Imagine having your annoying cousins or weird step siblings come over.
Different than you, separate lives and identities. You share a room with them.
Since they don’t have anyone else, you’re in charge of taking care of
them.
At first, they’re okay. Fun, like a new addiction;
friends for the lonely times,
entertainment for the boring times,
an escape for the hard times.
But then they start to inflict their emotions on you, until you can’t have any of your own.
Oh, and you can’t tell anyone.
Now put those annoying people, everything they do, in your head.
They are distracting, but if you don’t give them an opportunity to exist outside your head, you feel dazed and jittery and off.
They are both very tiring and distracting,
but you decide it is easier to give in.
That means precedence over school,
sleeping,
relaxing,
working,
even your own private thoughts.
Still, the more time you give, the more they want. The more they need, to take the pressure away.
If you feel something, experience something,
They apply it to themselves, and you don’t get to have it.
Soon, the plots of their lives start intertwining with yours;
their bad day in their world crosses into yours.
It isn’t so common to cross good days, only sometimes good moments
Everyone is perceived simultaneously. They might be conflicting, yet they are separated.
They become hyper realistic. Their preferences, their histories, their friends and families, the towns they live in. you find yourself at the computer to fact check for optimum reality.
you are having to control the mind, actions, and reactions of as many different people as are appearing right now. There are some characters who exist in the same world and know each other. Only you know everyone.
Who are they?
They are drifting off while the answers to an exam are read. They are losing five, six, seven hours a day. They are passing up parties, outings with people you only seldom see. They are losing your passions. They are being ashamed of someone who isn’t even real. They are missing someone who never existed. They are missing assignments. They are wanting so much to sleep but reliving the same scenes every night for months on end, until one night you finally don’t have to. They are not being able to remember if you are sad because of yourself or because of them. They are forgetting your best friend’s graduation party. They are losing the friends you do have.
But imagine all of these people are you,
and you are them.
So you feel like a different person, and the real life you sometimes becomes “imaginary” while the imaginary part becomes the “reality.”
And it can be very hard trying to stay you on the outside when you feel as though someone else is trying to control everything inside.
iamnotoldfashioned 