Escape; Alight

What is the difference between perception and reality?

I read a book a while ago in which the author meshed the supposed reality of a woman’s life with the fantasies in her mind and toward the middle I began to find it difficult to decipher between the two. She wrote in such a way that you began to doubt the reality of anything and believe everything as absolute, simultaneously.
Is an imagined future and present life as real as your bodily life?

I used to wonder about this when I was younger, because I was always a daydreamer. I’d spend hours, wherever I was, daydreaming scenarios, things happening that I wished for, being the person I wanted to be in my mind but hadn’t found the courage to be in the palpable world. But who’s to say that wasn’t real, at least, to me?
I still remember some of my greater fantasies, and they seem pretty real to me, possibly more so than some of the moments in life when I wasn’t quite there or didn’t want to be. Are these memories any less real because I was alone in them?
Quietly in my space, dreaming, albeit shrouded in mystery, but happy. Which led to another question: why would one want to be inside their own mind, alone, when they could be out there, amongst others? Sometimes, I think, being inside your own head is a defence mechanism, or it can be a place to go when things aren’t the way you wish them to be. I used to wander unintentionally... And sometimes I still do. Observing, protecting, hiding.

Force of habit.

I can see how one might think it an unhealthy way of living, the hiding part, you can choose to see it as self preservation or as fear. Fear of the outside world and the rejections that are inevitable. And maybe it is a little of both but I don’t think it debilitating or unsound.
Are you denied whatever joy an experience gave you just because it happened inside your head and not to your body?

I believe even dreams are a part of your reality. Everything is an experience.

Everything is your life.