The weirdest things trigger my suddenly involuntary re-entry into the fantasy world. I feel like I need to examine it and I just don't need to worry about it.
It feels normal to me, at this point. I've always had it. I learned at a very young age, less than two years old, to entertain myself with stories. Maybe boredom from neglect? The stories were so elaborate that I knew they had really happened. I could see them with my own eyes and I had no idea I was imagining them.
My understanding is that that's pretty normal for children, so it doesn't bother me.
I also learned to zone out when my dad would attack or yell. It was extremely easy, because I wasn't allowed to fight back or react anyway. So. Distractions that were a bit dissociative, no big deal.
Still not a bad thing.
I also wrote books that were dramatic and often tragic but with happy endings. Frequently involving orphans and people being turned into the wrong species, but often just about what clowns are like and what cats do. Pretty normal, maybe not so trauma-induced, because there's nothing wrong with a brain that's always leaned toward being a creative author. It's not weird.
I got really, really into it around the age of ten, when I started a sexual relationship with a pedophile and my mom was dying (because of my dad) and my aunt who I think abused her kids sexually started living with us.
It was a full story with an amazing amount of detail to the world, language, etc. I've had several of those, and I don't consider them to be bad. I know most authors don't have it, but some of the more well known authors do "see" scene vividly, so, it's whatever.
I played out these stories before the rapes happened. Some kids accused me of lying because they didn't understand how seriously I was taking the stories. Luckily I was known as honest otherwise, and adults were able to back me up to other kids. Other kids could tell what was real and what wasn't, so any games we played relating to my stories weren't bad things. Kids who really loved them became close friends.
Unusual, but all kids can be unusual. Not a bad thing.
It wasn't until 2008 when I became "friends" with B that I had to start pretending that they were real. Or face very serious threats. That's what messed me up the most, I think.
I was so ashamed that not even my mom knows.
I'm so glad I finally told her it wasn't real. I thought it would mess me up, and I thought it would destroy B, because of the threats she had made.
Luckily, it turns out that B was trying to control my mind, my story, and wanted me to be afraid of "telling the truth." She made it our boundary, that if it wasn't real, she'd cut me off in one way or another. She'd treat me like shit.
One time there was a full year where she didn't "believe" in it, because I had told her that I reality, I wasn't her mom.
My plan had been to say that none of it had been real.
I had to start backtracking and saying that half of it was true. I had started to love my characters, a lot. And she was threatening me. She was acting insane. I viewed myself as "brave enough to tell the truth" because of how she acted, like it was literally the end of the world.
During the year, I kept calling every night, obediently. We'd usually talk about her. She felt guilty about that, but I assured her it was okay. She needed help. She never brought up H or any other fictional character.
A year later, my pain suddenly got better. I realized that the characters were all mine again. I kept hearing "I'm free, I'm free!" because that's what I was telling myself.
Literally a week or so after that, she suddenly asked me again if it was all REALLY real.
I said it was.. i had been trained, by that point. And I was afraid. Afraid she'd hate me for being a liar (though my adult brain, thankfully, knows better), afraid she'd start threatening my life or her own life again.
I was terrified.
She insisted that I could REALLY tell her anything. She told me that I didn't need to be afraid because she had handled it for a year, just fine. She had stayed my friend for that year, which proved that she wasn't "using me," as she said herself. She used me as a tool to talk to them, though. That was previously the point of the friendship.
She also told me that if it wasn't real, she'd be fine. She played video games with characters she also wanted to be real, and could accept that her life wasn't as cool as it was in her games.
I thought she was tricking me, testing me. I knew that if I did admit that I had lied, that something bad would happen. I know I was right, too. Because she does not forgive. She holds grudges and tells you that she hates what you were one year. Hated everything about you. Can't EVER trust you again, will NEVER get over what you did to her.
She'd already done that to me, and I watched her do it to just about everyone I knew. She was by now my only friend, because she had forced me to cut off talking to my other friends. She would cut herself in front of me and have insanely dramatic meltdowns, complete with the loudest sobbing ever heard (like that of a young child's) if I mentioned having ever had a friend, or a boyfriend.
Once she felt so bad that she almost cut herself, because I didn't make a quiz about my likes and dislikes online easy enough... because she didn't know every detail of my life.
She was at once entirely innocent and in need of protection, and subconsciously in need of control of SOMETHING.
I hate myself for having not been strong enough to just tell her it wasn't real. I hate myself for not helping her because she was clearly just as distressed as I was. She NEEDED me, and even know I know I was like 14 maybe, too young to actually be what she needed...
It really bothers me.
I'm very sure she didn't even realize what she was doing. She was a child too. That's the hardest part for me. And then it continued until I was 22. Not a real adult, but legally an adult.
But going into the fantasy world is still easy and often involuntary for me now. Because it went from being a survival method... to being something that I NEEDED to survive.
But, the daydreaming itself doesn't really bother me. I remember a time when it prevented me from getting work done. It would prevent me from going home, and it would be the WORST to have to be too still or too busy.
I remember being able to lay for hours, just in my fantasy world. It was nice, though a bit destructive. But not directly. I just needed to learn to control it. I thought most authors thought like that.
My twin brother even had it for a short while. He stopped in high school.
I've had to remind myself that even if it was maladaptive daydreaming, it wasn't something I was ever supposed to become THAT ashamed of.
Maybe it would have been easier if I hadn't been emotionally neglected as a teenager, despite my dad being kicked out. And banned from us.
Or if literally any of the adults I had asked for help from had actually helped me.
But I need to accept that it wasn't my fault. I don't really blame B either, not for that. I blame her for her awful behavior, but am aware that she couldn't control herself and needed an adult figure in her life who could actually help. And I was not an adult. That's why it was so easy for her to think I was...
To the point of literally believing I was her mom, and finding all sorts of evidence for it.
Which was fun until it turned out not to be...
It's still very confusing, and I'm so so sad that I wont contact her to help her get through it, but honestly she's been dangerous to me for a long time. I can hope and even pray that she gets better and moves on with a decent life. And know that what happened was not my fault. Her unhealthy life, even if it wasn't her fault, is also not my responsibility.
I spent years straight of having no ability to heal myself, because I was literally her therapist. At age 13 and on, and later on for a full year with absolutely no boundaries in 2016.
Yet I am proud of how much she improved, and sincerely hope she continues with the skills I taught her.
And I made it clear that I was not a liscenced person and I wanted her to become brave enough to go to one. I hope she does.
