Elena S. (IEI) - Immersion in a World of Fantasies

I love to dream. In my daydreams I feel good; my inner states are comfortable.

<…> I don’t feel my body; I’m like air—you’re there in an instant and you move. I live with my soul alone; I feel light, I move. Worry comes over me about my dad—I’m there in a flash, I fly to his apartment, I look around, and I have this feeling that I actually walk there and see everything.

At kindergarten they used to lay us out on the veranda to sleep. And when they did, I never slept—I flew. I was lying there, but I was flying—that’s how it felt. I’d go past the kindergarten, past the little house. There was a little house there. When I lay on the veranda, I would mentally go over to that house, swing on the swings. I’d swing, swing, I’d fly on those swings, while my body lay in the cot at the same time. I liked how the branches swayed, how the birds sang. I still remember the smell, the movement of the wind, what it was like where I lay. I remember it now, and where I went—I simply imagined it.

And now sometimes I “fly” around the house—I see that the dishes weren’t washed in the evening.

But back then it was just happiness to fly here and there; I’d see some cloud and think, “Who is it—a bear or a kitty?” I had the feeling that—bang—I’m already sitting on the clouds, and it’s soft and white: not like a featherbed, it’s a different feeling. There, in the cloud, there was a completely different feeling, one I never experienced on the ground. It was very light there: good, sun, light.

<…> Sometimes it happens like this—I’m standing on a bridge. I’m standing there, talking to myself; I like my secret. And then I take a run—as if I’m standing here, but I’ll run off there, somewhere far away. In my mind I take a run: running, running, I run, then jump with all my might into the river and go to the bottom—while I’m standing there, reading. I have the feeling it’s real. I really do this. I immerse myself there, immerse myself, then I surface, shake myself off like a dog, and I feel so good! Just insanely good.

And then I go on living. That’s my kind of double life.

Or I’m lying on the couch—the window is yellow, then it becomes purple—such a beautiful purple, an inanimate color. But not completely inanimate. And suddenly I see myself from above—and it’s not me, it’s a little person: short legs, little arms, a head, big eyes. I think, “Wow, that’s me!” And then I go on lying there. It doesn’t surprise or irritate me. Well, that’s how I was for a bit.

<...> I always live with images; I always have images before my eyes. In childhood I saw myself in images.

I think in pictures in general; I see everything in pictures: I’m standing in a meadow, the sun. I imagine a little bun-girl rolling along, a path, grass, trees. I always imagined everything like that.