#so to write it out n post it is a little scaryy

[dedbuny]

hi :) im bunny and im a chronic maladaptive daydreamer :)

ive been doing it for about eight years now and im curious to see how many others do it too !

my (only moderately depressing) maladaptive daydreaming story/timeline is below the cut, if that interests u at all :) id love to hear urs as well in the notes !

my first memory of maladaptive daydreaming (aside from playing house and stuff as a kid) was in 2014 when i was in sixth grade. my friend and i would pretend to be certain characters throughout the whole school day, even writing the characters’ names on our schoolwork and calling each other by those names. the most common characters were always sam and dean, which is .. something . sometimes it was the 5sos members. then as the years went by the chosen characters changed depending on my hyperfixation at the time.

in grade eight i had moved on to kpop. this is the worst it gets i promise. mostly the same continued, except this year i realized something revolutionary: i could include myself in the daydream ! so i started pretending i was whatever kpop idol i was interested in on any given day’s friend, every day, for the next five to six years. this is where it became an addiction i guess.

grade nine was more of the same but with some drag race girls sprinkled in. grade ten was more of the same but with some video game characters sprinkled in. as those five to six years went by i continued daydreaming about myself and any chosen person or character i liked, except i realized one other extremely important thing: i could also just make up my own characters…..

so i did . technically the first original character i ever made was in eighth grade, named jacob. as much as i’m now trying to slowly distance myself from the maladaptive daydreaming and all the characters that were born from it, jacob really feels like my friend. they’ve evolved with me every step of the way — they’ve gone through a whole appearance change, their personality has changed, their gender and pronouns have changed, their world views have changed, all alongside my own, so it really does feel like i’ve found a lifelong friend who just gets me. and upon realizing that i’m purposefully creating my own blorbos from my mind to perfectly match my needs and wants and behave exactly like i want them to, i started feeling extremely self conscious about it all.

over the last five to six years i’ve created roughly 23 different characters, all with intertwining relationships and backstories and personalities and interests and styles. it’s been really fun actually, to be able to essentially create an entirely made-up friend group and make up their relationships with each other and watch them all grow. the issue lies in the fact that i’m spending more time imagining i’m them and/or imagining i’m with them than i am actually being in reality.

because all these characters behave in the exact ways i want them to and understand me perfectly inside and out, i’ve become much more easy to irritate. i find myself having a much shorter temper with my friends and family. my ocs know what i’m thinking and always have the perfect answer, because they are me. they know what makes me uncomfortable and avoid doing so, because they are me. they never question anything i say or challenge any of my beliefs, because they are me. in other words , uh oh .

this has all made me extremely paranoid, extremely insecure, extremely anxious and extremely depressed. it’s gotten to the point where i don’t really know who i am anymore, because i don’t really feel like i’m the one who has evolved or grown over the years. i feel like a side character to all the ocs i’ve made who are living my life for me. it feels like all my decisions are made by whoever it is i’m daydreaming as in that moment. i’ve had multiple breakdowns due to remembering that none of this world i’ve built in my head is real, and none of it ever will be. but it all feels unbelievably real. and i feel like if i ever stop i’ll be punched in the face with the consequences of letting what is essentially my imaginary friends control my life for six years.

i’ve thought it might be either evolving into or had initially stemmed from schizophrenia or ocd or did or something similar but i don’t even know anymore. right now it just seems like a combination of having autism, depression, severe anxiety, an extremely vivid imagination, and being chronically lonely.

i truly feel like i’m suffering alone here. i know there are other people who maladaptive daydream but i’ve never heard of anyone who does it like me. if anyone reading this understands what im going through i’d love to hear from you !!!!!

if u got this far into reading, thank u for hearing me out :)

love, bunny (...and jay and marcus and darius and veronica and luca and hiroki and minki and advik and hannah and hanna and nayeon and shauna and joslyn and thomas and christian and jack and claire and marion and peter and frances and oskar and felix and frederick and svante and shaelynn and heather and more)