I’ve had an imaginary friend since I was 6. I’m 16 now and don’t know how to get him to go away.

Hello, thanks for taking the time to read this. It’s kind of a hard topic for me to write about as it’s something I’ve literally never told anyone in my life, but something happened recently that made me feel like I just need to unpack this. When I was little, my mom didn’t believe in the public school system, so after me and my siblings finished kindergarten, she started homeschooling us. We moved away to the countryside not long after. While it was beautiful there, almost all of our neighbors were over triple my age, and playing with only your siblings gets old. With a lack of other things to do, I started reading a lot. We would drive an hour out to the library every month and borrow as many books as we could, then me and my sisters would spend the next few weeks slowly reading through them. I remember having to start picking out books from the teen section when I was eight, because I’d already read every book in the kids section. Anyway, for most of my childhood I spent more of my day with my nose in a book than without. While it wasn’t all bad for me (I have a decent vocabulary and strong writing skills now I’d say), spending so much of my time in fictional stories had an effect on me. I built up a very, very strong imagination; I created entire worlds filled with my favorite characters entirely in my head, where we would go on adventures together. For short periods of time, I even forgot that it was fictional, and it felt like I was really living my fantasy. I began to mix up what was in my head and what was actually real. It was around this period, right after my sixth birthday, that I really began to feel the loneliness. While I loved my family, I felt like I needed more. That was when I realized that I already had plenty of friends, dozens of them even; after all, why couldn’t the friends in my books become my friends too? While I had many friends I played with, none of them were really /my/ friend. They were all originally the friends of the authors who wrote them. So, I decided to make a friend of my own. I want to explain that it wasn’t a conscious decision at first; he crept in one day, just little, not-really-thought-out ideas building on top of each other. It wasn’t until he started listening to what I had to say, and even responding, that he really became my friend. Suddenly, none of the other characters in my books mattered, because I had a character of my own. However, though, It took me a long to name him. I know that he’s not real. I’ve always known that. But when you name something, it’s like you’re making it a little bit real, in a way. There was something about him that made me feel…I don’t know. Cautious? Apprehensive? He just felt different then the rest of them. Anyway, it wasn’t until I was in high school that I gave him a name. I named him Jeremiah. The summer before I started middle school, my family moved to the suburbs in Arizona, for my dad’s work and to be closer to family. For the first time since I was about four, I went to school with other kids my age. Middle school girls are vicious. I know a lot of people say that, but they really are. After being secluded with my family for so long, my social skills couldn’t overfill a teaspoon, and I knew practically nothing about popular topics of the time as I had previously had very little internet access. Middle school was a bust, friend- and grade-wise. I felt incredibly unmotivated and overall down. That was when he came back. I’d made a promise to myself, the day before sixth grade; I was done with imaginary friends. I wanted to have real friends this time, ones that I could actually play with outside of my head. But real friends are complicated and unpredictable. You never know what really drives them, why they want to be your friend in the first place, when they’ll decide they‘re bored with you and want to move on. Jeremiah was different. I knew he wanted to be my friend, /really/ wanted. I knew that he would never be like them. He wouldn’t say things like they did. He wouldn’t act like them. He wouldn‘t hurt me. But he did anyway, just in ways I couldn’t see, because I didn’t want to see. Sometimes it’s better to look, not watch. I‘m in high school now. I have real, unpredictable friends. I like and hate that about them, that I don’t always know what they’re going to do. But he’s still here. He listens to me. He responds with his own ideas, more than he ever did before. It’s started to scare me. I thought that once I got real friends, he would go away. I don’t know how else to get him to leave. I think it’s started to make me lose my mind a little. I think that scares me more. I saw him, yesterday. I was in my desk chair next to the window in my room, drawing on my tablet, when he crept in. He was standing right outside the window; he could have reached out and touched the glass if he wanted to. I didn’t really see him, not fully, just in the corner of my eye. But he wouldn’t go away. I hoped he would. I wanted him to. But he doesn’t listen to me anymore. Not really. It wasn’t until I told him, out loud, to “stop looking at me!” that he finally went away. He’ll come back, though. I know that. I don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t tell anyone about him, they’ll just think I’m insane. Am I going insane? I don’t know. It’s started to hurt, not knowing. The fear hurts more, though. I don’t want to admit this, but I feel like I have to. I think part of the fear, my fear, is that…I don’t want him to leave. If he does, I’ll be alone again. Does he know, how afraid I am? Does he care? He can’t, I know that. He’s not real. He’s not real, but…it still hurts. Why should it hurt, when it’s not even real? I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say. I don’t know why I‘m posting this, or even writing it up, really. I just wanted someone to know. I think he’ll come back, soon. He won’t listen to me then, I know that. I don’t know what he’s going to do. I think he might hurt me, this time. Was that all he ever did? Did he ever really care?