All My Friends Are Imaginary

I talk to ghosts. Phantoms, really. Every day, I have conversations—sometimes arguments—with people I think I know. My friends, my family, the waiter who messes up my order. But here's the kicker: they're not real. Not the versions I'm talking to, anyway.

Every person I interact with exists in my head as a mental model—a flimsy, half-baked caricature I've pieced together from scraps of time spent with them. A few shared laughs, a handful of stories, a quick exchange about the weather. That's it. That's all I've got to work with. And yet, I convince myself these models are the real deal. I talk to them, confide in them, get mad at them. But they're not the actual people. They're shadows I've cast on the wall of my mind, and I'm the one holding the flashlight.

Take my friend Alex, for example. In my head, Alex is reliable, always up for a deep conversation, and perpetually amused by my terrible puns. That's the Alex I hang out with when I'm alone, replaying our talks or imagining new ones. But then real Alex cancels plans last minute, or says something offhand that doesn't fit, and suddenly I'm furious. “How could Alex do this?” I fume. Except… it's not Alex I'm mad at. It's my Alex—the imaginary one who's supposed to be predictable, who's supposed to follow the rules I've written for them. When the real Alex steps outside that box, I don't get mad at them; I get mad at me.

Because here's the truth I keep tripping over: my mental models sometimes fail at predicting reality. They're shallow, built on quick impressions and lazy assumptions. They handle a lot of cases in my life, but when someone surprises me—good or bad—it's not them breaking some sacred trust. It's my model failing the stress test. And instead of updating the blueprint, I double down. I slap a motive on it. “They're being selfish,” I tell myself. “They're trying to hurt me.” But that's just me arguing with a ghost again; Ascribing malice to a figment I made up.

"But," you say, "what if they are trying to hurt me? What if they are being selfish?" That may be true, but I am still the one making my own independent assertion based on my mental model. What if they are just acting like they are trying to hurt me because they are afraid? What if they appear selfish because they are trying to protect themselves? Even if they tell me that they are trying to hurt me or that they are selfish, are they really looking deep enough to know the truth of their own motivations?

"What if they aren't afraid or selfish, but really are malicious?" Again, that may be true, but I am still making that assertion based on my mental model. And here it the awesome part: if I do not assign malice even though malice was intended, the other person must face their own mental model and decide whether their mental model is true. If I treat someone well even though they intentionally treat me poorly, then they suddenly have to face the fact that their predictions were wrong. They can double-down on their predictions, or they can choose to change.

When I get mad at my wife—my very best friend—and I get petulant, who am I really frustrated with? Whatever she's done is not why I am upset. My frustration is with my inability to predict her actions.

So what do we do with this? If all my friends are imaginary—if every conversation I have is half with a real person and half with a phantom—what's the point? Maybe it's about recognizing the gap. Seeing that the people we think we know are always more than our mental sketches. When I get mad, I can pause and ask: “Who am I actually mad at here? The person, or the puppet I've made of them?” It doesn't fix everything. I'll still build models—my brain's too stubborn not to and the models are useful when they work. But I can stop treating them like gospel. I can let the real people surprise me, contradict me, be messier than the neat little boxes I've drawn.

And here's the beautiful part: when I give other people that grace—when I let go of the phantom and make room for the real person—I'm giving myself grace too. Every time I forgive their unpredictability, I'm forgiving my own flawed predictions. When I stop demanding my models be perfect, I stop punishing myself for building them wrong. But when I don't give that grace? When I cling to my ghosts and rage at their failures? I'm the one who suffers. Denying them grace is denying myself the freedom to be human too.

Because the phantoms? They're just me, talking to myself. The real friends—the ones out there beyond my head—are better and more real than any mental model I can create of them. Leaning into the awe of watching the unknowable unfold before me is humbling and enlivening to witness. When I give people the grace to be themselves without any expectation to change, then I give myself the freedom to be myself without needing to change and simultaneously invite others to extend that grace back to me. Whether or not other people extend that grace, I am always happier for having extended it in the first place.

(NOTE: The ideas in this post are all mine, but AI was used to help build it out)