I don't exist here *might trigger*

I exist in this little timeless bubble where I spend at least 90% of the day in different fantasy worlds with fantasy people, completely submerged in my own mental imagery far, far away from life. There are people in these places that I care for and I feel alive there. Then something happens to pop this little bubble and I find myself rapidly tumbling down to earth at such force it's overwhelming and I have to take a step back and ask "Is this really my life?"

My little bubble of bliss was recently popped and now I don't know what to do with myself. I mentioned before that I am transgendered, female to male, and I haven't actually started taking hormones yet but in the next few months I will probably start. I've been living as male for years and this is what I want and although I am really excited I'm also really scared. I know this is a big change that I can't go back on. The main issue is i've been with my boyfriend for nearly 5 years and although he is incredibly supportive I'm scared things will fall apart once my appearance becomes more masculine as he is heterosexual. I don't know what I will do without him as he is the only real life person I've managed to connect with but I can't live a life I don't enjoy for the sake of keeping us together.
His family don't know I want to change gender, even though I look,sound and behave in a male way and pass as male 100% of the time now. They asked last night if we planned on having kids and I said no and then they started saying "you'll change your mind." and so on. Its heartbreaking because all my partner has ever wanted is his own son and I won't be able to provide that. The whole topic of marriage and kids became so overwhelming I had to run off to the bathroom before I started to cry.

On my way upstairs Ted appeared and told me everything would be okay. I got myself together and spoke to my boyfriend and I began to get a little emotional and he seemed a bit annoyed. He said that I always cry when we talk about serious stuff and he can't understand why the same topics still upset me and why I haven't toughened up yet. It was at this point I felt this strange sensation and all the sadness seemed to vanish. Ted took over and although I was co-conscious I felt relaxed whilst he handled everything for me. My boyfriend said that I seemed different. He doesn't believe I have different personalities but he did recognise that I wasn't myself. I'm so thankful for Ted coming a long to save me but it doesn't really change anything.

I'm scared of change. I'm even scared of good change. I don't know why. In my life not much happens, I'm unfit to work so I spend all my days trapped in my house, escaping into my little timeless fantasy existence. I want to stay there and I think I'm gonna shut off from the world for a good week or so. I just feel I am not built for reality and it scares me. Everything scares me. If I could go away inside my head and Ted take over for good I would be happy but that isn't/cant happen. I don't exist here but at the same time I can't escape my physical life and all the problems that come with it. I can't progress and it upsets me.
I just needed to rant. I feel unstable and afraid and not sure what to do with myself. Thanks for letting me get it off my chest.

-Hunter

Safe hugs

You are young. You shouldn't be thinking about marriage or kids yet!! And with being so young, who knows what the future holds? Even without your gender change, you might not end up with or stay with your partner. You're too young to know for sure and it's too soon to tell. Time can make plenty of unexpected things and changes happen. We've learned to not make serious plans too soon, or at least to not rely on them with everything we have, because we've had our plans and dreams shattered by life, time, and changes so much.

Your partner should never tell you to toughen up! He should realize that these things upset you, that they're stressful to you, that you have strong emotions attached to these subjects, and that you are struggling! He should be sympathetic, not a hard-@$$! You know what tough is? Tough is brave enough to cry. Tough is brave enough to keep trusting after it's been broken by others. Tough is brave enough to share your emotions and thoughts with others. Tough is brave enough to show emotions. Your partner is not tough. He's hiding. Hiding emotions and hiding how things affect him. And hiding is not tough.

You should never live for others!!! Your life is YOUR life, and you need to live for YOURSELF! If being a male makes you happy, then do it and screw your partner if he doesn't like it! Do what makes you happy and comfortable, and screw everyone and everything else if you have to! Putting yourself second to people or last to people only hurts yourself and makes life more miserable. You need to put YOURSELF first. It's not selfish. It's the healthy thing to do.

Don't let anyone or anything pressure you, make you feel guilty about yourself/your choices, or change your mind if you really want something!!!! If you don't want kids, don't have kids! If you want to be a male, be a male! What happens will happen. All you should be focusing on is what makes YOU happy and what YOU want, NOTHING ELSE.

