You are the only people I've talked to about
any of this.
M is 49 years old.
For the most part, she lives a pretty predictable
middle-class life:
ranch house in the suburbs,
soccer-playing son, color-coordinated jewelry.
But she wanted to talk to someone about her
other life.
She says it began innocently
when she was about 7 or 8,
on the red swingset in her childhood backyard.
Daydreaming.
“So now here we are in a space adventure.”
Imagining herself as part of her favorite
cartoons.
“We’re trying to get the bad guys …
hostile alien species … Oh no!
There’s a black hole that’s gonna suck
us in
and we’re all going to die!
Trying to save Earth …”
It just felt good.
She says these loyal friends filled her up,
gave her understanding,
closeness, adventure.
And they followed her everywhere.
“We accidentally zap back …
We’re not where we’re supposed to be …
Are we going to pollute the timeline?
How much can we reveal?”
Even though marriage and family got M
the closeness she missed in childhood,
somehow it didn’t feel like enough.
So to fill in the gaps,
M started carving out hours at a time to daydream,
time away from her husband and son.
There are places you can be where
you’re going to be understood because
all the characters
you create are you.
M recently started looking for some way to
get some perspective on all this,
and her search led her to a website for people
who call themselves maladaptive daydreamers —
people who say they’re so obsessed with their fantasies
they can’t live their real lives.
And M wonders if that might be her.
What world do you want to live in?
Well,
I don't know.
As much as
I hate the feeling of being torn
and being in two places,
I'm not ready to give up my daydreaming
and I'm not ready to give up my characters
and the feelings that
those daydreams give me.
So she goes back to the place
so many of us do for real understanding:
inside of our heads.
