maladaptive daydreams

dreaming yourself into dark corners

Dawn’s light reveals a misty kingdom. I am cobwebbed head to toe in dreams, stickily laced across lash and lip. They are midnight’s cerements, clinging to my bedclothes like burrs. From these ghostly filaments, I weave a pliant but unbreakable web of daydreams to hold me fast from sunrise to sunset.

Does your heart ever quicken from dancing on distant shores? Or settle into the sleepy rhythm of a kitchen perfumed with warm dough and kettle steam? Do you dream yourself into dark corners? Become both goddess and heroine, victim and rescuer, of a private inner world?

Doorways appear in idle moments. The supermarket queue. Waiting for boots to be laced. A meandering walk without headphones. In life’s dead-ends, I pluck a silvered thread and weave. Once it was the lonely walk from one classroom to the next. Now the web is spun in stolen moments - when a glass needs refilled or there’s tea to be made. Sometimes I indulge in plain sight; at a quiet table or on sullen walks.

My dreamer’s cocoon is largely impervious to the outside world. Neither scalding water sluicing skin clean nor glittering real-life achievement can break the tangled cobwebs.

Often, I’m left breathless by the intensity of what’s not real. I circle back. Greedy for more. Again. Different. Better.

Nowhere is more private than these personal daydreams. No closeness will ever disclose my deepest desires, hidden like hazelnuts within a salmon, within a river, within a wood, nor touch the intimacy of clandestine reveries. It’s an irresistible siren call.

I admit it’s the part of me no one sees that I cherish the most. A core identity that remains unknown and untouched. Within the hallowed privacy of my imagination, it’s possible to live the impossible, but often it’s in this fantasy world that I allow myself to feel the simplest of possibilities until I ache.

Do you catch yourself daydreaming? Until recently, I never questioned the inner fantasies that run parallel to my real life. Are they ‘maladaptive’ or creative play? Wistful escapes or wishful manifesting? Let me know what you think.

Kate xx