Your bubble of bliss needed to be popped, and it will continue to be popped no matter how many times you hide in it. It's time to start facing the real world, fears and all. Reality scares all of us to some extent. But hiding from it won't make it go away, and it won't help anything get better. You have to face reality, face your fears, and start adapting. Only then will you be able to live better, function better, and feel better. Yes, it might be tough at first, but nothing in life is easy. And yes, it might seem to get worse at first, but things usually get worse before they get better. Much like a wound. It's going to hurt worse with proper cleaning and such, but it'll heal and get better if you let it.

You've already made your path clear. You can't stay inside. But you feel as if you can't cope with the outside. Look around you! Look at this site! There are people EVERYWHERE that can't cope with the outside, but they keep trying, and they keep surviving, and eventually, they learn how to cope with the outside, and their coping gets better and better the more they work at it. If you hide from something, it'll never be fixed, it'll never get better, and it'll never go away. If you face something and work on it, it can get fixed, it can get better, and it can go away. Your bubble of bliss doesn't need to disappear completely, but it needs to take backseat to reality and real life, as it should.

You need to learn and find ways to be happy in reality, ways that aren't connected or dependent upon other people. Explore yourself. Try new things. Find things you enjoy. Hobbies to take up your time. Activities you can escape into in place of your blissful bubble, that way it's easier for your bubble to take the backseat to reality.

Lots of people aren't fit to work. We're not fit to work right now. But that doesn't mean we're not fit to live, and we keep trying to live to the best of our abilities! You don't fail if you fall down in life. You fail if you stop trying to get back up, because that means you're giving up, throwing in the towel, saying "I quit", and life will end up winning, because life never stops. Life doesn't stop no matter what happens or who wants it to, it just keeps going. So you can either learn how to move forward with it, or give up and let life walk all over you like a door mat. Is it easy? No, but again, nothing in life is easy. Things vary in levels of difficulties, but nothing is easy.

Lots of people fear change. Change is natural to fear. It's something different, something not always well known, and that creates fear. But change is a part of life, and we have to learn that it happens. We have to learn how to cope with change, otherwise everything will just keep changing around us anyway and we don't know how to deal with it. Just like learning how to walk, you have to learn how to adapt, how to cope, how to deal with change, how to live life. Everything can be and is learned. It all depends on the person.

You CAN progress if you choose to! But what's needed for progress is change! If something's not working, you have to change it to find what does work! You can exist here if you choose to. You can't escape your physical life and your problems, so why not embrace them? Embrace your physical life, embrace your problems, and start working on living in reality and thinking about ways to help your problems. Life isn't going anywhere, reality isn't going anywhere, and they will continue to pop your bubble over time.

EVERYONE HERE has felt or also feels unstable, afraid, and unsure of what to do with themselves. YOU ARE NOT ALONE! But it is up to YOU to learn how to remedy these things! It's up to YOU to find ways to stabilize yourself, to calm your fears or at least cope with them, and to learn how to be sure of yourself and find a path that you enjoy and would like to take!

Everyone in the world at some point has felt these feelings, has dealt with similar emotions and thoughts and fears. Like we said, everything is and can be learned. It all depends on if the person is willing to learn, and what choices they make. Stabilization is learned. Calming or coping with fears is learned. Confidence is learned. Decisiveness is learned. The choice to learn, however, is your's.

Keep in mind that change doesn't always happen over night. ESPECIALLY change to thought processes, mindsets, thinking habits, and mental states. These things will take time, effort, work, and patience, but changing them IS POSSIBLE! You can't expect to wake up one day and tell yourself, "Today is a good day", if you normally wake up feeling miserable. It will take a while of waking up and telling yourself "Today is a good day" before you'll begin to believe it. And it'll take longer to get to the point where you wake up in a good mood and don't have to tell yourself "Today is a good day" anymore. But it IS possible!

Rant as much as you need to on here. That's what this place is for.


- A mixture of us(?)

