There is a strange kind of emotional self-reference that is quite bonkers:

I feel that I am important to this person, therefore I must be important to this person.

To the bonkers person, the feeling/belief becomes the evidence of imagined importance. Sometimes I think this can point to loneliness, insecurity, narcissistic tendencies, a fragile sense of self, or simply an inability to accurately gauge the absence of another person’s relationship to them or with them.

Constructing fake relationships in the head.

It’s something that gives pause, doesn’t it?

Cray, as we once said, people constructing an emotional reality in which their own importance is considerably greater than it is in the reality shared by someone else. Think The Crush, circa 1993, but with a fake, non-romantic relationship someone builds in their mind with a person they do not know, and more importantly, does not know them, who is not nor has ever been in their life. Or with a parent who is no longer a factor in their adult child’s life, but insists that some portion of the past validates interfering in another adult’s space. Observing this is disturbing.

There is a difference between being interested in someone and imagining that you are important to them.

We all notice people. We can become curious about them, admire them, dislike them, wonder about them, or even develop a fascination with them without ever having a real relationship. We can cross a line between interest and intrusion, and believe this is healthy or justified when, in fact, it is neither.

But when someone begins assigning significance to themselves in another person’s life without the other person participating in that relationship, something else is happening. They are no longer responding to a relationship; they are responding to an idea of one that does not exist. And the more elaborate that idea becomes, the less it may have to do with the actual person they are thinking about. They have filled in the blanks themselves.

There’s some crazy going on.

Psychologically, I think that can say quite a lot about the person doing it. Sometimes it may come from loneliness, insecurity, a need to feel significant, or a tendency to construct emotional narratives in which they have a more important role than they actually do.

It might go like this:

I matter to this person. I occupy space in their thoughts. Something about me has affected them. They need me. If I think about you constantly, you must be thinking about me, too.

Eventually, the assumption can become so familiar that it feels like fact.

And maybe that is the part I find hardest to understand: how completely separate two people’s realities can be.

One person can be carrying around an entire relationship that the other person isn’t carrying at all.

One person can spend hours thinking about what the other thinks, what the other feels, what the other must have noticed, what their interactions mean, and what place they occupy in that person’s life—while the other person is simply living their life, giving that person no thought at all.

When does one person’s obsession with believing they are a part of another person’s life, when they are not or never have been, become dangerous? At what point does a nutcase attempting to force their way into a place they are not wanted become something of legal relevance? When is it time to call in the law?

Defiant trespass.

Defiant Trespasser § 3503(b): Entering or remaining in a place after receiving direct notice – such as a verbal warning, fencing, or posted signs – to stay away. Graded typically as a misdemeanor or summary offense depending on the circumstances.

If you’re told to stay away, stay away. In your head you may believe the story you’ve told yourself forever, but that is your story. It is a form of delusion. If you try to force your way in, there are laws to protect those you wish to harass. And you, crazy people, do not have the right to interfere with the lives of others. It’s a legal matter.

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In a world where the disgruntled are at times inclined to show up, packing, never take this lightly. It’s the road rage of the front yard, or your front door.

So keep in mind…

We know that a person who is genuinely important to us usually knows it because there is an actual relationship there— interaction of continued and ongoing conversation, recent history, frequent shared experiences, and mutual, two-way attention. Respect for the people in another person’s life.

Importance isn’t something one person can simply declare into existence for another person. One person cannot simply scream to another and decide, for instance, another person wants to talk to them simply because in their jumbled mind, they’ve decided that the other person does. That’s insanity. If there is no relationship there, and never has been, wrong assumptions may have caused some sort of mental break.

Another person can imagine themselves the central character in your life inside their own head, but that doesn’t make them the central character in yours. If you see this happening, don’t brush it off.

It could be someone related to you in some distant way, or just someone who lives down the street,or any person that has no importance or relevance in your life filling their mind with an entirely different story not based in reality. It is almost heartbreaking.

But in these strange times, it can also be dangerous.

above right: what was more maddening than the untangling of the 20-foot phone cord + shit was crazy + and some people are crazy as well

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