When I was younger, as my mother would put it, I was off in my own little world most of the time. She would say I was so far inside my head and thoughts that I wouldn't even respond to my own name. I would go off into my own world of fantasy and adventure. I was always imagining things like (now this is really nerdy and kind of embarrassing) imagining I was a character in something like Harry Potter and I would pretend to be a witch who was whisked away just like Harry, from my boring life as a Muggle to the exciting and adventurous life at Hogwarts. I would be lost in my head for hours at a time imagining that really happened to me.

How this relates to my primary source is Ofelia, the main character of Pan's Labyrinth, imagines or dreams up that she is a long lost soul of a princess from another world. She is given three tasks to complete before the next full moon to be returned to her life as a princess. Ofelia, like I, imagined being taken to a whole new world where she would feel important. She wanted to think there was a place beside the real world where everything would be alright. A place where there was no conflict and death, like in her real world, and only happiness and life.

This gives me the insight from this version of childhood presented, that children most of the time make up their own imaginary world to escape. Not every child needs to escape some of the things Ofelia had to, but even just to escape to a world where you can make up your own decisions and not be told what to do. A place where for once you were for once the person making the rules. In my case, a place where magic really did exist. Even just something as simple as that is a reason a child would create their own world.