i am scared

MD has been messing with my perception of reality, my mental health, and concentration. Ever since quarantine hit, I have experienced much more "addictive" day dreaming habits and they are having a negative effect on my life. Covid-19 hit me really hard because my social interactions quickly dwindled to nothing. My mental health took a huge knock-back from this and I struggled to deal with the current situation of my life. I developed anxiety over absolutely everything, analyzing myself more than ever, and found unhappiness with myself. I felt sucked dry. To cope, I would day dream in order to forget about the blandness of my current stay-at-home life and imagine myself in different scenes- often accompanied with music. At first, these dreams started the same way I had day-dreamt my whole life. However, as time progressed, my dreams became more complex, innovative, and more interesting. I also began dreaming for increasingly long periods of time. There are moments where I could occupy my brain for five hours in a row- doing literally nothing else but daydreaming. 

These habits I developed came to the expense of a portion of my sanity.

The first issue with these dreams were that I had moments afterwards where I felt like I was not present in my real life. This is hard for me to explain but I my brain would dream so much that when I bring my focus back to my real life, I struggle treating it as if it were not a dream. I never feel like I am 100% in the moment sometimes- no matter how hard I try. Please let me know if anyone understands the feeling I am trying to explain right now. I realize that it sounds very confusing.

Another issue I have with MD is coming to the realization that these dreams will only be dreams- nothing more. My brain yearns for the positive emotions that I feel when day dreaming and when it sets in that I do not experience those same emotions in real life, i develop a form of subtle depression. Depression at the fact that my life is never going to be as vivid or miraculous as it is in my dreams. I have heard others talk about this same thing on this forum, which made me feel more safe in a way, but it didn't disrupt the fact that I am undermining my own happiness by constantly reminding myself of what I will never have- even if it may bring me a form of temporary euphoria.

Lastly, I can't concentrate on my own life anymore. I feel as if my brain has chosen to leave my current life behind and only focus on the one inside my head. This scares me so much sometimes because I am able to make two hours of zoning out feel like 2 seconds. I have work to do and school to focus on and by day dreaming, my mind forgets that these things are important tasks. I just don't feel the same pressure to work hard as I did a year ago. It's like my life doesn't exist and isn't important anymore when I can just day dream about totally better one. 

All in all this makes me feel really pathetic. I realize that my day dreaming is a coping mechanism I developed to deal with the extremely shitty situation my life is in right now and my complete lack of a social anchor. This doesn't make me feel any less disappointed in myself though. I feel embarrassed for feeling this way and especially stupid when I incorporate the lives of others (like celebrities) as inspiration to my own dreams.

Here is my biggest problem: I want out! but at the same time I am scared to do so.
I do not know what I would do with myself without the daydreaming to help me tune out my own life. I struggle with intrusive thoughts and daydreaming is a way for me to regain some of my serotonin. I am also not ready for the boredom that would ensue if I were to stop day dreaming. I know I need to start doing something about it since I stay awake for hours doing this as of late. However, I am just so afraid that doing something about it would make everything much worse. 

I have written a lot and I am grateful to you if you were able to read it all. I am truly sorry if you find this relatable but if you do then I would appreciate it if you shared your own experiences with these issues. I am sharing because it allows me to be honest with myself and (hopefully) make someone else feel like they are not alone. Thanks )