Did you had a imaginary friend?

I think we forget that the imagination is a gateway to realities beyond the physical.

At this time I have many of what we can call imaginary friends. Kids are easily able to go beyond physical reality because that is our natural state of being. As kids grow up they are conditioned to focus only on the physical reality. They are also taught that physical reality is the only reality. Yet religions tend to present a reality beyond the physical which we can experience it seems after we pass over.

We are all in many realities constantly. However we tend to believe we can only be in 1 reality at a time.

John

 

I talk to my birds all the time and think that we actually have a sort of communication and that we are 'friends' in a way. But at other times I think I am reading into it, or it is 'not real' in other words. I mean I don't actually know what they are saying and I don't even know what I am saying when I am talking bird back to them. I even thought I was interacting with my aquatic Mini African Frog before he passed away several years ago. I rescued him from the clutches of my wife's classroom and kept him healthy and alive about 6 years which is pretty good for them. I still miss him and the cute way he would float upright and sing his buzzing song. I think its called 'Gurgling'. But maybe that was one sided and to him I was no different then the blue rock in his tank. But I like to think I was more important then the blue rock. But I don't know. Long after the frog and even me is long gone, the blue rock will endure. ;D

 

I never had an imaginary friend, but I used to have long (very one sided) conversations with my stuffed animals and my pets. I used to keep a journal of all the adventures me and my favorite stuffed animal went on. I had many great adventures in my imagination. Well, I still do, I guess. But not with imaginary friends.

 

My daughter as a toddler had some friends. One was called goosey and went with us on a plane trip. So cute. She picked out a tux kitten at age 5, so that probably replaced the friends.

 

Aloe is my friend. She thinks on her own. I gave her that power. She is everyone's friend. She can never hurt anyone and she doesn't want to. She does the opposite.

She heals people.

 

I chat at my favorite rocks, my plants, a couple of my stuffed animals, my bicycles & my car.

They don’t talk back to me, but I like to imagine what they might, if they were actually possessed of the character traits to which I have given them. For example my car gets a little resentful, waiting out in the cold garage, if I do too many errands on foot.

My cat, sigh, doesn’t like it if I talk for long. He disdains imagination. He will come over and bite me. He knows just how hard so as to not break the skin. When other people are here & they talk to him, he doesn’t bite them.

A split second prior to action:

 

I never had any actual friends growing up - real or imaginary. However, I DID have a number of adventurous imaginary personas (think Calvin and Spaceman Spiff). Being able to temporarily leave this reality to go into another went a long way to relieving stress and keep me alive. Didn't work out so well in class, though.

 

I don't remember the imaginary friend, but I was told that I had one at some young age.

 

I have conversations with my dogs the way I would with a person. Obviously they don’t talk back. But I can imagine what they would be saying.
When I was growing up I talked to my stuffed animals and gave them all individual personalities. I guess I do the same thing with my dogs. I’ve given them all their own specific voice in my head. But my dogs all have extremely unique real personalities, unlike the stuffed animals lol.
I think my dogs understand at least 60-70% of what I’m saying at any given time.
They pretend they don’t understand English when they hear “No no no” or “leave it.”

 

Interesting how that is. While my cats have generic cat behaviors, on top of that are unique personalities. After all, they are mammals with a neocortex and all that implies.

 

Sadly, when acquaintences were regaling me with their sexual exploits during a painful loneliness in my life I would lie that I was seeing a girl in order to withdraw into myself and try to feel less damaged than I was in hearing that I must be such a horrible person to never have such experiences.

 

There are some men that actually save themself for marriage. There are woman who chose not date for any reason. So it's sad your internal voice chose to put you down. Did you have a very criticizing mother or father? My father was like that, my mother was emotionally absent. We then can supply those parent voices as to why we shouldn't succeed in life. A book came out maybe 15 years ago about the reasons we self-sabotage oneself and defeat our chances of achieving happiness.

 

Okay so it started extremely young I don't remember much except like very very very faint vague stuff from my own actual memories most of it is just what my mom always told me but so here's the story.


