Perhaps I AM gaslighting myself?

For the 25 years I have been alive, I have lived my life outside of myself. Living in the moment is something that has never been easy for me for a multitude of reasons. The most important of those, in my opinion, for the topic I’m writing about today is that I used escapism as a defense mechanism for many of my formative years. Being an imaginative kid really carried me through the circumstances I had to deal with in my adolescence. Solo role playing as a child morphed into maladaptive daydreaming for hours and hours at a time. I was easily sucked into the internet, where I spent all of my waking hours as a way to distract from what was happening around me. The life events I have been through are a completely different story from what I’m trying to get at today, but it’s important to recognize my patterns of behavior, of survival, for me to start guessing why it is that I behave the way that I do. I have had a difficult couple of months (arguments with close family, both of my cats…