A Wonderful Fantasy to My Intrusive Reality

I always had an "overactive imagination" growing up. I loved playing pretend, I loved daydreaming land being someone else, being someplace else; life just seemed more fun that way. Except I never really grew out of playing "pretend". It took over my life up until was I was twenty-two, for fourteen years.

When I got into middle school was when my game of pretending took a whole new meaning. I needed a place of escape but I had none, physically but in my mind, however, I had plenty but at the time this wasn't a conscious choice I made. I daydreamed when life became too stressful for me when I wanted to be away from my bullies or from the discomforts of my home life; I even had a world I'd go for each they were never the same. The scenarios and worlds, I'd create would be my most idealized versions of myself of the friends I wanted, the world I wanted to live in at that current moment. My love for anime and cartoons served as an expansion of my daydreamed world map; even the characters from my favorite Y/A novels had faces. All my favorite characters from either anime, cartoons, or novels had their own little town and I lived among them. It was a happier life even though I was very well aware that daydreams weren't real no matter how real they felt.

It took several episodes of me zoning out and coming back out of it to start gaining control of my daydreams. The more intense they got the easier it was for me to choose when I would daydream and where. Because of all the stress, I was under it was easy to slip into the daydream all I needed was the right music and space to pace. I'd get really agitated if my daydreams were interrupted or if I felt the urge to pace and daydream but couldn't because I was outside or had company around. Although my daydreaming made me happy I was also very disheartened by how much time I devoted to my alternative life in my daydreams than my reality.

I often felt like there was something wrong with me so it eventually became my embarrassing secret; I never told anybody about it for years. I was afraid of what people would think of me, especially those closest to me. But, after years of this behavior, I wondered what it was, that it could be some kind of disorder so instead of getting a therapist I did what everyone does, and Googled it. To my surprise, my odd behavior was more actually more common than I anticipated. It's called maladaptive daydreaming and it's a psychiatric condition that causes intense daydreaming. It's intrusive on a person's daily life and can be triggered. This can be anyone whether it's a person who suffers from anxiety and depression-like myself or any other mental disorder or your average joe.

What I lacked, in reality, I gained in the world of my fantasies and I had all the control over it but, that was, at least to me the only upside to it. As the years went by the time was immersed into my daydreams turned into my LIFE 24/7-24 hours a day. I'd even choose my daydreams over basic human necessities like eating or using the bathroom. My daydreaming consumed my life and that's because of my depression from the very start daydreaming was my coping mechanism it didn't matter that I knew they weren't real. Once I realized that it was a very hard lifestyle to change and took me several years to break out of the. cycle.

I had plenty of slip-ups of weeks not daydreaming then relapsing again. That repeated itself until I got a good grasp on myself and my depression that was just two years ago when I turned twenty-two. Maladaptive daydreaming is not something that can be "cured" but can be handled and controlled more if you occupy your mind with something else, with a hobby or mediating. It's not in itself inherently bad daydreaming is a natural occurrence and should be an enjoyable past time but it can become an issue if you're not careful.

Although I do still feel the urge to daydream when I'm stressed out I don't miss it but I don't hate it either. It's nice to have a place to travel while you're staring blankly at a wall or pacing back and forth in your room but life is out there and that's where I need to be.