Hello- My MDD.

[Felicia Amelloides]

Hi. This is my first post on here, so I wanted to go over why I think I might have MDD and see if anyone else has experienced something similar. Sorry in advance for the length- this is actually the short version.

I've been daydreaming vividly almost every day for 4 years. I've always loved telling stories, and the first time my daydreams became so strong was when I decided that I wanted to meet a character I love from a video game. I created an imaginary plot line which would allow me to meet him logically (as much as my younger mind would allow), and he became my first proper imaginary friend.

From there, my plotlines only became more complex. I had the idea that I was some sort of magical deity (narcissistic, I know), although originally this 'magic' was very weak and it became stronger over those 4 years of plot. I've read stories about how people set aside specific hours for daydreaming, but my daydream is linked to the real world and so it happens continuously- as in, as long as I'm awake I'm daydreaming. I have a vast network of imaginary friends (over a hundred, most from various video games, cartoons and anime, but some are my own original characters) and a plot line which connects everyone together. I have a history with these characters; I know them. I've even dated two of them in the past (not at the same time), each for several months, and it actually hurt when we broke up. At the present, I live with four of my characters and see them as family. I've lived with all four since August 2016, and with the eldest since June the same year. Over the year and a half I've 'known' them, they've developed relationships, interests, skills. Their characters develop and grow in real time; they even age and grow taller, and we celebrate their birthdays as if they were real people.

I know that none of it is real, but in reality I'm very socially awkward and have low confidence and self esteem, leading to the god-complex omnipotent super-extroverted persona which developed over my years of daydreaming. I lose hours of sleep to my daydreams, but at the same time I find that I can't sleep without my daydreams out of boredom or the empty feeling I get without them.

Sometimes my daydreams get so out of hand that I lose control of them, often leading to negative consequences (I've been afraid of them on multiple occasions), but usually my control returns within a few minutes and I stop whatever I ended up imagining before any more damage can be done.

I don't know if I actually have MDD or if I'm too young to tell, but from what I've read from other people online and from the self-diagnosis tests I've taken, I'm about 90% certain that I at least have signs of it. In the aforementioned tests, I usually show all or most of the symptoms described.

However, due to my closeness to my imaginary friends, I often find that I don't really want a cure for my (possible) MDD. It feels like it would hurt a lot to lose everything that I've built up over the years, especially since I feel like I actually worked to get it all and earned it through my various imaginary adventures. But at the same time, it scares me that while most of my classmates and friends are thinking about their own lives and the tasks they have ahead of them, I prefer to distract myself with a vast fantasy world that no one else around me has. Sometimes I just want to be in my own head and not a hundred others.

I've tried talking to people about this, but my friends see me as crazy and generally just ignore me if I talk about friends that don't really exist (which is admittedly understandable- I see my own fantasies as fairly outlandish too) and my mother, the only family member I could really talk to about this (I live with her and my younger brother, and I'm not particularly close to any other family members) doesn't believe that MDD exists (again, understandable- it isn't officially recognised yet) and just passes my daydreams off as normal activity. 

She might be right in that I'm neurotic, but at the same time I know that this level of absorption into daydreams isn't exactly normal- neither is the large amount of imaginary friends I have. Most kids have one, maybe two. People my age usually don't have any. Over a hundred is excessive, but I really do feel as if I genuinely know each and every one of them.

So that's all I have to say on my daydreaming at the moment, but if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask and I'll try to answer them as well as I can. I'd like to know if there's something I should try to do about this, and also (as I said at the start) if anyone else has experienced/is currently experiencing the same sort of thing, and if so what they've done about it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm sorry again for how long it ended up being.

-Felicia.

[Martha M]

 I don’t think I have ever had anything close to 100 characters. I don’t think I have ever worked with more than about 20 at a time, and usually fewer.   While somewhat worrisome that you are cutting yourself off from reality, on the other hand this is quite an impressive achievement.