I’ve been told that I space out a lot or that I have a rude habit of not looking people in the eye when they’re addressing me because I’m busy thinking about something else.
Here’s what I’d like to tell them: Writing inherently emanates from the imagination. To be a writer, I have no choice but to be a proactive daydreamer, to ride the high of my own fantasies.
Daydreaming is the tangible proof that I, like all other daydreamers, am still a child at heart.
There’s still some part of my childhood self stuck inside, begging to be acknowledged. She communicates with me not through words, but through the scenarios of waking up in a world with superpowers, getting back at all the people who have wronged me. She takes my favorite childhood books like Marie Lu’s “Legend” series, songs like The 1975’s “About You,” and television series like “Alice in Borderland,” and transforms them into alternative universes.
Being able to dream in an immersive and vivid manner has been one of the most wondrous and overwhelming experiences I’ve ever had. Here are some of the things I’ve daydreamed about if you’re looking for some whimsical inspiration:
- Flying: Flying in my daydreams has been nothing short of surreal. It’s hard to describe something so abstract, but if I were to choose a word, it would be “exhilarating.” According to EBSCO, true flight has developed on four separate evolutionary pathways in insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats — none of which are ancestral to humans. Yet, humans have always longed for the immense euphoria and liberation of flight.
- Having the power of mind control, teleportation, telekenesis, or shapeshifting: As an avid watcher of fantastique and psychological thrillers, my daydreams often writhe into the supernatural world. How cool would it be to know what others think of you? To move objects with your mind? To not have to walk to school?
- How people would react if I died: Would I be missed? Would people care? How long would it take them to move on with their lives? The child in me needs reassurance that I wouldn’t be forgotten.
The idiom to have one’s head in the clouds refers to someone who is frequently found daydreaming or lost in their thoughts, searching for a way out of their own mind. Letting your head fall into the clouds every now and then is not such a bad thing. As humans, we were practically made to daydream. According to the book “Neuroscience,“ if a human is left in the dark, isolated, their brain will start inventing hallucinations — such as sounds, shapes, and voices — to fill the gaps of sensory stimulation. That’s why isolation is one of the most effective forms of torture — it quite literally makes people lose their minds.
Daydreaming releases dopamine from experiences that aren’t even real, according to New Scientist. I once felt such a deep sense of accomplishment fantasizing about building a tipi and skinning salmon in the wilderness, even though I know I’d never be able to survive in real life. The ability to escape reality with just one command to the brain is like sitting at a slot machine that never loses. But that’s also what makes daydreaming so dangerously addictive.
Be careful not to let your daydreams become maladaptive. According to the Cleveland Clinic, maladaptive daydreaming is characterized by frequent, intense, and excessive daydreaming that can last for hours. These daydreams often feature vivid and complex characters, plots, and settings.
When I was around 11 or 12 years old, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I would sit for hours on end in the comfort of nothing but my own imaginative escape. I tuned out lectures, stopped talking to my friends or parents, and I would get unusually irritated if someone distracted me from my reverie.
It was a powerful coping mechanism because it took my mind away from what was presently going on in my life, allowing me to detach from reality. There was no end to the number of possibilities of what I could daydream about. Any trigger, any song, movie, or book could be spun into my own little universe.
I didn’t realize how unhealthy this dissociation really was at first. The first step to overcoming an addiction is to admit it. So I’ll admit that at times, I would have this sudden moment of clarity and find myself talking to my imaginary friends out loud. Then came the shame, the embarrassment, and the mortification of the revelation that I was interacting with people who weren’t even real.
When we think of addiction, we think of drugs, smoking, gambling, or pornography. But in truth, maladaptive daydreaming is harder to quit than any of the addictions above because the trigger is your own mind. When it is left unoccupied for more than two minutes, my mind automatically wanders. Oftentimes, I have no control over what I am thinking about, and therefore, I am left to confront the ugliest parts of my subconscious.
In a way, I am grateful to maladaptive daydreaming because it saved my life. During the worst times, I knew that I could escape and burrow into the safety of my imagination. I even get this sort of absurd and selfish sadness over losing my ability to maladaptively daydream, because it gave rise to some of my most radical writings, I began to think that it wasn’t so bad. I can’t help but feel like I killed a part of my creativity by getting better.
That’s the dilemma of being the miserable artist or the normal person. Sometimes, I don’t know if I can be both at once.
But maladaptive daydreaming has taken so much more away from me than it has given me. It cost me some of my most precious childhood memories — I gave up playdates and sleepovers so that I could live vicariously through the deception of make-believe worlds. I wouldn’t ever wish for anyone to end up in a place where they have no choice but to daydream to escape an unbearable reality.
I owe maladaptive daydreaming a big thank you. It served its purpose, and I’m still here. While I’ll always be a daydreamer at heart, for now, I’m going to see if I can live without it. Somewhere in the dark, maybe I’ll be able to find a life that’s worth living on its own.
