...And it was all a dream
The not-quite-all-there journal of a Maladaptive Daydreamer
12 April 2020
Daily average screen time: Something ridiculous
The meadow feels lit up from the inside. The setting sun saturates the golden blades as a gentle breeze causes them to ripple like waves. I rock back and forth in my hammock watching the stars stream across the sky, taking in the music and the sound of people dancing...
...and my mum walks into her bedroom. I snap out of it.
"Hey, do you maybe want to go for a walk?" she says.
"Uhhh, no?"
"I'm just a bit worried about you, because you haven't left the house, or really spoken to anyone, in eight days."
Sure, I don't know what day it is, but I think I'd notice if I hadn't spoken to anyone in eight days.
I try to remember what I’ve done but it's all blank, there's just the meadow. Why can't she just leave me alone. I don't want to be here. I'm not supposed to be here. I just want to go back...
19 May 2024
Daily average screen time: 8h 58m
I look up the definition of Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD) for the first time in forever. I’m researching for an interview with fellow dreamer Jess Skudder. I go through three different explainer pages and a research paper – each one upsets me more. I guess the brain doesn't like being confronted with its own habits.
Harvard Medical School tells me, "Maladaptive daydreaming occurs when a person engages in prolonged bouts of daydreaming, often for hours at a time, to cope with a problem.” It says the daydreams are often vivid and complex, that a person becomes so consumed they may fail to do anything or be with friends and family. It also tells me that maladaptive daydreaming is “not a mental illness”. Though it sure feels like one.
MD isn't just a coping mechanism. It often requires interacting with the world just as much as not interacting with it. Happy memories, wishes, aspirations – they all impact the inner world just as much as sad ones. If I experience something in the inner world, I can appreciate it more in the outer world.
Life with MD can never be boring, can never be truly sad or traumatic. Pain is a feeling I can abandon if I need to. If I don't want to be here, I won't be. I'll be in the meadow, or a city, or on top of a mountain. It's the times I do want to be here that are the hardest. It's called maladaptive for a reason.
A dreamer is in many ways a high-functioning (sometimes) addict. Dreaming isn't just a habit, it's a compulsion. It’s a constant effort to stay in my present mind and body. Most of my days are spent drifting between my outer and inner worlds, often so seamlessly I don't even know it's happening, or how much time I truly spend in either.
My average screen time is my very flawed way of tracking how much I've been gone. I celebrate when it hits below eight hours, I despair when it goes above ten.
20 May 2024
Daily average screentime: 8h 42m
I met with dreamer Jess in a sunny little study room, and we talk a bit about the mindfuck that is memory gaps.
Jess would just lie in bed and drift away and come back not knowing how much time had passed. She tells me it feels like “gross bed rot”. She relates to me, "I definitely had a period where I would spend all day locked in my room."
Jess says her confrontation with MD came when people started to notice her strange dreaming habits. She tells me of a time she was daydreaming as a kid during Christmas. Her brother noticed her making a face and she remembers thinking “Oh my god I need to stop doing this”.
And she did stop after that day. For years.
It is at this point I realise our experiences of MD were fundamentally different. She has more control than I ever had. There were moments where hers was as out of control as mine has always been. But that feeling of compulsion just wasn't there for her.
"I don't really have an addictive personality," Jess says. She has this earnest and casual way of talking about MD that I have never had. She has never shied away from being a dreamer.
"It's just a type of daydreaming. Everyone has their little quirks and stuff."
I wonder if her acceptance is what allows her to have so much more control. Will I ever reach that point? Maybe someday dreaming will become an option, not an inevitability.
28 May 2024
Daily average screen time: 7h 20m
I’d like to apologize to my flatmates for all the pacing around I do at two in the morning.
Or at 10pm, or 5am, or right now as I’m writing this.
The Sleep Foundation said that people with MD experience strong emotions that have no connection to reality. MD dreams can be so immersive they result in physical reactions such as repetitive movements, verbalisations and facial expressions.
For me, this means pacing. I have never lived in a place without choosing a pacing space. At home it was in my mother's bedroom. I don't think she ever figured out why she would always find me there. I would pace, dance, lie down, read, cry, or stare into the mirror and talk out loud to no one.
In my flat it’s space at the end of my bad. My flatmates have never said anything about it beyond the odd joke that they can always tell when I’m awake, and the occasional ‘hey, I’m trying to sleep’.
It’s worse when I’m reading a book or watching a movie or show – I literally cannot sit through anything by myself without having to get up and pace, sometimes for hours.
Some days I feel bad about it, though not enough to stop.
5 August 2024
Daily average screen time: 8h 31m
I’ve been thinking about Mum and my daydream of the meadow recently. For all my talk of wanting to live my real life when faced with a choice to go out and live, I often choose not to.
For years MD has protected me, it’s allowed me to escape myself when the world becomes too much, taken me to a place I can be anyone and do anything. MD is more than a thing I do. It is a part of me. For the longest time it felt like the biggest part. In some moments it felt like the only part.
If I had the chance to stop I probably wouldn’t, at least not fully. It would be like losing a limb.
I’ve come to believe it’s not so much about beating it or stopping, rather just trying to balance both my worlds and have them coexist together. I can’t live without either of them.
I can’t promise that I won’t disappear for eight days again. But maybe at the end of the eight days, if someone asks me to go on a walk, I might say yes.