Living in a Fantasy World

When I was a pre-schooler I was obsessed with learning how to read, and I was lucky enough to have a mother who was able to spend the time to try and satisfy my appetite and give me the tools I needed to open up a whole new world of fantasy. I clearly remember reading my first unaided page of an Enid Blyton paper back when I was six years old and curled up in bed, and being very proud of myself.

I have always loved to read before I go to bed as I find it a great comfort. I remember going on brownie camp when I was very young and being absolutely horrified that once in our sleeping bags, the lights would go out, and we were to go to sleep…WITHOUT READING! Of course I would have to burrow down inside my sleeping back with a torch to pour through the pages of my books before I could sleep. Even now I don’t feel the day has ended properly until I have read at least a few pages of a book.

I love books for the same reason most people do – they are a way to escape the real world and enter one where anything is possible. The same can be said of films and television, and to me these are much the same drug as a good book is. Perhaps even more so. It’s an escape that can at times threaten to swallow us whole. It’s not unusual to love stories and escaping into fantasy worlds, but for those on the spectrum it’s a more intense experience that can consume us.

In my younger years when I didn’t have such things as a job and children that constantly demanded my attention, a new book by my favourite author would send me to my room where I would lock myself away and not be seen until I had read it cover to cover and completely and utterly surrendered myself to the world it created. It would become my world, and the characters would become my best friends. It would be all I could think about and when it was over I would feel as though there was a deep hole in my life.

Films and TVs shows have had the same effect on me. During my university years Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin off Angel completely dominated my world to the extent that I would watch nothing else in my free time, and would even turn down engagements with real friends in favour of watching the latest episode on TV. I even went so far as to write my dissertation on the representations of masculinity in Buffy in my final year.

The reason why these stories appeal to us so much is simple. We spend all day in the real world, with real people, trying to decode their meanings, trying to fit in, trying to understand society and its rules, and it’s both confusing and exhausting. Books, films and TV shows, however, offer us the enjoyments of real human emotions with much less ambiguity. The characters intensions are clearly laid out for us, often we are given insights into their very thoughts and know exactly what they are feeling. In books our protagonists go so far as to tell us what they’re thinking and read the other characters for us. In TV and film scenes are deliberately shot to show us what we should be looking at, close ups on faces and exaggerated expressions make them easier to read, music tells us what the mood is and how we should be feeling. We are able to become part of tight groups of friends, enter into their world and share in their excitement, sadness and jokes, without feeling out of place. What’s more we already know that the story is already planned out. Someone is in control, it is not haphazard like the real world, ultimately there is a plan and you are in safe hands.

The real world scares me, because I am constantly looking for meaning and order, and am never satisfied. In the stories there always seem to be a greater purpose that drives the characters. My constant search for meaning in life keeps bringing me back to these stories, because they are the only place I can find it. They are the only place I feel safe, and where things make sense.

I could recite entire episodes of my favourite shows and films, and their lines will often turn up in my conversation, because I have learnt most of my humour from them. I relate most of the world around me to the stories that I love, and try to find fantasy and magic everywhere in the world around me, because I feel far more comfortable in a fantasy world than I do in the real one. Sometimes it is all I can think about.

I know that it’s the same for my son who frequently replaces real conversation with scripts he has literally lifted straight from his favourite shows. For me the enjoyment that we get from this fiction is one of the plus sides of being on the spectrum. I would not trade in the great I joy that I experience from immersing myself in a fantasy world for anything  – and I wouldn’t take it away from my son either. For much of the time we live in a fantasy world, and I can tell you now, it’s a lot more fun than the real one!