Imaginary Friends

[noahie]

Did you have any imaginary friends as a kid? What were they like? Do you still think about them as an adult?

I didn't have any imaginary friends, but I used to have stuffed animals who I'd give personalities to and have them enact stories in my head. I used to consider them friends of mine too, and would have them watch TV with me and generally felt comfort in their presence. I kept them up until the age of about 12 or 13. Once I started middle school, I tried focusing on my relationships with my classmates and friends. Still though, I've always been introverted and prefer being by myself.

[asahelix]

I was a weird kid. I am still a weird kid.

My imaginary friends were shadowy clones of myself that all had their own personalities and traits about them, similar to the Smurfs or that one Gravity Falls episode. I don't remember much about them. I just remember I would command them to do my bidding. I've had a few others that I am a bit too embarrassed to share, but that was one of them lol. I also did give my plushies/stuff animals/whatever you want to call them personalities and different traits to them. I don't remember most of them, but I do remember this Beanie Boo dog with a blue tail and a teddy bear that to this day I still sleep with (don't judge me) 

[fablefound]

waiiit i ALSO did something very similar with my stuffed animals @noahie ! i'd do needlessly elaborate stories with them all the time, usually acting along to a movie or book i was into. they all had names and personalities and some of them were related to each other... though i also eventually decided to try talking to, y'know, other people, i still have a soft spot for plushies and have quite a few in my home.
besides that though, i did also have... uh... is it an imaginary friend if it's not really a friend? i used to play at having ghosts "haunt" me. one of them was, inexplicably, grovyle from pokemon mystery dungeon. the other was called "scarlet" and i often said she lived under my desk.
i, too, was a weird kid 

[MrsMoe]

When I was a kid, my imaginary friends were constantly rotating between whatever movie or cartoon I was currently fixated on. Sometimes it'd be a Disney character, other times it'd be Tom and Jerry, and on another day it'd be Garfield. The imaginary friend that lasted the longest by far would probably be Sonic the Hedgehog. I liked to pretend he was with me all the time and talk about him like we were friends and it would drive my older sister insane.

[sipuli]

I can't really remember these myself because I was still pretty young when I grew out of the imaginary friend thing, but apparently I had one who was really naughty (the classic "I didn't do it, it was [imaginary friend]!") and one who I never actually played with because she was always travelling somewhere. I'm pretty sure I even pretended to get postcards from the second one. When I was a bit older I had an entire imaginary world that I played in, but strangely no more imaginary friends.

[arachnoFlora]

I've been collecting plushies for a very very long time, and one of my first plushies was this red dragon shaped like a bean.  I don't know why I fell in love so especially with him, but I decided that his name was Fir and he was like my familiar.  I never really played at this being real, like a true imaginary friend, but in my daydreams he would fly alongside me, flapping his comically small wings, and enable me to do magical things.  I kind of imagined it like the popit menu in Little Big Planet, for some reason :p.  I still have him and he's still my little dragon friend, but he's too small to hug properly anymore, so he's lost his spot on my bed in favor of a big dog plush.

[saku]

when i was younger, i used to own this peppa pig plush that i carried everywhere and it was my comfort imaginary friend  i even took it to school (because i struggled to make friends and didnt have many) which brought me comfort  sadly, i ended up losing the plushie so i ended up getting  a new one, but it didnt feel the same  i did manage to find it a few months later but i grew out of it and i was more attached to my cinnamoroll plush lol

now, i still collect and own plushies because i never grew out of it, but i still think about my imaginary plushie friends from time to time 

[ewomack]

I had a small stuffed skunk I carried with me everywhere. He had a personality of his own and would every now and then make comments on people or situations (I may have helped him in this). Some thought I carried it around too long and I received some nasty flack from people. I still have the skunk. I'll keep him around for a while.

[504slashdiv]

I find it kind of interesting a lot of people have their plushies as their imaginary friends. For me I've always had humans/humanoid characters as my imaginary friends.

They sort of "manifested" in my daydreams of me in a parallel world where I say the right things and have these awesome friends I hang out with. I would imagine them being in the same class as me and I'd imagine giggling with them in class over a lesson or going over notes together or doing group projects together. They would appear like this in my daydreams from elementary school until the end of junior high school.

I was a pretty lonely kid and this was during a time when screens weren't so ingrained into our lives, so daydreaming about imaginary friends was my way of dealing with that loneliness. Though they were certainly imaginary friends, I never spoke about them to anyone.

It was only in senior high school when I told people about them, mainly my online friends and some artsy IRL friends. I called them my OCs at the time, and it was also at that time when I stopped treating them as imaginary friends and more as OCs with proper backstories and personalities. It kind of coincided with the fact that I became part of a super nice friend group in senior high. It's a friendship I really enjoyed perhaps to the point that I didn't need to imagine up friends to keep me company.

At my age right now, I've been feeling really lonely lately so I kind of started daydreaming about my original imaginary friends again, but this time rather than them being my classmates they're now in different colleges and places but with reunion-type scenarios playing in my head. I also have thought of a new imaginary classmate in a parallel universe where I had a different choice on where I went to college. Everyone's also actually listed on my OCs page under the "Imaginary Friends Extended Universe!"