{"quotes":[{"text":"He was everything I needed because his entire character had been molded by my deepest wants and desires. He was my rock when I cried, my playmate when I laughed, and my hero when I needed to imagine that one existed for me.","author":"Richelle E. Goodrich","tags":["friendship","hero","imaginary-friend","imagination","kindness","love","richelle","richelle-goodrich"],"id":43223,"author_id":"Richelle+E.+Goodrich"},{"text":"I don’t like psychiatrists,” Alecto told her. “Not because they don’t think I’m real, but because they have no idea what they’re doing.","author":"Rebecca McNutt","tags":["danger","imaginary-friend","imagination","mental-health","mental-illness","psychiatry","psychology","real"],"id":86447,"author_id":"Rebecca+McNutt"},{"text":"Your imaginary friend isn’t the problem, Amanda. The problem is that you don’t seem to have any real friends.","author":"Rebecca McNutt","tags":["companion","death","fantasy","friendship","imaginary-friend","imagination","love","psychiatry","real"],"id":177548,"author_id":"Rebecca+McNutt"},{"text":"I know have lived, so many times, that the only thing I have left to remember is my writing, cause every single moment in life it's already written.","author":"Piroska Rodriguez","tags":["childre","fantasy","fiction","imaginary-friend","inspirational","light","planets","story","universe"],"id":195751,"author_id":"Piroska+Rodriguez"},{"text":"It's like I'm dreaming of the imaginary friend Katie and I had when we were little. She'd been so real to us as kids. We each remembered Anna, that's what we'd called her, just like we remembered bits of our parents. But now, in this dreamscape of Paradise Lost, our imaginary third twin has all grown up.","author":"Beatrice Rose Roberts","tags":["canada","cape-breton","childhood","coming-of-age","death","foster","grown-up","imaginary-friend","nostalgia","parents","tulpa","twin"],"id":199707,"author_id":"Beatrice+Rose+Roberts"},{"text":"I’m considering keeping the shutters open, even if people are spying on me at night from the apartment across the street. Especially if they are spying on me. It makes me feel less alone. I have a mental camaraderie with that imaginary person and their imaginary gaze. I find myself performing myself for them and exaggerating my facial expressions so they can see me more clearly, like actors project their voices on stage. I’m miming myself.","author":"Jalina Mhyana","tags":["city-life","exile","florence","imaginary-friend","italy","loneliness"],"id":218029,"author_id":"Jalina+Mhyana"},{"text":"Stanley forced a smile to his lips at the memory of the onesided romance; it was silly, after all, a stupid childhood crush. Who’d fall in love with a fictional character? That was the kind of thing you laughed about as an adult. Or at least Harriet had thought so. He couldn’t quite do it, though. Couldn’t quite see it as a joke. It had felt too real, too raw and wild and fierce, for him todismiss it even now. It was love, of a sort, stunted and unformed as it was. For a time, it had kept him sane.","author":"Amelia Mangan","tags":["book","character","childhood","fan","fiction","humor","imaginary-friend","joke","life","mother","readig","romance","sane","sanity"],"id":219178,"author_id":"Amelia+Mangan"},{"text":"Some of the most evil human beings in the world are psychiatrists. Not all psychiatrists. Some psychiatrists are selfless, caring people who really want to help. But the sad truth is that in today's society, mental health isn't a science. It's an industry. Ritalin, Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro, Resperidone, happy pills that are supposed to 'normalize' the behavior of our families, our colleagues, our friends - tell me that doesn't sound the least bit creepy! Mental health is subjective. To us, a little girl talking to her pretend friends instead of other children might just be harmless playing around. To a psychiatrist, it's a financial opportunity. Automatically, the kid could be swept up in a sea of labels. 'not talking to other kids? Okay, she's asocial!' or 'imaginary friends? Bingo, she has schizophrenia!' I'm not saying in any way that schizophrenia and social disorders aren't real. But the alarming number of people, especially children, who seem to have these 'illnesses' and need to be medicated or locked up... It's horrifying. The psychiatrists get their prestigious reputation and their money to burn. The drug companies get fast cash and a chance to claim that they've discovered a wonder-drug, capable of 'curing' anyone who might be a burden on society... That's what it's all about. It's not about really talking to these troubled people and finding out what they need. It's about giving them a pill that fits a pattern, a weapon to normalize people who might make society uncomfortable. The psychiatrists get their weapon. Today's generations get cheated out of their childhoods. The mental health industry takes the world's most vulnerable people and messes with their heads, giving them controlled substances just because they don't fit the normal puzzle. And sadly, it's more or less going to get worse in this rapidly advancing century.","author":"Rebecca McNutt","tags":["asocial","child-innocence","childhood","colleague","creepy","crime","disorder","drug-company","drugs","ethics","evil","family","friend","happy-pill","human-rights","imaginary-friend","industry","innocence","innocence-lost","lexapro","little-girl","mental-health","mental-illness","morals","normal","normalize","overactive-imagination","pretend","prozac","psychiatrist","psychiatry","psychologist","psychology","resperidone","ritalin","schizophrenia","science","social-issue","social-misfit","stigma","subjective","weapon","wrong","zoloft"],"id":243920,"author_id":"Rebecca+McNutt"},{"text":"I know what I'm talking about, Alecto! When I think of Jud, I think of the times he wanted to be a coal miner, the times he took Wendy and me sailing in the harbour, the times he showed me how to play soccer, but I forgot all the bullying and I’ll never understand why. And now you ask me, you ask me what happened once we were in high school. You said you didn’t understand what having a family was like, so ask me!” Mandy was shouting at him without even realizing it, her words sharp and unforgiving.“I….” Alecto started, hesitating for a moment. “You don’t seem like yourself Mandy Valems, not at all….”“No, go ahead! You want to know what having a real family is like?” Mandy snapped, turning to stare at him coldly. “Ask me what happened, I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”“…What happened?” Alecto asked quietly, looking nervous and confused.“I stayed late after school in shop class when I was in grade 9, trying to keep my lousy grades up. I was building a birdhouse, something like that, and that was when Jud and all his popular jock friends came storming in, laughing and swearing like a bunch of pigs,” Mandy continued. “So ask me what happened next.”“I… I don’t want to ask you what happened,” Alecto replied.“Ask me!” Mandy yelled.“Alright, what happened next…?” Alecto questioned.","author":"Rebecca McNutt","tags":["argument","assault","attack","beat-up","bully","bullying","canada","cape-breton-parents","confession","conflict","cruelty","fight","friend","friendship","high-school","imaginary-friend","nova-scotia","school","shop","stress","wood","wood-shop"],"id":328324,"author_id":"Rebecca+McNutt"},{"text":"As an artist suffering from insomnia and working from my apartment, I had an artistic freedom to explore and create awesome stuff. I wore a robe and slippers as my work dress code. These are the days when creativity is my best imaginary friend. And I was crazy enough to create what people would call masterpieces.","author":"Shawn Lukas","tags":["apartment","artist","composer","crazy","imaginary-friend","insomnia","masterpieces","music"],"id":329659,"author_id":"Shawn+Lukas"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":19,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}