6:49pm June 28, 2014

“And we’ve seen all that mockery too. And what we want to say, or would say if anyone would actually be willing to listen, is… nine times out of ten, when you scratch the surface on someone who is trying very hard to live in a fantasy world, you will not find a spoiled brat who is just so spoiled they think they’re entitled to be Someone Special and created their fantasy because reality didn’t give them all the specialness they thought they deserved. You will find someone whose real, waking life is mostly unpleasant. Someone who is being constantly bullied, or abused by their family. Someone who has some disability that no one has ever acknowledged and just doesn’t understand why things that come effortlessly to others are such an uphill struggle for them. Someone who is cognitively completely out of synch with what others expect from someone of their age, and deeply confused about the most fundamental aspects of what’s going on around them. Someone with severe depression or anxiety or PTSD that started long before they tried to cope with it by creating a fantasy world because they had no other resources available to them. Someone who has few or no friends who aren’t bullies or pity friends, outside of groups that might give them an opportunity to do all this stuff in a place where it’s considered normal.”

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Can’t emphasize this enough. Bullying people, especially teens for some reason, for creating fantasy worlds to escape reality, is a really horrible thing to do. Especially given what those teens are usually facing. I was one of those teens, I did not and do not deserve one iota of the bullying I have gotten then or now because of anything I did. I was doing my best to survive a horrible, complicated situation, and I would defy any of these bullies to do better in my shoes. I don’t think they could.

(via youneedacat)

What really bothers me is sometimes people use the bullying and the hurt as reasons why it’s “sick” and “pathetic” to be so involved in a fantasy world. But everybody does things to cope with pain. Why should fantasizing be more worthy of contempt than anything else? It really hurts that people think this way.

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