This clip from the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas about Charles Dickens as he writes A Christmas Carol is a great portrayal of what it is like to have characters living inside of your mind.

Though this scene is more dramatic than what I experience, I can attest that I have characters living around me. Some of these characters are like lifelong friends, and when they are done telling their stories and move on, I mourn their absences like I would a loved one. There are also characters that haunt me. Characters that give me nightmares, and every time they speak, they send shivers up my spine. People may say I have an overactive imagination, but I say, I have the mind of an artist: creative and wild.

When I was little, I had imaginary friends I talked with often to entertain myself. I was the student teachers placed in a desk far away from other classmates because I refused to pay attention. I have ADHD, and though I have struggled with attention my entire life, I feel it was something else that captivated my mind. I would invent stories about twisted trees holding fairy gardens that could only be accessed by an ancient key, and to find this magical key, I had to go on a quest in my backyard. These were the stories I told myself as I walked home from elementary school in the second grade. Stories reminiscent of my favorite movie at the time, The Neverending Story.

As a child, my family dismissed my active imagination, and it often got me into trouble. When I was supposed to do a chore, I always turned it into an epic adventure, and if an adult called for me, I seldom heard them. I loved the world I built inside of my head. A world where I was a heroine. A world where magic was real, and evil always succumbed to good. A world so far removed from my childhood.

Now that I am an adult, I can look back on this brave little girl with fondness. She dared to tell stories, even when she was labeled as strange or weird. She held lands within her mind that most people could never fathom, and yet, they were her sanctuaries. When children were mean, as they often are, she would invent her own friends. When adults wanted her to get her head out of the clouds, as they often do, she would nod her head all the while flying through the sky on a reading rainbow. She chose stories, and she still does.

Characters are my gift. They whisper words I fear to say. They speak unspeakable truths the world needs to hear. They are portraits painted in words of who we really are and who we long to become. Without characters, without stories, really, we are nothing more than boring. I don’t know about you, but I am grateful for characters, even the ones that terrify me. For they are, and have always been, my greatest friends of all.