My Story
My History with Daydreaming Addiction When I was young, I was a natural coward. I hid from any situation that would make me interact with anyone who could judge me. Only, I did have a small group of friends who I thought I was “safe” around. We would play imaginary games like house, pirates, or superheroes just like any other group of friends. Yet, I always found myself more immersed in these games than other children. My friends would tire of the game long before me, and got annoyed when I pestered them to keep going. So, I ended up continuing the game in my room for hours on end. Even in school, I found my head was in this fantasy world where I was a grown-up in a much cooler world. I thought it was amazing that I could escape my boring second grade classroom while everyone else was stuck there. Next, I got to fourth and fifth grade where the class got divided into “popular and pretty” and “weird and ugly.” You guessed it. I fit in with the outcasts. I didn’t even really fit in with them, because I made every effort to isolate myself so that I could daydream as much as I wanted. I didn’t care that my old friends betrayed me, and my old bullies pretended to be my friend out of pity. Because I had my daydream world. At this point, I became more immersed than ever in my daydream world. High School Musical had just come out, and I realized that I could spend more hours and energy if I had a solid source for a story. Middle school only fueled my addiction more, as I could camouflage myself in a group of girls and pretend to participate in their insipid conversations while staring off into space, planning my next pacing session at home. The Percy Jackson series, Shatter Me Series, and an endless number of young adult novels combined in my head to make my own personal fantasy world. As I grew older, I noticed the themes of the material that I incorporated into my daydreams changed. I sought books like The Darkest Minds or the Mara Dyer series that centered around a group of close friends and usually had a romance. Needless to say, I had a strong desire for such relationships, and was frustrated that I couldn’t have them in real life. Ironically, it never hit me that the reason for that was because I spent hours pacing around my room instead of interacting with people. Then high school and Sarah J. Maas happened. Sarah J. Maas’ books were saturated with everything I wanted in my real life that I could only have in my fantasy world: love, friends, loyalty, adventure, and excitement. My hours spent daydreaming increased, and the behavior was only rewarded as my grades remained as high as ever, and my parents never questioned walking in seeing me pace around my room with earbuds in my ear. However, I also met my best friend in ninth grade. She was very aggressive and persistent about us meeting up. Eventually, I didn’t mind. We were inseparable outside of school: either I was at her house or she was at mine. Fate handed me the love I thought I could only have in my daydreams, and my pacing time went down for a bit. I even began trying several methods of quitting that I found online, journaling my progress. Everything was looking up. Until she moved to Arizona. That sent me spiraling back down into my fantasy world, because I had to numb myself from how much it hurt to be away from her. So here I am now in my senior year of high school. I’m in a twelve-step program for fantasy addicts, convinced this is my only way out. In the beginning, I managed 38 consecutive sober days before I inevitably relapsed. Now, I call into meetings whenever I can, grateful to hear the voices of people like me, knowing I don’t have to go through this alone. But if I learned anything from cheesy sports movies, it’s that the number of failures doesn’t count for shit. What counts is that you keep getting up until you stay up. Thanks for hearing my story, friends. I hope it helps.
