Author's Notes: This is a piece I wrote shortly after watching Finding Neverland. It is a group of entries from Peter's journal, as he desperately searches for his mother, and for James's Neverland.
I've tried. I've wondered the path inside my head so many times. Searching for her, and for the place in which she lies. He knows where she is and how to get there and it saddens me that he can see what I cannot. I search and I search, I write and I write, turning page after page, looking for any trace of her. And all I find, all I come up with at the end of the day, is hands smudged with ink, and words that run into each other with no desire to stop.
What makes it even harder to bear is that I know I saw her that day. When I sat on his bench and he told me to look inside my imagination, and inside these damned pages, I found her sitting in his Neverland. And now, she's gone. Or rather, Neverland has gone. She is still there, but the place I search for has disappeared from these pages, and I don't know how to get it back.
He knows. I watch him sometimes when he writes and I see the flashes on his face. For a brief second his eyes will close, he seems lost, and then, a calm over takes him and I know he has made it to Neverland. To her. When he tells Michael, George and Jack that he has been to Neverland that day, they laugh and smile and ask him to tell them how the pirates and the indians and the fairies are. He tells them of course, but as he does I feel his eyes bore into me, knowing that inside I grieve for the place called Neverland, for inside my head, it has died. And I have lost her.
I wonder sometimes if it has all been a dream. I wish wildly that it is all a dream. But then, with little irony, I realise that it because I have lost the ability to dream, that I feel so lost and lonely and helpless. The master of Neverland, as I have come to think of him, told me – still tells me – that if I imagine, if I believe, then I will find the place I so desperately seek. And I do imagine. All day I sit and remember what I saw the first – and only – time that I entered the place I long to be. But, I think that is were my problem lies. I am not imagining, I am recalling. I cannot imagine. I do not know what it is I am meant to be imagining. All I know is that I need to see her again. And the only way to do that is to enter Neverland. And here, is where the problem starts, and my words begin to circle. I think that this is pointless. I feel that I have lost her. I know what it is I have to do, but I don't know how to do it. Imagine, he says. I can't, I feel like screaming back.
She is dead. Both in the world around me, and in my head. I have lost her for ever, while he still sees her every day in his bloody Neverland. Imagination is for children, and I, am sick of being a child. He can spend his days imagining is that's what the he wants; he can try to be his bloody peter pan. But I am going to live in the real world. I am abandoning this damned search and realizing the truth; Imagination, is for fools.
Author's Note 2: Thanks for reading, reviews are welcome of course. And just in case anyone is a bit confused;
The point of view of this is Peter, writing his journal.
'He' is J.M.Barrie.
and 'She' is of course, his mother.
