The missing years
One thing missing from my introduction to fanfic tale, is what else that drives me towards fandoms. As a child I had a dream (ok, Martin Luther King moment over). I daydreamed a lot, mostly in the time between going to bed and going to sleep. It was a simple dream to begin with, with simple storylines, based around my alter ego, the person I wished I could be. Of course I needed characters to fill this dream and I took them from what I saw around me, namely TV and film.
This is how daydreaming took over my life
One thing missing from my introduction to fanfic tale, is what else that drives me towards fandoms. As a child I had a dream (ok, Martin Luther King moment over). I daydreamed a lot, mostly in the time between going to bed and going to sleep. It was a simple dream to begin with, with simple storylines, based around my alter ego, the person I wished I could be. Of course I needed characters to fill this dream and I took them from what I saw around me, namely TV and film.
This is how daydreaming took over my life
It began as a way to calm down in the evenings. But my parents argued a lot and daydreaming also became an escape for me. As I grew older and new TV shows appeared, the storylines became more complex, more characters were added. I found that I enjoyed daydreaming more than what was happening in real life.
Reading fanfiction was both a blessing and a curse. It stopped me from dreaming and gave me something to focus on in real life.
However, there was, and still is, a large overlap between my fanfiction fandoms and shows/films used in my dreams. Therefore, fanfiction also acts as a trigger. If I read a fic set in a show or with characters or even an emotion I could incorporate into a dream I experience an overwhelming need to follow it up and dream for a bit.
It's hard to describe it to anyone who has never been addicted to something, but imagine you really need a drink or a fag or a drug. If you don't get it you become short tempered, scatterbrained etc. This my daily battle.
In 2007/2008 I got an iPod. This is both the best and worst event in my life. Music is entertaining but also heavy in emotion. If I hear a certain song, that can also be a trigger.
At this time my dreams started to show violent physical ticks. I discovered continuous movement was a great way to immerse entirely with my dreams. I started sprinting from one end of the garden to the other; back and forth. Or I stay on the swing for hours on end. In bed, a place I used to be able to dream without movement, I now rock back and forth, from sitting to shoulder stand and back again. And during all of this my iPod would be blaring at full volume to block out the world and supply constant emotional prompts to my dreams.
If you read my story in the previous post, you are now up to date. GCSEs looming in the summer of 2010. I haven't been on LiveJournal since late 2009.
In the run up to GCSEs I split with my then boyfriend. He didn't know of this weird addiction I had developed, so I had reduced the hours a dry spent dreaming to hide it from him.
Suddenly I was free, my dreaming spiked and my revision fell off. 3 weeks before my exams I realised how much time I had wasted. Revision went into over drive, but I was increasingly frustrated at how the dreaming affected my concentration on work.
Despite this I got good results and plunged into summer, most of which I wasted dreaming. Throughout A Levels I struggled with an ever increasing desire to dream. In this time I was still reading fanfic, but at nowhere near the level I used to and mostly just the McCoy/Kirk fics. LiveJournal activity ceased and my activity socially in real life also dropped to a worrying level.
I also started getting depressed because of this. I have always struggled with self esteem and the realisation that I would and could never be like my other dream self was a bitter pill to swallow. Every time I emerged from dreams I got so depressed to remember that all that life was just in my head.
I ploughed through A levels and half way through I realised that if I wrote a scene down from my dream in the form of a story then I no longer dreamt about that scenario. I started writing my dreams. However I don't think I shall ever put them online. Partly because they are so personal, despite being in the form of an OC centric multi-fandom crossover fic but mostly because it will never be finished as it spans 30 years of my other self's life.
Anyhow, I somehow got through A levels and got into uni. This is where it gets a bit depressing. I wanted to reinvent myself as an outgoing person. So I did, basing my attitude towards life on that of my dream self. Although I ended up with a lot of brilliant friends this way, I also blurred the edges between reality and dreams.
With my new friends taking up what time I used to use dreaming, I had a hard time meeting deadlines with my uni work. I became very disheartened and I decided to go cold turkey. This didn't end well.
10 days in I crashed. I started small scale self harming to get the little voice int head to shut up and stop reminding me how useless I was, the self esteem problems worsening.
I realised by giving up dreaming I was divesting myself of my family and closest friends. I had a husband there, and I had invested almost as much effort into the relationships in my dreams as in my real friendships.
A depressing scenario.
After 5 months I found peace. One of my friends noticed my odd behaviour, he reached out and, for the first time in my life I told him the entire story. He now keeps my iPod from me when I have an assignment due and let's me talk when I need it. I revised and worked in his room to stop me from dreaming.
Thankfully I seem to now have found a balance between work and dreaming. It seems to be working. I can only hope that over the holidays I do not revert back to my old habits.
You may be wondering if I am insane, I also wondered for a while. That was until I found a possible name to put to what I do. It's called Maladaptive Daydreaming. I used it to cope with issues in my childhood and got addicted. It's common to have a physical tic but I discovered that mine are very violent compared to others. The knowledge that I wasn't alone helped me a great deal to get to where I am today.
Unfortunately the psychological community doesn't recognise it fully yet and what studies there have been have been focused on major childhood trauma and escapism. That isn't the case; my childhood wasn't awful but I got addicted to daydreaming anyway.
This isn't a justification to all those on Lj for my absence, this is a message. A heads up about us - the daydreamers.
Don't let us fade away