the person she had always wanted to be. Under the alias Cartoonprincess, all her true personality traits that she had previously been scared to show the public had come to the surface. She was bold, she was sassy, she was hyper, she was stubborn, she was fun-loving, she was insane; but even more incredible was the fact that this measly online community had sparked emotions within her that she didn’t even know she had. All of a sudden, she knew what it was like to feel true compassion and empathy, and for the first time in her life, she knew what it was like care deeply about others and was able to trust them with a lot of personal matters. She was essentially portraying the same character she had been portraying all along in her daydreams, only now she was actually interacting with real people. Cartoonprincess quickly became her new alter ego. It was because of all this that she developed a strong emotional attachment and soon after, addiction to the wiki. This all took her fantasy world to a whole new level, as she now had an intense desire to meet and be with them.

Lately, however, it seemed as though her imagination had hit a dead end. Ideas and scenarios weren’t coming to her as easily, and it was gradually becoming more and more of a struggle for her to come up with new characters. She was going off to college next year, and the idea of not being a kid anymore and having to let go of all her youth and innocence depressed her. The nostalgia was almost too much for her to bear and she fell into a quiet despair.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 200%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As the full moon rose and shined through her curtain that night, the one thing she wanted more desperately than anything was for her fantasy world to be real.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 200%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Isabel lay completely still in her bed. She took calm, deep breaths as she stared intently at the ceiling. Maybe if she completely cleared her mind, the next time she opened her eyes, she would really be in her fantasy world.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">''<span style="line-height: 200%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It’s worth a try. ''<span style="line-height: 200%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> She thought.