A childhood belief about imaginary friends

I had my first imaginary friend when i was 3 or 4, he was a giant white rabbit called sticky.

Then i met Tom. He was a boy the same age as me with brown hair and blue eyes, he was good looking but i could kind of never make out his face properly, like it was kind of out of focus.

Then we started playing a game where i was a fairy princess and tom was my twin brother and we invented HEAPS of other imaginary characters to play this game with (i am an ony child). When i was 11 the fairy game stopped being fun because i knew i looked stupid playing imaginary games even though it was really real to me!

Tom and the others continued to hang around and we met a few more imaginary people along the way. Eventually it was just me and Tom again but then when i was 13 or 14 i made best friends with this guy and he liked me but i didn't feel the same way about him at the time (we ended up going out a few years later).

Tom got really jealous and sometimes when my friend would talk to me, Tom would make smart remarks about what he was saying. It was really distracting.

When i was about 15 or 16 me and Tom had a big fight and he told me he was in love with me and i realized that i was in love with him too and i had been for a long time. But i knew that we couldn't be together obviously becauase people would think i was crazy and i said that and Tom said i shouldn't care what they thought. I ended up yelling at him to leave me alone and that he wasn't real and that i was and i needed to stop thinking about him and start thinking about real people. He started crying and walked out the door and never came back.

I was so upset. I ended up going out with the guy but secretly it was on the rebound from Tom. It didn't work out with the guy and i know it was because i was really in love with someone who i know doesn't exist.

I still think about him all the time and i miss him. I know how it must sound, like i was such a lonely person or something but that's not true! I've always had lots of friends and attention from guys. But despite that, Tom is my favourite person of all the people i've ever known, and i haven't told anyone about him since i was 7. My mum didn't even know that he still existed.