Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! We have a winner!

I've been doing a lot of thinking since my last post. I constantly get myself into bouts of depression and sometimes find myself feeling hopeless. I was starting to feel like this was all my life was going to be and it totally sucks.

I hate feeling like this. I really do. I wish it would just fuck off already and go away. But wishing won't make it so. So I've decided to get to the bottom of what my problem really is.

Last night I made the mistake of eating a whole can of Pringles as a substitute for dinner and I drank a glass of Pepsi just before going to bed. As my stomach seethed in pain from too much salt, and my mind wound up being wired due to the sudden caffeine intake, I started searching wikipedia on topics of mental illness, trying to at least identify what my problem was. It was really late at night (or rather early this morning) when I started to suspect it might be a type of dissociative disorder. I found a test online to take to show a scale of the disorder. I sent it to my email address so I could take it this morning.

According to the test, I scored a 45 on Dissociative Identity Disorder, which apparently any score above 30 was a high likelihood that it in fact is true. However, I know someone with the disorder, and also did more reading on it, and still didn't feel like this quite identified my problems.

I continued to read through various links on Wikipedia, that lead to other links, etc. etc. I do believe I have finally figured out my problem. It is so freaking eye-opening that I'm finding it to be very hard to contain my emotions about it. Side note: I probably shouldn't be doing this while I am at work, but whatever... It is what it is...

The problem I have is called... [drum roll]: Maladaptive Daydreaming

I found this page written by someone who is recovering from it. I still have so much more to read (only on Part II) but holy shit! This was definitely what I have and what has kept me suffering for so long. His first part was so dead-on that I read it with more intensity than I've ever read anything before.

So now I finally know the problem! I've identified it. That's the beginning of fixing it. It has installed a sense of hope in me once again. Now that I know what the problem is, I can now move towards figuring out how to change it. It might take awhile, but it will be so worth it.

I've always considered myself to be a highly imaginative, creative person. But these fantasies have plagued me since about the Junior High School days. I used them as a form of dissociation from my life because I was being severely bullied in school and didn't know how to cope. I wasn't getting any help from school and no one was taking me seriously (i.e. it was just teasing), or were telling me to change who I was (i.e. be more like them) so people will like me. But it wasn't that easy. People I thought were friends would suddenly betray me and turn to the dark side of the force and start making fun of me, too. Just the other day we were friends, hanging out, talking, laughing, and now suddenly you treat me as though I have a contagious disease. It was rough. Also, people I didn't even know would walk up to me and say, "Mellissa, you're ugly!" I didn't know how to get out of it, so I began escaping into a fantasy world.

Basically, since I can remember, I have always loved DC superheroes. Always have, always will. In Junior High, I began collecting comic books and would start to imagine "what would happen next" stories of the heroes that I loved. Eventually that morphed into them getting married, having families, and their kids getting married and having kids, and so on, and so on.

After awhile, these fantasies would take over my life. I would spend hours alone in my room, fantasizing about these people. I always thought the problem would go away when I left Strathmore and got the Hell away from that shithole of a town. Then when I had moved out and on to college, they continued. I found it hard to socialize normally, fearing I would be treated the same way I was in Strathmore. I became more distant and found it hard to form any friendships or anything like that. In fact, I only know two or three people since my college days that I continue to interact with on Facebook. The rest are distant memories. I never attempted to be around the others and would find ways to get away from them, isolating myself. I had no real sense of who I was anymore.

I always hid this fantasy world. Always hid it. I was ashamed of it, or embarrassed about it. I didn't want anyone to know what was going on in my head. Again, I thought once I got a job and started my life, everything would be fine and I wouldn't need to fantasize anymore. And once again, that didn't happen.

I realized a few years back that many of the characters, either the Superheroes themselves, or their offspring, had some aspect of myself (or personality) or my life that was being enacted into these storylines. Some even shared my initials. Some were idealized versions of myself or who I wished I was. And sometimes when something would happen in my life, the fantasy would take on that storyline and it would be something bigger or better than what it was.

It's really hard to explain it, but that website I found has done a good job of it so far. It is an addiction. And the only way out of it is for me to find myself again. Find my identity and start embracing it. Realize that I am worth living, not these fantasy characters.

Anyways, I will continue to do more research on this subject and fill you all in when a breakthrough happens. I will also see about finding resources and talk to my doctor about it once I feel more comfortable doing that, after more research is done.

Finally, I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel again...