Thanks for your replies.
I know i'm too young to be worrying about such things and I've always said if I were ever to get married and have kids I would want to be in my 30's after I've got a career, a house, etc. The only reason I am thinking about it now is once I start hormones I will eventually go infertile. I have the option of saving some eggs but unlike sperm they can only last about 2 years. I have to decide very soon if I am okay with never having a child that is biologically mine which is obviously a big decision and one that affects the relationship with my partner.

I know that I need to do things for myself and doing things for others in the past has never worked out well. I'm just so used to escaping and running from problems I struggle with even the smallest of issues. I've mentioned my attachment to this other world, the one that has been with me since birth, before and how I've always chosen to exist there. When problems arise in reality I can normally go here and spend time with these other beings/people and live a life that feels right. I know I never want that place to go away but I know I need to detach myself from it slightly but I guess I don't know how.
I feel guilty for complaining when I know there are people who have had to endure far worse things than myself. I'm just really scared of life. I'm trying to find ways of coping but I guess, at this moment in time, I feel very hopeless but I know that will change.

Anyway thanks for listening to me.

I know i'm too young to be worrying about such things and I've always said if I were ever to get married and have kids I would want to be in my 30's after I've got a career, a house, etc. The only reason I am thinking about it now is once I start hormones I will eventually go infertile. I have the option of saving some eggs but unlike sperm they can only last about 2 years. I have to decide very soon if I am okay with never having a child that is biologically mine which is obviously a big decision and one that affects the relationship with my partner.

It would be naïve to do that without thinking about your future, having kids and all that. I'm glad you're doing that. I hope you find out what is most important to you and in what order you need to do them to get to where you want to be.

Life is scary. We don't really know how to deal with it yet. I hope you figure it out though. Best of luck.

Frank_Darko wrote:Thanks for your replies.
I know i'm too young to be worrying about such things and I've always said if I were ever to get married and have kids I would want to be in my 30's after I've got a career, a house, etc. The only reason I am thinking about it now is once I start hormones I will eventually go infertile. I have the option of saving some eggs but unlike sperm they can only last about 2 years. I have to decide very soon if I am okay with never having a child that is biologically mine which is obviously a big decision and one that affects the relationship with my partner.

We understand this. But in that sense, you should only be thinking about what YOU want and if YOU want kids. Again, it's too soon to tell if you're going to be staying with your partner, with or without the gender change, so don't focus on what he wants because if you end up not being with him, you're going to kick yourself for making choices based on what he wants. Only focus on what YOU want and if YOU want kids. DO NOT WORRY about your partner, as it's too soon to be thinking about a permanent future, much less kids, with him. WORRY ONLY ABOUT YOURSELF AND WHAT YOU WANT.

Frank_Darko wrote:I know that I need to do things for myself and doing things for others in the past has never worked out well. I'm just so used to escaping and running from problems I struggle with even the smallest of issues. I've mentioned my attachment to this other world, the one that has been with me since birth, before and how I've always chosen to exist there. When problems arise in reality I can normally go here and spend time with these other beings/people and live a life that feels right. I know I never want that place to go away but I know I need to detach myself from it slightly but I guess I don't know how.

Again, everything is and can be learned. The choice to learn, however, is your's.

"You need to learn and find ways to be happy in reality, ways that aren't connected or dependent upon other people. Explore yourself. Try new things. Find things you enjoy. Hobbies to take up your time. Activities you can escape into in place of your blissful bubble, that way it's easier for your bubble to take the backseat to reality."

"You can exist here if you choose to. You can't escape your physical life and your problems, so why not embrace them? Embrace your physical life, embrace your problems, and start working on living in reality and thinking about ways to help your problems."

"Keep in mind that change doesn't always happen over night. ESPECIALLY change to thought processes, mindsets, thinking habits, and mental states. These things will take time, effort, work, and patience, but changing them IS POSSIBLE! You can't expect to wake up one day and tell yourself, "Today is a good day", if you normally wake up feeling miserable. It will take a while of waking up and telling yourself "Today is a good day" before you'll begin to believe it. And it'll take longer to get to the point where you wake up in a good mood and don't have to tell yourself "Today is a good day" anymore. But it IS possible!"


