I have always had a habit of daydreaming and making up imaginary lives for myself. Sometimes it gets out of hand. This is one of those times. Due to various things going on in my life, and things from the past that are on my mind, my eating issues have got worse and my daydreaming habit has also got worse. I guess I just feel like I want to talk to someone, anyone, who understands and doesn't think I'm a freak. (My T says I'm not a freak, but he's on vacation this week.)

When I was a kid, I used to invent imaginary lives for myself. I did quite a lot of research in various ways as my rule was that they had to be 'accurate'. Doing the research was always the most satisfying part: once it was done, I could theoretically relax and get on with imagining the world I'd created, but instead I'd scrap it all and start again.

Recently I read a novel called The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan. The main character does something she calls 'the birthday game' and it's exactly the same thing I do: pick a birthday, build a life around it. I bought the book on Kindle and showed my T some sections as a way of explaining this whole thing to him.

My T has helped me recognise that my fantasies often contain information about how I'm feeling about my actual life. I told him I used to imagine being a girl whose mother had died and he said that's not surprising "because sometimes we think we've had a mother but we haven't really".

Since I started acknowledging CSA by my dad, I keep making up alternative lives where the CSA still happened, but it was someone else: a teacher, an uncle, a brother, a sports coach, a step-parent (not that I have those), anyone except my dad. I don't know why I don't just imagine a life without CSA. I feel like a freak.

I've also been fantasising a lot about having a sister, and I don't know if that's because I wish someone shared my pain and I wasn't alone. I don't know. I just know I'm spending too much time in my imaginary world and not getting enough done in the real one. It's a coping mechanism and it will get better in time, but I just feel like such a freak because I can't just concentrate on being me.