The first time I realized that my daydreaming wasn't, "Normal."

[Dreamer]

I was in about fifth grade the first time that I realized that my daydreaming wasn't, "normal." It was the first time that I felt a deep sense of concern about the behavior and the first time that I wondered if there was something wrong with me. 

It was around the holidays and there were a lot of family members visiting downstairs. I had stayed in my room all day as I was caught in a very involved daydream. In the daydream, I had been sent to military school. The military school drill Sgt. was the man from the 1995 comedy film "Major Payne."  I became very attached to the Drill Sgt. in the movie.  In the beginning of the daydream, Major Payne would scream at me and make me do an absurd about of pushups and sit-ups. However, as the daydream progressed, his behavior toward me began to shift and he started to become a  caring figure to me. In the daydream, my fifth grade teacher also appeared to the military school. He watched me through the basic training that I was going through and he witnessed the drill Sgt. yelling at me. He remained in the background of the daydream, as though watching to see if he needed to step in. 

After many hours of fantasy,  I paused from the daydream and had a realization that what I was doing must be unusual somehow.  I became nervous that everybody downstairs knew what I was doing and might think badly of me. I asked myself, "Could they hear me pacing around? Was I talking to myself out loud?" I became scared to go downstairs because I could not face the idea of them asking me what I had been doing in my room all day. I also experienced some paranoia, wondering if my grandfather could see what I was doing through the ceiling. I knew that he couldn't, but this was the first time that my pretending and fantasy life truly scared me. It was the first time that I wondered if there was something wrong with me. It was the first time that I felt like I had to keep it a secret. 

I've been living with the weight of this secret up until a year or two ago when I stumbled upon an article about Maladaptive Daydreaming. It was then that I realized that I wasn't crazy and more importantly, that I wasn't alone.