I have been away.  I am often away, dwelling in the realm of the unreal while the world around me crumbles to dust without my even noticing.  Ask me where I've been, and chances are I'll be unable to answer you.

My obsession with the unreal, with the idea that perhaps reality can be experienced only through unreality, leaves   my friends and family deeply frustrated. I don't notice clutter, I don't notice when someone is speaking to me, and I don't notice my personal appearance.  None of these things matter to me in my deepest moments of solipsism.

I suppose this sinking into myself originated as a defense mechanism.  In school, at the dentist, in my room at night, I would leave to go some place else.  Sometimes books took me there, but sometimes I would just stare up at the ceiling or out at the nothingness in front of me, emanating from me, and I would be myself somewhere else, and in  this elsewhere I was safe and the world could be beautiful.

Is it healthy to be so entirely elsewhere?  I think it is probably not.  But I would much rather be unhealthy than to give up this world of my own creation to the world that is.