First off I realise this question will sound unbelievably bizarre to anyone who isn't familiar with this, so I apologise in advance if it merely confuses the shite out of anyone ;) 

I'll start with a small backstory to explain my situation before I talk about the actual subject of the movie hallucinations, just in case it makes it easier for anyone to see where I'm coming from: (If the backstory is depressing or boring you, Ctrl + F the phrase "back to the movie hallucinations" without quotes)

Without wanting to go into detail and ruin anyone's Sunday morning, I'm in a *very* lonely place at the moment. I'm 25 years old, I live in Ireland which has been hit very hard by the EU economic crisis and basically to cut a long story short, I've spent most of my young adulthood chasing the dream of being popular and being liked by the people I grew up with, to the point at which even though I'm pretty invisible and don't have a close "crew" like everyone else I know, I have enough acquaintances that I can find out what club / movie / whatever everyone is going to and just tag along myself, so I'm not there *with* people I know, but enough people I know are there at the same time, that I sort of feel like I'm part of something. And don't get me wrong, none of these folk dislike me, I'm just not close enough to "hang out" unless we run into eachother at events like these.

Anyway point is, this is becoming harder and harder because of the curse of emigration. While I've lived in Dublin my entire life, because of the recession there is a steady trickle of people from my social scene out of the country - London, Canada and Australia are the favoured escape routes, with London far outpacing both of the latter options due to its proximity to Ireland, both geographically and culturally.

So if I can use an analogy here, I've always used the analogy of "chasing the train" as a motivational tool - I missed the "train" of being close to these people when I was younger (even though they were the absolute staples of my life socially, if that even makes any sense at all - Ireland is *very* small so your childhood friends, however close, tend to stick around for a very long time), so in being "independent" enough to follow the crowd around in recent years, I've been chasing the train, hoping to get close enough that I can grab hold of a railing and swing myself up and through one of its doors. And like many borderlines, the fear of the unknown makes simply getting onto another train going to another destination, even when it might be parked in the station and so much easier to get on than a train which is speeding along at a hundred miles an hour and which I'll have to run after incessantly until I catch it, a more appealing option.

Now, however, I feel like I've caught up with the train, but not in the way you'd expect - it's like I kept running along the railway with the mantra in mind "it's never too late, some day you'll catch this train and get on it", without considering the possibility that the train wouldn't last forever and nor would people stay on it forever. I came *so* close to getting what I wanted about a year and a half ago, I really did, and then people started graduating from college (we were 22/23 at the time) and getting the hell out of here. So now when I go out to clubs etc, meet the shattered remnants of the crew (those who've survived the mass exodus) and we exchange wistful memories of Dublin's formerly vibrant social scene, I feel like I've finally caught the train, but the train has crashed, so what I've basically come across is the mangled remains of a derailed, ruined train with nobody but a few survivors aimlessly hanging around the crash site not knowing what to do.

That analogy is weird, but I hope it's somehow understandable. That's where my life is at right now. I'm not actually more alone than I ever was before, but it feels like the possibility of being part of the crowd has slipped away as the crowd itself has scattered to the four corners, and as I foolishly put all of my hopes and dreams into achieving this goal (stupid I know but this all started when I was 15, mistakes will be made etc), it also feels like any possibility of fulfilment or happiness have also slipped away.

So with that in mind, back to the movie hallucinations. 

There are three particular movie scenes which come to mind while typing this, although I'm sure there are more which will come to me as I continue thinking about it. The third isn't a movie scene but a scene from a popular YouTube series, but regardless:

The three movies are
* "The Shining" - the two scenes in which Jack goes into the bar and talks to Lloyd, the ghost bartender (who no one else can see), who gives him a friendly ear amidst what he perceives as his family's hostility towards him - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60WR8dB0H-s

* "Gravity" (**SPOILERS**) - the scene towards the end in which she's about to give up, shut off the engines and let the lack of oxygen send her to sleep peacefully, when Matt re-appears, gives her a very understanding pep talk about how he gets why she likes to be alone in space, where nobody can hurt her, but it's ultimately unfulfilling and she should return to Earth and try to enjoy her life (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f46GwvQHmOs#t=0m49s)

* "Llamas with Hats" episodes 9-12, where (**SPOILER**) Paul has decided to stop hanging with Carl due to all of his mass murdering evil ways, so Paul initially made a Carl mask to replace him, but then hallucinates that the mask is actually posessed by Paul, so he's no longer alone. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYqBDTsHZsQ&amp;list=PL73E750DD8966C252&amp;index=9)

* Special mention: The end of Llamas with Hats episode 12, wherein (**SPOILER**) Carl has accepted that Paul is dead, so rather than having conversations with his mask, he's opening talking to himself, portraying both sides of the conversation

*One more: Most of the film Castaway, in which Chuck, marooned alone on an island, has long conversations with a football "Wilson", to keep himself company while on the island.

Basically I replay these scenes in my mind during moments of isolation (though I spend a lot of my life alone, I differentiate between being alone and "isolation" because being alone isn't always sad or upsetting, sometimes it can be quite nice! Isolation is when you get hit with feels because you realize that you don't want to be alone at that moment) and for some very bizarre reason although they're all pretty depressing scenes, they *massively* cheer me up. And I really mean *massively*. If I ever feel like I need a "good cry", I stick on that scene from Gravity in particular and bawl my eyes out over it. I don't know specifically why I do this - I think the idea of fantasizing about somebody really caring is appealing, and to fantasize about someone else fantasizing about somebody really caring is appealing because it's like "people do this in seriously popular and successful movies, so clearly it's not that unusual and you're less alone than you think you are, others also do this fantasy thing so don't feel weird or guilt trip about it or whatever". I don't know if that what drives it for me, that's just a theory (one thing I've realized since I started examining my own thought process is that there's an almost frightening amount of aspects of my own personality and what drives me that I genuinely am clueless about and don't understand at all! Freaky, but kind of cool in a way)

So basically I'm wondering, am I alone in drawing comfort from this kind of scene? Does it cheer anyone else up and does anyone else fantasize about scenes like these in films, TV shows, whatever, in order to feel less lonely?

**NOTE**: I'm not looking for advice on how to solve my loneliness problem. Believe me when I say I've tried it all and it's just something I'm going to have to deal with in my own way and my own time (being a ridiculously eternal optimist, I firmly believe that I'll work it all out no matter how bleak it sounds). Traditional solutions won't work for me because my issue isn't merely loneliness, but the loss of a specific group of people who were my whole world as a teenager and who have slowly drifted from me over time - that pain is still too raw to be fixed by replacing those old mates with new ones, so although I'm sure people will have suggestions, they're probably going to fall on deaf ears until I've worked out my own issues and come to terms with them. :)