Real Fantasy Worlds!

Replying to juliev82's posting made me think of a concept which might be of use to someone and to which I am not comfortable writing because it is a subject too close to home. I don't mind discussing this in an anonymous forum where the only person that knows me who is liable to read it knows about it anyway.

When I was 19 or so I had something of a breakdown where the world was something of a surreal place. Nothing and no one reacted to me in a way I expected, it led to my total and utter confusion. I never realised 'MY' perception of the world was out of kilter, to me I was perceiving the world rationally, I reasoned rationally or so I thought. However I was aware that the world was not reacting in a way I anticipated and people had rather bizarre reactions to me. I was lucid enough to deduct that maybe it was I who was causing these strange reactions in people but I couldn't articulate to myself how I was creating these reactions in people. As far as I was concerned I was a rational and sane human being.

As an antidote to this surreal world I found myself in, I created fantasy worlds in my head that reacted in a way I could anticipate. I could have complex and sophisticated conversations with the characters of my fantasy world and it helped to create some stability in my psyche. Apparently to other people in the 'real world' would see this 'nutter' having one sided conversations with no one. To myself I was actually talking to a very real person, as real as my mother and father and sister and brothers, only this person was reacting in a way I expected them to react. Of course I only learnt that my fantasy worlds were not real in retrospect. Even today as a hang over symptom, when I am under severe stress I create fantasy worlds. I remember taking my daughter to school when she was young and I must have had something on my mind and her asking me who I was talking to. Now she just shouts comeback!

I just thought that the concept of a character perceiving two worlds in collision could produce an interesting story. There was never anything sexual in my fantasy worlds. Worst luck! But both my fantasy worlds and the real world were as real as eachother and written in the first person could produce some memorable scenes.