I'm MADD; ask me why.

I couldn’t care less if you do love parts of your madd, but please don’t say you love madd as a whole. it can and will confuse regular/immersive daydreamers into thinking they have madd when they don’t and it can also be damaging to people really struggling with their madd and those trying to recover.

if you love your paras say you love your paras that’s absolutely fine! if you love the escapism madd provides, say you love that. but please don’t say you love madd as a whole. because if you genuinely love every bit of your madd… i honestly don’t think you have it? saying you love seeing your life waste away in favor of daydreaming, watching your relationships crumble, hearing your tinnitus spike every day, having damaged feet from pacing, etc… and you’re saying you love that?

i understand loving certain parts of this disorder, i do, and i’m not out to attack anyone, i’m just really fucking scared this disorder will go ‘mainstream’ and we will never be taken seriously and will be left to suffer while people mock our mentally ill asses for trying to be ‘special snowflakes’. please. 

i want to be taken seriously by my family and i actually honest to god want help from this disorder. it’s taken too much from me. but that won’t be possible if people make it out to be a ‘trendy mental illness’ because other people took a statement from a madder made about loving parts of madd too literally/seriously.

like it whispers in your ear and covers your eyes and strokes your face while it pulls your hair. maladaptive daydreaming holds you by the throat and tells you to think of it as a hug.

you can’t feel time slip away, minutes and hours adding up to years. you can’t see how your own eyes glass over. it makes you a ghost of a person, a hollow shell and the thing that’s supposed to be inside is literally worlds away, but all you feel is the rush. it wrecks you from the inside out but even as it hurts you, it tells you “i’m the only one who understands, stay with me, be mine, you’re mine.”

it’s a disorder that completely enslaves you and that. is. so. scary.

and the second scariest thing? how it disguises itself. “shh. it’s okay. it’s not a big deal. everyone daydreams.” or, “you have a vivid imagination. you’re lucky. you’re special. be glad.”

I would wait up at night for a miracle. A portal in my closet, perhaps, or a rapping at the window. I created magic where there was none because I resented my reality.

I thought there was something wrong with me because I believed so wholeheartedly in that other world. Because that was my reality.

Then I grew older and had a name for the problem with my brain, the issue that kept me trapped in that other world.

“Your daydreaming”, my counselor said, “is like a monkey on your back. It goes everywhere with you, weighing you down and distracting you. It’s always whispering to you, saying that you can’t get better, you can’t quit, that your life will be meaningless without it.”

“So”, he continued, “what should you say to your monkey?”

My brow furrowed as I tried to think of the right answer. “I should say...that it’s wrong? That I can beat it? Um...that I’m taking medication to help me get rid of it?”

“Nope.” he said. “You don’t owe your monkey an explanation. Why would you engage with it? YOU’RE THE BOSS.”

“So that’s what I tell it?” I said eagerly.

I would wait up at night for a miracle. A portal in my closet, perhaps, or a rapping at the window. I created magic where there was none because I resented my reality.

I thought there was something wrong with me because I believed so wholeheartedly in that other world. Because that was my reality.

Then I grew older and had a name for the problem with my brain, the issue that kept me trapped in that other world.

I’m not exactly new to maladaptive daydreaming. I don’t know how long I’ve had it but I’ve never really reached out to anyone, personally or online, about it. I thought maybe I’d start doing that now cause I really want to talk about it but can’t work up the courage to do so to my friends or family members. Soooooooo This is gonna be my MADD blog, please reblog if you post about daydreaming so I can follow you. Cool I guess. Bye.