Try making lists. Lists of things you enjoy doing in reality, lists of ways to help yourself cope with problems and fear in reality, lists of positive aspects of reality to help you feel better about it (there's always a silver lining to everything, even if it's difficult to find at first), lists of things you can do in reality to help yourself feel better and/or calm down, stuff like that. Try making lists to help yourself think of ways to cope with reality, deal with reality, and that will help you live in reality. That way, you have lists to help remind you of things you can do to help cope, or things you can do instead of escaping into your bubble, or positive things to focus on about reality to help you feel better about it, etc.

And definitely try to make a list of goals, and remember to take one small step at a time! Maybe one day your goal is to only escape into your bubble for a certain amount of time, like a few hours, or something. Maybe one goal could be to find a new hobby you can use to help replace your bubble escape. Maybe one goal could be to get some chores done around the house. Stuff like that. Even baby steps are steps forward in progress. Heck, even crawling is still forward progress. Go at a pace that works for you. And every time you succeed with a goal, celebrate! Feel accomplished! Congratulate yourself! Post it on here! Something to help you realize that you succeeded and yes, this is possible, and yes, you're doing a great job!
When you don't succeed with a goal, DO NOT beat yourself up, or let yourself think depressive thoughts, or let yourself think self-hating thoughts, or anything like that. Simply tell yourself, "I don't think I was ready for that goal just yet", and then either save the goal for another day, or change it to be a bit more manageable. Remember, trying is the key thing here, NOT succeeding. Because as long as you keep trying, eventually you WILL succeed.

Frank_Darko wrote:I feel guilty for complaining when I know there are people who have had to endure far worse things than myself. I'm just really scared of life. I'm trying to find ways of coping but I guess, at this moment in time, I feel very hopeless but I know that will change.

Anyway thanks for listening to me.

Don't feel guilty! If you really want to think about it that way, none of us here have a "right" to complain because no matter what, there's always someone who has it worse than you. You are struggling! You are hurting! You are stressed! Complain all you want! If you didn't have a "right" to complain, Kat would've come out to do a verbal smack-down on you (she's not afraid to do that to people she thinks doesn't have a "right" to complain). EVERYONE IS SCARED OF LIFE, either now or was at some point in their lives. IT IS NORMAL/NATURAL. The question is, what are you going to do about being afraid of life? What exactly about life scares you? How can that be remedied? Are there things you can do to help yourself feel more prepared to face life? These are the questions you should be thinking about and asking yourself, since facing life is not impossible, and coping with fear of life is not impossible either. Many people do it every day, and you can too!

Hopelessness is the enemy! Fight it! Don't give in to it! It's a lot like denial/doubt with DID, you can't let it win! Making small goals that are within your accomplishment range can help with hopelessness, because it shows you that yes, you can do this, and yes, you can succeed! Try to work on changing your mindset/outlook on life/reality as well. Maybe when you wake up, trying playing some happy music, or upbeat music. Or try putting on a funny/happy movie to listen to in the background or watch while eating breakfast. Or simply play/put on something that makes you smile/laugh. If you're playing upbeat music, try singing along with it as you get ready, or at least lip-syncing to it. If you're listening/watching something funny, focus on it, and let yourself smile/laugh. What this will do is help your mind get into the habit of starting with a good mood, a good outlook on the day, and a better outlook on life. Eventually, you might not need the music or anything to wake up and feel good about the upcoming day full of new possibilities.

"Keep in mind that change doesn't always happen over night. ESPECIALLY change to thought processes, mindsets, thinking habits, and mental states. These things will take time, effort, work, and patience, but changing them IS POSSIBLE! You can't expect to wake up one day and tell yourself, "Today is a good day", if you normally wake up feeling miserable. It will take a while of waking up and telling yourself "Today is a good day" before you'll begin to believe it. And it'll take longer to get to the point where you wake up in a good mood and don't have to tell yourself "Today is a good day" anymore. But it IS possible!"

Remember that you have support here, and that you can always ask for help, including advice/ideas about ways to help you cope with life/reality (from the group on this forum, not necessarily just from us or anything).


-A mixture of us(?)