adults don’t stop having imaginary friends we just start referring to them as original characters
Don’t worry they haven’t found my emotional support idealized version of myself.
do you mean your Original Protagonist
Yo why are all of you feeling bad? Be happy that your inner child is still alive
that is a magnificent attitude honestly, I love that.
adults and teens have so many of the same needs as young children, it’s just that the ways we fill those needs change over time. we all have a need for creative outlets, a need to tell stories even if only to ourselves, a need to express and explore different facets of the self and keep ourselves company in our own heads.
I think it’s nifty that young kids just naturally invent imaginary friends (without anyone showing them how!), and that that is a totally normal part of being a tiny human. I think it’s lovely that as we grow (and learn more clearly to distinguish fiction from reality), our relationship with imagination shifts, and we try to funnel that creative impulse into more solid forms. I think it’s fabulous that so many people are out there making up characters and stories inside their heads, because not only is that how stories come to exist and be shared with the world, but because that is such a meaningful part of the internal human experience. Just like there is value in singing when no one else is in the room, in dancing when no one else is watching, so too is there value in imagination–even and especially when you are your own audience. In such quite ways, we fill our lives with sparkling color.
