Honestly, I've never had imaginary friends due to loneliness. I've always made friends very easily. With me, it was just my imagination. I'm deeply into art and writing and I always have been. Me and my brother have a fan fiction called CLOUDS which we've been writing since I was in 4th grade. We're still writing it today. (i'm in 11th grade now.) I made the first eventual CLOUDS characters when I was in second grade. Sam (a sassy chick), Sally (a Rocker), and Eriqa (a Spanish girl). I remember making up Sally one night on a car ride home... I set out a extra outfit for her that night, lol. When we began CLOUDS in 2003, those three were the first characters. Then we added official characters like Mario, Ash, Lain, ect. We've always RPed the story in real life to because it's so fun. But we know it's not real.
Oh and I totally get the Pikachu thing, Zenotwapal. But for me it was Pikachu and Jirachi. And for my bro it was Mew and a Charmander.