I live in an imaginary world.

[IllFindStrengthInPain]

It's probably taken me 5+ years to admit this to myself. And I hate admitting it because I hate accepting that my imaginary world is fake, and made-up. But I know if I carry on like this I'll become demented, talking to myself on the street and become even more closed of from people (not like I'm closed of enough already).

So basically, ever since I was about 11, I've just had imaginary people in my head. I don't want to say imaginary friends because that sounds so vapid and silly! They feel more to me than that. I've always been socially anxious and a loner. So it's basically where it came from. I would just see a picture from a magazine or someone from a tv show that I thougt looked cool, and they would become part of my imaginary circle of friends etc. They're with me from the second I wake up to the minute I go to bed. We laugh, make jokes, have arguements etc. And now 8 years on, I'm still in the same situation.

I've only recently realised it's negatively impacted my life, because I don't want to hang out with real people. They bore the living daylights out of me. In my head, these friends are the coolest people in the world to me and they're the perfect friends. I act like the real me to them. And no-one in real life could ever match up to that (I don't think, not that I've met anyway). But, I've just realised if I stay like that I'm just going to become so isolated and lonely and become a whitherd old spinster. I don't have any friends, because I never want to hang out with them. On the occasions that I've hung out I'm like "is this it?". It just seems quite boring as opposed to the world I've made up.

But the thing is, I like living in this opposite world inside my head, and those rare moments that I do bring myself back down to earth and say to myself "THIS IS FAKE", and those few moments of silence that come after it just feels so dull, deathly and boring. I just think 'do normal people actually live like this?'. I guess it makes me understand why normal people do go out and hang with friends because reality seems quite boring. And it just makes me think, "well why should I stop doing this? I enjoy it, it's not harming anyone etc". But something is telling me that I can't go on like this. But I just can't imagine life any other way. And I just don't know what to do. It's really hard to train my mind not to go back to these people in my head, because it does it continuously without me realising.

So. Now I don't know what to say at all. I could never admit this to anyone in real life. And I really don't want to leave my friends behind, but I know it's the right thing but :/ What else is there? Urrgh now I don't really know what the point in me writing all this was. But it just felt amazing to finally get it of my chest, and to see if anyone else has gone through the same thing or what I could do, or even if there is a psychological name for this kind of thing (apart from delusional and weird) .

[ShelterLight]

I spent a good deal of my life in a place that only exists in my head, talking to people that I know arn't real. It's true that it's simply more fun to enjoy the more exciting and adventurous world that I created for myself, and it's far easier to relate to the charactors I created myself than the real people that I know.

I don't spend as much time there as I used to, and recently I took up writing as a way to express it a bit better.

Maybe it would help you to write about it too, at the very least it would be a great way to use your creative imagination.