From daydreams to fiction

I drove home from my parents' house last night, just singing along with the radio, minding my own business. Suddenly, I started to daydream. I daydream all the time (at school, work, driving, and at home). My mind wandered back to earlier in the day. I saw a guy that I grew up with that's been gone for two years. Oh boy! He has grown up into something else. Very attractive (Sigh) All he did was say hi to me and go on his merry way. For some reason, those two words "Hi Nikki" (Side note: he calls me Nikki because that's what I was called when I was growing up.) spurred up the oddest sensation in my stomach. I took a deep breath to shake it off.

Well, a little over an hour later I see him again. Once again, "Hi Nikki" and my hands start shaking. I say hi and then bye as I try to pretend that he doesn't affect me. I hurry away, too bent on getting away before I do something stupid and try to flirt with him. I get home and I look down. My hands are shaking and I have weird knots in my stomach. I know this reaction. I get this reaction when I'm attracted to a guy but I'm simultaneously scared that he knows I'm attracted to him. When I was a teenager, and completely scared of boys, I used to get this reaction around just about any guy I wasn't related to.

Back to driving home, I start to daydream about the what ifs that fill up life. What if he can tell that I'm attracted to him? What if he suddenly (by some random miracle) finds me attractive now that we're grown up? What if... Suddenly, as if on autopilot, I switch the what ifs and the images of him asking me out to a current piece of fiction I'm working on. Now my characters are living out my daydreams. The main character is now me and the guy in the story is this guy. They get to live out life while I daydream about it.

My realization as I drove home is this: In order to protect myself from disappointment I project my daydreams into fiction. That way, my extremely unrealistic daydreams get life somewhere and I don't have to feel the sting of hurt and disappointment when someone doesn't act that way I hope they will. I'm not sure if this is really healthy or not but at this point I don't feel like I have much of a choice. I think it's safe to say that my daydreams will most likely end up in my stories. So if you want to know what's going on in my head... read my stories.