I've had a fascination with all things fantasy and science fiction for as long as I can remember. I pulled an all nighter to read the Twilight series (don't tell my mom, I technically wasn't allowed to read them yet whoops), threw myself into series of 5, 10, 20 books, devoured new movies and TV shows like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5. I knew that none of it was real, but that didn't stop me from incorporating it into my daily life.
Doing chores with my siblings became a Cinderella-esque prelude to a midnight ball. Headphones provided a handy soundtrack while I cleaned the kitchen or scrubbed toilets. I ran through dialogue and crafted backstories for secondary characters. Without friends my age to spend summer afternoons with, I took to trekking the mile or so through the town square to get to our local library, arriving with an empty backpack and leaving with as many books as I could carry. I did this once a week like clockwork but often more.
Before we knew what roleplaying games or fanfiction were, my sister and I would stay up after lights out to take turns whispering to each other about what characters we would be in our latest obsession, building long and involved adventures. Our 'verbal games' (as we dubbed them) were sometimes casual musings and sometimes intense constructions with character sheets and pencil scribblings of plot ideas or villains to incorporate in our next late-night session.
Somewhere in early high school, this dried up. I still find myself turning to fantasy in moments of stress and anxiety, but my adult mind no longer gives me the luxury of crafting my own unique scenarios where I can star as an abducted royal, a peasant training as an assassin, a sorcerer brimming with power. My imagination has been shut down, boxed up and left to gather dust in the attic because somewhere along the way I decided that it was unrealistic and unhealthy to spend so much time pretending to be something other than I was. So without even the creative outlet of allowing myself to create my own worlds, characters, situations, and adventures, I find myself becoming inordinately focused on the ones that exist already. I have spent all nighters as an adult reading every book in a newly-discovered fantasy series when I knew I had a school assignment that needed to be done or an early day at work the next morning. I have read 300,000+ word fanfictions rather than spend the mere two hours I needed to get a work project done. Sometimes these things work out fine (thanks to ADHD, procrastination is one of the few motivators that actually gets to me but it comes with a ridiculous amount of stress) but sometimes it comes back to bite me in the ass.
I have snapped at people who interrupted my reading because I resented getting pulled out of the fantasy world where, just for a little while, none of my problems existed and I could be someone else, anyone else. I've had to come up with excuses for why projects or assignments weren't done or rush to get them finished in very little time. If I happen to recognize that I don't have the time to invest in a whole book, I may find myself sucked into Instagram or Tiktok or Youtube instead, devouring so many bite size chunks of content that I end up spending just as much time there (if not more).
In some ways, escapism is the polar opposite of mindfulness. Rather than being present in the moment and allowing ourselves to experience the emotions and physical sensations in our bodies, we run from them and immerse ourselves in something else. 'If we ignore it long enough, maybe it will go away!' we think. But it hasn't, it doesn't, and it never will. When the book is over or the end credits roll, the problem is still there. The feelings are still there. And despite my pride in being an 'accomplished reader' (can you tell I'm a burnt out gifted and talented kid?) I feel emptier at the end than I did at the beginning. Because now not only is the problem still there, but I feel a keen loss, a mourning for that world or those characters that I got so invested in but now have to say goodbye to and face reality again.
So the constant question that I ask myself is where does that line live? - the line between appreciating one of my favorite genres or forms of media and running away from my problems and feelings. How can I bridge the gap between the starry eyed, imaginative child that I was and the nostalgic, anxiety-ridden adult that I am now? I imagine there's no one easy answer. There never is.
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