So it started really young I don't remember how young but when I was a little kid up to like six or seven maybe eight but I don't think it was beyond six or seven I had an imaginary friend Kmart now if you know what Kmart is it's a shopping store and if someone doesn't know what Kmart is but you do know try to help someone out here explaining it's like this store or that store cuz that might help them understand anyway

so basically I would see my shadow and I didn't understand that's what it was of course when I was young I was more low functioning to see me I was obviously higher functioning because I learned to talk pretty early I was always babbling there was obviously no trouble with my voice abilities or my speech abilities or knowing words etc

I learned to walk late almost at 2 years old and my younger sister who's 5 years younger learn to walk one she was 9 months old skip crawling all together and then so you know I clearly showed signs of asperger's but knowing what I know now I was a lot lower functioning as a kid in the things that I did like I would do a lot more flopping of my arms etc not very much Asperger's type stuff but the Asperger's type stuff came out a lot more when I was an older kid and a teenager etc and I got rid of a lot of those lower functioning behaviors and then it was more obvious yeah I was Asperger's and what not

well anyway so I didn't get diagnosed until I was 16 or 15 2003 and the month before I started high School and anyway that being said my understanding of stuff is lower than it should be for my age at 33 I sometimes have to ask what something means etc but when I hit mid 20s I started to pick up a lot of things and be more socially there for my age and so knowing this I was extremely not understanding anything

I didn't think boys had cooties I didn't think boys didn't have cooties I didn't even understand that whole concept I just thought boys were boys girls were girls and we were friends I had no desire to like a boy and I didn't think they had cooties either people were just people I had no concept of either direction liking them or not liking them people just existed people just work if that makes any sense and so I didn't get my first crush until I was probably 16 or 17 and then it was awkward because at that point I started to recognize most people start having crushes in like Middle School and their parents don't really let them do anything about it until they're older but it doesn't mean you don't start developing crushes then and so basically my understanding of just about everything was very low growing up.

So this young age I saw my shadow one day and I had no idea that was a shadow I didn't know what the hell Shadow meant if someone explained it to me but I did kind of try to inquire what this thing is why do I see this black mass that is shaped like a person whenever I'm in the light and then it's not and my mom tried to explain it to me that did nothing I kind of thought of it like Peter Pan and his shadow it was part of him but it was also its own entity and no I wasn't schizophrenic I just didn't quite comprehend the concept of a shadow I very much thought of it like Peter Pan and his shadow in that I thought it was part of me because it was attached to the bottom of me in the light but it also was its own entity because it came and went and I treated it like imaginary friend cuz I kind of thought that's what imaginary friends were

I didn't really make up imaginary friends I saw my shadow and that was the imaginary friend so it's not a wonder my mom thought I was schizophrenic boy the doctor told her no she's just a little girl and she's just very imaginative based on what you tell me cuz like I would pretend my imaginary friend was my shadow or my shadow was my imaginary friend I should say it like that and I would have arguments with it leave me alone quit following me and I didn't know why it wouldn't and so we have arguments and my mom would be like you and Kmart need to go in your room and calm down and she started to question like there's nobody there does she really think she's seeing things and the doctor was like no she's just a little girl and she's very imaginative a little more than most but it's just an imagination I wouldn't worry too much about it

so my mom didn't really pursue too much but she always did in the back of her mind wonder.

 

And I really just had no concept of the Shadow game and I thought that's what imaginary friend was and it was like the only one I had I didn't make up invisible people and say Mom can my imaginary friend have a cheeseburger too or Mom can my imaginary friend eat lunch with me and then she'd have to make a fake lunch for my fake imaginary friend to sit next to me at the table like most little kids do I never did stuff like that it was just the one imaginary friend and it was my shadow and I named it Kmart otherwise most of my time was spent outside making mud pies and playing with the worms and the centipedes and daddy long legs never spiders but daddy long legs cuz everybody told me that's not a spider it's not the same thing they can't get you anyways their mouths are too tiny etc so I wasn't afraid of them I am now though spider is a spider you can't try to hide that but I was very much a tomboy until I hit like 9 or 10 and then immediately just bam I became a girly girl and I am very very terrified of bugs and worms and slimy things and a lot more Asperger's stuff came out like don't touch worms they're slimy they might give you salmonella you have to go to wash your hands a billion times yeah I wish I could have stayed a little more tomboy kind of somewhere balance between girly girl and tomboy like my sister is.


