Return to reality

It’s strange and terrifying to think about return when you’ve been gone for so long. It’s strange
because many of us ultimately don’t know where we should be returning to. Is it even a return? What
are we leaving behind? If the dream world feels like home somewhere at the back of your mind, then
is reality where you should really be?

It’s inherent for a dreamer to despise reality because it threatens the only place where you can exist
and therefore your existence altogether. Saying reality can never measure up to the daydreams is
understandable from your position, but it’s a very ambiguous statement, dangerously inaccurate too.
You know that daydreams feel wonderful because you exist in them, you’ve seen it all, you’ve felt it,
you’ve been there and you can attest to just how beautiful and emotionally fulfilling they can be,
right? But when you say reality is terrible, are you actually there? No. Do you feel like you genuinely
exist in it? No.

This is why you are wrong.

Reality can’t measure up to your daydreams only because you are not here. How can you say reality is
ugly when your eyes are shut so you can’t even see it in full bloom? What gives you right to say it’s
dull when you don’t even exist in it? Yes, reality can be just as exciting, just as thrilling and mind-
blowing and emotionally fulfilling as your daydreams. Don’t use the excuse that it will never compare
to the life inside your head. It’s your perception that’s flawed, not the world. Every time you stop
daydreaming and try shifting your focus from fantasies to the outer world, you come to a conclusion
that not only reality happens to be dull and disappointing for you but outright suffocating. This
happens because your entire system is depressed. And thoughts of depressed people
are always turned inwards, preventing them to be here, to live in the moment, regardless of how
intensely hard they attempt to shift their focus. If you aren’t turning your attention inwards to
daydream, you’re turning it inwards to ruminate about how fucked up and miserable everything is. As
long as your thoughts are turned inwards, you’re not here. And as long as you’re not here, reality will
continue to be terrible for you.

Do you know why you daydream? Because you desperately try to exist somewhere, anywhere, as long
as you can exist. Because when you aren’t daydreaming, you are nowhere. And this nowhere you call
cruel reality, which you’re catapulted into every time you abandon daydreams, isn’t reality. It’s
nowhere. Don’t mistake things.

Returning to reality means returning to yourself.

It doesn’t mean giving up what’s in your daydreams and it doesn’t mean forcing yourself to focus on
the outside world and pretend you are what you’re not. It means rebuilding your sense of self until
it’s solid enough for you to exist inside your own body instead of existing in dream world and
nowhere at once. It means rebuilding the sensors which let you experience positive emotions on
your own skin in place of having to depend on and live off emotions of your characters. This new self
that will be reborn and that you’ll ultimately be returning to as you return to reality is made up of the
same self that expresses itself in your daydreams which means that by giving up daydreaming, you’re
only giving up the habit that consumes countless hours, nothing else. As I wrote in the previous post,
those feelings of life making sense, of purpose and love and passion and spontaneity of emotions
experienced in daydreams, they’ll remain yours. This is the thought you have to remember during
your entire recovery. You’re not giving anything up. Your most precious daydreams are you.

There is no such thing as finding a balance between fantasies and reality because if you do so, you
will always be split, moving from one place to another and never dedicating yourself wholly to either
side. And this is not fair. It’s not fair towards people in your real life and it’s not fair towards yourself.
You have to go for all or nothing. When you do go for all or nothing, you can have both. When you
genuinely let go of your attachments and daydreams in order to experience and process underlying
pain that must be felt for you to stand up and rebuild yourself, they’ll come back to you.