A few weeks ago I sustained a head injury. Not very serious (especially on the scale of head injuries), but it had a pretty big ripple effect on my life and kind of threw me off course in my career as I had to let my brain heal. I've wanted a bigger doll for awhile now to do more ambitious and elaborate projects for (I've owned BJD's for over a decade) and started shopping for one to give me something to do that didn't involve screens after screens became a significant symptom trigger. I found one that's a fair bit bigger than anything I've ever owned before. I was immediately interested, but I feel like on some level something is slipping for me with this.

I bought her furniture and clothes and I catch myself often thinking of it as something to nurture and spoil. I don't like or want kids, I've never lost a child, so it isn't that. I still don't want a kid at all, my accident didn't change that even a little bit. But the way I feel inclined to spoil this inanimate doll like it's a real thing is clocking something for me that I'm worried about. I don't feel like I can talk to anybody about it because it sounds so crazy. I feel like I'm retreating into a bubble some how. Like I just want everything in my world to feel safe and soft and this is helping me with that. 

I dedicated a corner in my apartment that's decorated for her, she has her own furniture, clothes, she has more shoes than I do. While none of that is necessarily abnormal, it just feels different. Like everything feels more significant because it's for that doll. Everything in that corner is soft, and safe, and cute. I've had doll areas every place I've lived, but this feels different to me. Over the years my dolls have increased in size and I've never approached it like this, the line was always clear between me and "This is a doll", "This is my space", and "this is a diorama to display my dolls". The line feels blurry right now. This doesn't feel like a display area, it feels like her room.

Rather rapidly, this has increased in its significance in my life. When I get up in the morning, I go to get dressed and then change her clothes for the day since her wardrobe is right next to mine. I've thought often as I go to sleep that I need to be rested and take care of myself because she needs me, and I can't keep her safe if I don't take care of myself and keep moving forward in my recovery. Even on shopping sites like amazon. I used to just have one watch list "(my name) wants". Now there's 2, mine and "(her name) wants". My mom is the only person who knows anything about it, and it isn't much. She found a pair of baby shoes that were nearly identical to a pair I was obsessed with as a kid that I left out on my counter after they came in the mail.

She just commented "With all due love and respect, those shoes were not THAT cute that your dolls need them". I laughed it off and disagreed, but she doesn't know about her. That part of my apartment isn't where guests typically go. No one really knows about her. I feel embarrassed or ashamed that I'm babying a doll. I don't want people to know because I don't want to be compared to the really crazy doll owners. But I don't want to get rid of her either, I'm very attached to her. On some level I'm trying to rationalize it as an external way to baby myself after a really scary accident, since a doll can't get a TBI, or really get "hurt" from a fall or accident.

Dolls repair easily compared to people... but I don't know. I don't know when it's time to worry about it, or when I need to actually talk to someone about it. I feel like as long as I'm still questioning if I'm ok then I probably am... I don't know. I'm a pretty successful person, my life is comfortable, so one bump in the road in my career shouldn't upset me so much (especially considering this isn't my first health scare), but it did. All of it did, and on some level this does too, it's just easier to ignore it gnawing on my mind than everything else is. So for now, I spit this into the void so at least it's out of my mind for a little while.

A “bond” (on doll terms) is a type of deep spiritual and emotional connection to certain BJD or character that this doll represents. For example, I have a lot of dolls, I have only bonded with around ten, and only deeply bonded with two. Those dolls are so important to me, that, if my house where on fire, I would risk my life for them (irrational as it might sound).

As anything ethereal, a “bond” can’t be explain or created artificially (regardless of how beautiful the doll is), it just happens.

It’s not only “a pretty doll you like”, but a doll that you look at their eyes and know if it’s sad or happy. - If westerns weren’t so “closed minded”, it would be like the asian notion about “a doll being occupied by a spirit or soul” that has an affinity with you (they even do funeral cervices for dolls, mostly in Japan, because “trowing away a doll is bad” since they assume dolls look after child and humans in general, and can have an spirit of their own, so it would be disrespectful to just thrown them to the garbage).

It’s a bit of a crazy notion for westerns like us, but it’s pretty common on asian countries, and since modern BJDs are mostly from asia, there is a matter of whether you believe in it or not. - If you hold your doll and you feel better, if you love it regardless of it’s price and origin, if you think often about what will happen to it when you die (of old age, luckily), and you worry about your doll fate, if you go around and see something on a souvenir shop and instantly think: “I have to buy this! it would be perfect for my doll! I know it would love it!”… then, you have “bonded” with that doll.

If anyone else has experienced a transaction gone wrong or winding up disappointed with what you received, how do you deal with it? Again, this isn't about the dolls, just the negative experiences and memories attached to them

Right now, I fell completely off from even liking the thing. I was like okay, should I sell that minifee? And then I went like maybe reshell it? Or keep out of sight out of mind? And it boggles my mind bc i loved that minifee but rn I can't stand to even look at it bc i find it ugly unlike the doll chat3au that looks like an actual beautiful ethereal princess!! Does this feeling pass? Can I start liking my minifee again? Or do I sell it and focus entirely on doll chateau?

The only other doll I actually found extremely beautiful was a dim doll that i never saw again (i saw her at a meet and i dont like my country's community actually so i left) and an unoa that rn also seems ehhh compared to doll chateau. I literally want to build a doll chateau army of dolls and dress them all in the most outrageous hyperfeminine fantasy looking fashion.

I would consider also a p0povy doll but I dislike the faces. And I realised after getting my doll chat3au how important the bodies image was (not even the possibility just the image) to me. The reason I actually think that minifee looks inferior to me is entirely bc of the body and maybe bc it has chubby cheeks and ehh... I think I like the dolls that look like ethereal fairy princess models.

I thought that minifee could look like that but look generic af, i even considered modding the fuck out of it. And the more i started looking around the more it didn't make sense to me that I have a minifee and how much i wanted and had bonded with the thing until my dc girl arrived and i think that now after finally having a comparison, i am never getting any other company's doll I guess or maybe i can find something similar in doll spaces?

Like that dim doll (whose body if i remember correctly was actually a doll chat3au body lol). Companies i had my eye on for a while are d0llzone and dream valley but i will think about it. Any suggestions for similar doll body anatomy and ethereal faces such as doll chat3au?

Around 5 years later, I had the opportunity rebuying them in the resin color I’ve always wanted for the sculpt. I was feeling very excited because at the time, I thought I’d have the same love as I did 5 years ago before I sold them…but now, 3 years later, she still sits on my shelf unpainted, unpainted and I feel afraid I’m not connecting with that doll as I did years ago before I sold her…..And to add to that, I feel unsure if I should sell them again because it’s uncertain the artist will have them for pre-order again in that resin color, plus buying her secondhand is pricey and it’s not often I see this them either…

Along with my doll aesthetic changing drastically in the decade when I first got them originally or that I’m older now and have become much busy with my job and somewhat have less time for my hobbies, I feel I’m at a weird impasse. I feel like maybe customizing them would change my outlook and reignite that feeling but I’m still not sure.

It’s not that I’ve lost my spark in the hobby, I don’t as much customizing as I used to, and my original grail sitting unpainted and undressed really reminds me of that when I look at them…..