A very long introduction:

[Kelsey]

Hello, my name is Kelsey and I am new to this blog even though I have known about it for a few years now. I have finally decided to join so that I can read about other people's experiences/ask advice/meet daydreamers/etc. (:

So I'll just say a little about myself first I suppose. I'm a University student in MA who will be 20 come September. I have a production major and film minor. I'm a pescetarian. Music means the world to me and I listen to it all but my favorites are: Coldplay, Radiohead, 30stm, The Killers, The Strokes, Arcade Fire, Bombay Bicycle Club. I love thrillers and reading about serial killers and nutrition. I'm pretty eccentric and I get it from my family who means the world to me.

Also, a mention for those who follow thedreamersof who read this. I run a maladaptive daydreaming support blog on Tumblr, here is the link for anybody who wants to check it out (http://thedreamersof.tumblr.com/). I created that blog on August 15th, 2011 as a means of receiving support and giving all of my support to others. That blog is one of the best decisions I have ever made. <3

    Now, about my maladaptive daydreaming. I can remember actively daydreaming and really becoming addicted to it as far back as the age of eight. For years my life consisted of school, daydreaming for hours, dinnertime, and daydreaming myself to sleep. By the time I was twelve or thirteen I started to associate my daydreaming with negativity. I would try to "teach" my friends how to daydream the way I do and they would not understand. I also noticed that my family would catch me daydreaming and look uncomfortable or sometimes just outwardly question my behaviors. I started to try hiding my daydreams but it wasn't easy living in such a small house. Sometime later I decided to try quitting cold turkey. I was miserable, I felt diseased, and worst of all I felt like nobody else could ever understand. I struggled for a year trying to quit and ended up not daydreaming for up to six months straight. After the six months I went back to my daydreaming because I was sick of still obsessively thinking about it, and I decided I would just control myself. This has been the case ever since.
    When I daydream I don't pace, my movement is a little specific and feels slightly embarassing to talk about. /: I need to be holding a pencil in my hands and I have to sit or lay down and move the pencil around as I dream. Theres a bit more to it and I suppose it could be worse but if anybody besides my family ever caught me daydreaming I would be horrified. I have managed to control my daydreams but honestly my cravings for them come in waves. If I am busy enough on campus I can go up to a week or so without daydreaming but I also have what I call "bad days" where I constantly lock myself in my room to daydream and these days can last for a week or more. If I spend a long time without daydreaming, or too much time daydreaming, my personality starts to change. My anxiety goes up, I can get depressed or paranoid and I start to push people out of my life and stop taking care of myself as much as I should. I have various times in my life where I have considered suicide as an escape. It's amazing how this has been my life for the past twelve years or so yet nobody in my "reality" would ever guess that I had maladaptive daydreaming disorder or any disorder for that matter.

I discovered the term maladaptive daydreaming disorder when I was seventeen. I will never forget that night, I searched for hours on the Internet and this site was one of the first places I found. I cried tears of joy until the next morning haha. I told someone I had MDD for the first time when I was eighteen after moving into college for my first year, it was my sister and best friend Samantha. About a year or less later I was arguing with my parents and it slipped out. I have also told a few friends since then, which I sometimes regret ever doing. Currently, I am content with my daydreams but a bit thrown off by the changes I've been experiencing with my mental stability and my refusal to grow up and deal with society. I suppose I will be blogging about that here. Thank you for reading! <3