Blogging: For those who can't cope with just ONE Imaginary Friend

I've always been fascinated by Imaginary Friends. In fact, I've always harbored a secret curiosity about other people's childhood "Friends," but I haven't really ever been sure how to present that to a group of adults. And even in myself, despite my pre-occupation with them, I barely recall them at all. Which genuinely makes me sad, as they were a huge part of my childhood.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm an only child, or because I am a narcissist or what, but I couldn't be content with just one imaginary friend. Instead, as a child I constructed an elaborate "race" of imaginary beings, called the Dootdos. Of course, my best friend of all of them was named Dootdo... I'm not really sure if he was the King and that's why all the rest were named after him, or what. I know that Dootdo had a dog, and a friend named Bippy. Bippy was the smart one, who was tall (well, tall for Dootdos, they were all quite small, nearly smurf sized), and wore glasses. He was the one who orchestrated all of our hyjinks. I know there were a few female Dootdos, and numerous others who's names I can't remember - I should ask my mother, she remembers all that crazy stuff.

But as an only child, who often spent time playing by herself, I "coped" by inventing a whole race of friends. I can't recall the specifics, but I remember that the hierarchy and such was reasonably complex, and that they all interacted amongst themselves in addition to interacting with me. I've been thinking about this more and more recently, because my boyfriend considers people that are on the internet to be imaginary people. He doesn't understand why I get upset when "internet people" are rude to me in video games. I have a hard time differentiating that from someone I know yelling at me, and it frustrates me.

One of the reasons I've hated blogging in the past is because it truly is an exercise in narcissism, and I'd really like to think that I was above that. I'd like to believe that I wasn't dependent on having other people read and respond to my thoughts to validate myself. But then I started thinking that maybe writing one's thoughts out for others to read is the grown up's imaginary friend. The person that you talk to, even if they can't or don't respond back just because it feels good to get your thoughts out on paper. And perhaps since I couldn't content myself with one Imaginary Friend, blogging is my grown up equivalent.