My maladaptive daydreaming became erotomania.

When I was 21 I entered society for real. I moved out, started college. My father had shunned me, and my relationship with my mother was superficial. I had always been a daydreamer and lived in my head for most of my life. My daydreaming got worse and worse the older I got.

For context with what Im about to explain, when I was 19 I was raped, which triggered CSA trauma flashbacks. I became an agoraphobe, quit my job, hid in my room all day, only coming out to get food or drink water or use the bathroom when I was sure I wouldnt run into anyone. It got so bad I once even peed on a bunched up towel I had in my room, because I couldnt hold it anymore but heard people in the common areas of the house. My parents did not try to intervene pr get me help. They both were in extreme denial about themselves and their lives and their kids functionality. After a year of hermit mode, in which I began to logically piece together the role my parents played in my life and how their abuse and inaction shaped me, I started to get better. I got my job back, and applied to school.

So, at 21, in my first semester of college, I met my teacher and formed a crush on him within the first 2 weeks of class. I was kind of an untouchable in high school, for reasons related to my csa that I wasn't able to articulate as a teen. My only sexual experiences thus far had been violent. But this man was safe. He was funny, he was kind. I saw him check me out one time when he thought I didnt see him, and I loved the attention. I had sex dreams about him, the first time I had ever experienced that. Sometimes with CSA, puberty gets messed up and either starts too early or too late. Mine started when I was 18, so really late compared to my peers, and I felt like I was finally catching up to my peers socially and sexually and my puberty was complete.

I would spend the evenings walking around campus listening to music and daydreaming about this teacher. We would talk for hours in my head. I started googling him, and found out information he hadn't shared in class, which informed the plots of my daydreams. He also talked about his family in class sometimes and I googled him enough to find out their names and then started googling them too.

I was living with undiagnosed PTSD and bipolar with psychotic features, I just didnt know it yet and wouldnt know that for a few years. So, at some point my daydreams broke from reality and I was convinced, absolutely convinced, that I was going to marry this man. That I had suffered what I had suffered, in part so that my timeline and his would collide at that point. He was the universe paying me back for what was taken from me.

I didnt think he loved me; I thought he was eventually going to love me. I started getting very worried about every action I took because I thought it would affect the future timeline. In my psychosis, I thought some actions would speed it up and we'd get married sooner, and some actions would make the universe punish me and the wedding would be pushed back by a few years.

This delusion lasted for years. If Im perfectly honest, I think it lasted until very recently, when my antipsychotic medication finally interrupted the thought and removed it by the root.

I will be 30 in a few months. I spent my 20s in an unreality. ​

I feel like an actual insane person when I look back. I was an obsessive digital stalker. I was certain beyond any doubt that he was my future husband.

He provided a safe space that I took and ran with mentally. He was a male authority figure who was kind. Him checking my body out turned into the possibility of being sexualized in a safe, gentle, reciprocal way.

My brain conjured this delusion as a way to keep me moving forward. I had something keeping me going, I had something connecting me to humanity. The delusion acted as an emotional shock absorber for daily troubles and resurfacing trauma.

Now that Im back in reality and past this delusion, Im grateful for the ways that my mind kept me safe, but now I also feel completely unanchored. I have no idea what Im working toward. But I know I will not marry this man, a man who was only in my life for 1 short semester and knew me only as one of his many students.