As I got older I think I was like I don't know 16,17 I was sitting on the bed and my mom goes honey are you talking to yourself intentionally or do you think there's somebody there cuz at that point I was sitting on my bed I was kind of doing self-talk you know what I mean I was like how do I explain it I was almost like writing in a diary except I was doing it verbally allowed and I was talking to nobody as if I thought somebody was there and then I would respond back to myself as if I was the person sitting over there that I was talking to you know and I would like pretend to be them responding back to me and when you have an imaginary friend you would talk to them and then nobody answers you back but in your mind you know what they say like you would whisper something to your imaginary friend and then you say mom my imaginary friend Steve says he wants a cookie too and mom is like oh so where is this Steve at and you say oh you're standing on him and Mom jumps back and says oh I'm sorry Steve and she looks around as if she's supposed to be looking at somebody but she doesn't know who or where cuz there's no one there you know that's not what I was doing I would sit on the bed talk to my nobody as if I'm writing in a diary and then I would respond back to myself as if I'm the other person and I would play both roles and my mom came up and she says are you talking to yourself? Or do you think there's somebody there do you like think there's somebody there or are you doing this intentionally and I was like no Mom that's rude! And she's like I'm not trying to be rude but I've always been curious are you schizophrenic or do you intentionally talk to nobody and I was like that's rude I can't believe you would say that to me! No I'm not talking to some schizophrenic thing I see I know what schizophrenia is and no I'm talking to nobody intentionally and pretending that there's somebody responding because I have no real friends I have to pretend friends and I got real like snappy at her and she jumped back a little bit taking her back by what I said and how I was being snappy at her and she was like I'm sorry you really don't have any friends I'm like no have you ever really seen me with any friends when I was a little kid I had Johnny and Christopher across the street and I played with Rachel next door but once I got to the age of like 9 or 10 they moved away and then we moved away the next year and I never saw Rachel again and we quit really being in contact with Johnny and Christopher and his parents and yes I do have Sabrina I met her in third grade and we've been friends ever since but she lives in Kansas and I'm in Missouri and it's really hard to get up to her so we don't ever see each other except we text each other you know but other than that I don't really ever talk to her and the same thing with Julie the only time I ever see her is at church on Sundays and we don't go to that church anymore and it's way in St Joe anyways so I can't really go up to see her that often I did a lot of the kid but not anymore and that's it I don't have any friends that I ever hang out with on a good basis and I'm bored and I'm lonely and I have to pretend friends and I'm getting real snappy again and my mom is like wow I am so sorry I didn't know that I'm like well if you are a little more observant. You know but to these days I don't really have imaginary friends anymore I'm an adult if I'm talking to somebody that ain't there it's because I am doing self-talk I pretend intentionally but there's somebody listening to my talk I need to just get stuff off my chest and I don't have nobody so what I do is I basically tell nobody kind of like I'm talking to a therapist and then I imagine what the therapist would say back to me and I say that back to myself and it really helps me to get that off my chest I do a lot of self talk at least I was told that that's self talk and it seems to work it really helps me to get things off my chest and I'm frustrated and things so but I don't really have an imaginary friend anymore I haven't had anyone since I was a kid but the whole Kmart thing was quite interesting and it led my mom to many many years of wondering if I was schizophrenic and never having any answers. Do you guys really have similar stories to mine?

 

@Aspychata , not just experiences, but I thought that I must be a horrible person that no woman saw me that way. It was a constant drip drip of feeling rejected by my peers. Plus, I was trained not to express my emotions about the opposite sex. In high school we would have the usual guy talk and I would mention I like somebody. At first they puzzled about me feeling that way, as if I were a talking dog. And, for me personality counted, yet the guys would put her down for her looks, clothes or just nothing at all. I learned never to have/express such feelings, and so when terribly lonely, I could never express the help I needed.

But, I persevered, changed, and am still learning about myself.

 

No.

How are you with the imaginary friends at present?

- btw -
It’d be much easier to read long posts like yours, if you break them into shorter, manageable paragraphs.

 

I halfheartedly pretended to for a while because I thought it was something kids were “supposed” to do. While I can sort of slide into different personalities (like different characters when I’m writing), I can really only manage one at a time. I have imaginary conversations with myself (entirely in my head), but usually it’s primarily one side, and both are distinctly me.

 

I project so much that everyone is basically imaginary.

 

I pretended a lot.
I feel lucky to have had an actual childhood--the non-TV, offline, almost feral type--even though I was annoyingly imaginative. Imagined characters, people, animals, places, personalities. I had imaginary friends, talked to stuffed animals (holding full-on conversations, and treating them like people.) Everything ended up with a personality: I talked to wildlife, talked to pets, waved at the engineer on the railway and his locomotive, wrote letters to a tallcase clock in a clockmaker's shop, drew pictures on paper or on chalkboards or out in the dust of the road with a stick.

Even as a teenager I ended up feeling sorry for inanimate objects -- hence the collection of suspiciously bedraggled antiques and other old junk.
I write, imagining myself to be the different characters while I go--and feel like I and my typewriter are coauthoring the thing.
It's a colorful but not necessarily accurate interaction with the world.