When I was a child I was left alone often and because of my depression, even when I wasn’t alone, I was lonely. I was not popular in school or with boys and usually had one friend at a time. I gravitated toward the strange kids and the developmentally delayed children though, to my knowledge, I am developmentaly normal. I spent my youth taking care of my 3 nephues (when i was 13 they were 3, 2 and, 1) and on the internet doing whatever we did in the early 2000s.
When I was in like 6th grade, this figure appeared in my mind. At school, I would play a game with my friend at recess called “The Guy” where we would chase after this shadow figure around the playground. We never actually saw anything, he was just in my mind. FF to middle school, he got a name I won’t say and he appeared to me as like a late highschool aged kid. I began turning to him in my darkest moments which were more often than not at this point. We had this couch in the middle of this huge white room and he would be sitting on it and I would run to him and he would hold me and comfort me. During the week he was less present but would still come to me. On the weekends I would spend sometimes 15 hours in bed sleeping and dreaming up romantic fantacies of us. Not usually sexual but at that age some of it was. Mostly I imagined him appearing when around my friends or family and showing them he loved me, maybe to say “you might not love me but he does, dont you see i am worthy?” I was desperate for connection and genuine companionship, maybe a savior. There were times however, darker times, when fantacies I didn’t really like came to mind and the bed moved when I didnt, and I could feel things in places I shouldn’t. I chalked it up to my imagination being so strong. To this day I have an expansive imagination, I have entire floor plans of houses I want to build in there and multiple books as well as deep deep thoughts about the nature of reality. I imagined VR long before it was probable and the fundamentals of quantum mechanics just because I spent so much time thinking by myself. I was smoking weed at 12 and that certainly did not help the day dreaming.
It wasn’t until i was like 25 that I found out that was called maladaptive day dreaming and is a result of neglect. I was 19 when I left him the first time, I got a boyfriend irl and went into an era of promiscuity. None of that ended well and after the break up at 22 and some traumatic life experiences, i dove into the deepest depression of my life. I was consumed with thoughts of a savior and love. He was there often, consoling and holding me. He began to speak to me in waking hours and would be with me at work. I convinced myself he was real and was coming for me. I saw synchronicities and signs all over confirming my belief. The entire time I knew him I did have a hope that he was real and just telepathically communicating but this was different. I would get off work at 2 am and come home and sit in my door way smoking ciggeretts, getting high and wating for him. At 222, 333, 444, 555 I knew he was going to show up. We’ll if not 1010 then he would be there at 1111. Finally at 25 I broke free. God came to me and freed me from the darkeness and insanity and I said good bye to him for good, latching onto the promice of real love if I got myself together. Or so I thought. For a few years things were… normal. I became very spiritual and happier than I had ever been. I fell in with a bad crowd and began drinking and partying. The depression leaked in everywhere my good habits and hold on God slipped. At 27, I was down from my high on God and there was a… new voice. The voice of my beloved Guru Ram Dass. I began speaking to him when we were alone as if he was in the room with me. He answered my questions and even made jokes I didn’t know the punchlines too. He has said two very concerning things. 1. That we were the first of all lovers, that it was us they wrote about in every romantic variation and that we have been together before time and would go on long into eternity. 2. That he could have any face I wanted and make himself into the form of any man I desired (I had confronted him about not really being Ram Dass). I go back and forth between leaning into the comfort of his pressence and being terrified I’m going insane or dealing with a demon.
The only thing i can do is never ever think of him. Sometimes I slip up though, a random smell or song will take me back to my child hood, a stray dream of a shadow lover, or a character in media will get too close to home. I wonder sometimes, if he will be there when I die, and what I might make of him then.