When I was in middle school, I was alone in life. /emo. My plushies were best friends. I started taking them to school, maybe to gain attention, maybe to have someone with me. But I treated plushies like a four year old would. They had a name. I talked to them like they were real. They went everywhere with me and sat next to me.
Now my counselor has gifted me an otter plush I call Ed. I have not been childishly obsessed with a plushie in years. Yet I feel it starting again. I keep him with me. At dinner. Next to me while I'm typing this. On my shoulder in a photo. In my backpack for school. Next to me when I sleep. In the rim of my jeans or strapped to my arm when I'm walking around. I've started talking to him, and I'm extremely tempted to slip and start being obsessed with him like he's an imaginary friend.
Is it normal, or even okay to have an imaginary plushie friend at my age? I wonder what Ed thinks of this. Should I not be intimate friends with a plushie? What if I start thinking he is real? With my illness, that's actually a possibility.