I became the lie I created online

[thaelyana]

Hello, I hope you are doing well. I was going to tell you something a little stupid at the base, but in the end I think I'm going to be a little more serious than expected.

I was 12. Just a regular kid , a little lonely, a little curious, a little lost. One day, I downloaded Clash of Clans, just a mobile game. I met some people, we started talking. And that's when everything started to change, even though I didn't realize it at the time.

Very quickly, I created a fake persona. Another girl. She had a different name, a better life: rich family, perfect home, no problems. It was me, but better ? more interesting, more loved. I started lying. Constantly. I don't even know why.. it just came naturally. It felt safe. It felt good.

And then, to make the character feel even more "real," I started pretending she was sad. I made her say things like: "I'm tired of life," "I want to die," "I feel empty." At that point, I was fine in real life. I didn't feel any of it not truly.

But one day, I crossed a line. I became her. Somehow, by pretending to feel pain, by saying I was suicidal, by acting it out, I started actually feeling it. Like my brain couldn't tell the difference between the fake and the real anymore.

When I said "I'm not okay," I would feel not okay. When I made "sad faces" just for the role, I started feeling the sadness I was imitating. And I started living through these fake emotions — like they were mine. They weren't. But they became mine.

Now, 6 years later, I'm still trapped in that girl's mind. The one I invented. I don't know how to separate myself from her. Her sadness became my sadness. Her pain became my daily life. I live in a personality that I made up ,and I can't escape it.

And then there's social media. It makes everything worse.

Every time I scroll TikTok, every time I hear a sad song, or see videos of people sharing their pain, it drags me even deeper. I absorb everything. I cry over things that aren't mine. I think I'm someone who's easily influenced. And I'm starting to realize: maybe I don't actually want to die. Maybe I'm not really depressed.

Maybe I just don't know how to live outside of this identity I built. An identity made of sadness, fueled by posts, by videos, by music, by comments, by trends.

Even being on this forum right now : I can feel how it keeps pulling me back. I'm surrounded by people who are struggling hard, and somehow, I start aligning myself with them. Not out of cruelty, not out of mockery just because I don't know how to be anything else anymore.
And maybe I'm okay. Maybe I've been okay all along. But I've repeated the script so many times, nurtured this fake pain for so long, that it became the only truth I know. My only language.
My prison.

I built my entire self on a lie. And now the lie has consumed everything.

Sorry, I translated it — I hope it still makes sense.

 

[SadBumblebee]

The translation is very good. In regards to what you've said, it's definitely a thing I've heard of before. People might pretend to be someone else to escape or just for fun, but the longer you stay pretending the more you absorb into that character. If you want to get better, I strongly recommend pulling yourself out of those depressing TikToks. It might seem insensitive, but you should focus on yourself and not worry about others. You need to go into self-preservation mode. See if you can engage in activities you used to enjoy, see if you can gain pieces of yourself again. Even if they are just crumbs at the start, progress is progress.

 

[thaelyana]

@SadBumblebee TYSM
Honestly, you're really reassuring. I thought I was crazy, alone in my corner, because I've never found anyone who went through something like this… If you ever come across similar stories again, I'd honestly love to read them.
I've always felt like my sadness wasn't "legitimate," like it didn't really count. Because how can you feel like your pain is valid when there's no real reason behind it? When it all comes from a situation you invented yourself, years ago? Who would take that seriously?

And yet, I suffer. I suffer just as much as some people here. But because I know my pain comes from a character I created, I feel like an intruder. Like I don't have the right to be hurting. Like I don't belong here on this forum.

At the same time, I tell myself: if I ever did something stupid, like some people here have done… it would be a lifelong regret. Because deep down, I know I could have gotten out of it. I don't know — none of my problems are "real."

But that's exactly what makes it so hard: how do you heal something that doesn't really exist? How do you fix wounds caused by a life that was never real? You can't grab it, you can't face it, you can't prove it.

I try to make efforts — for example, with TikTok. As soon as I see that my feed is getting sad or depressing, I cut it off, because I know it'll affect me for weeks.
But I'm realizing just how dependent I am on all of it. I depend on social media. I depend on how others see me. I depend on a version of myself… that isn't even really me.

And I think that's what's slowly killing me.
Six years of this kind of sadness — it's a lot. Of course, during those six years, some bad things happened too. When I was 15, I got mildly bullied, but honestly, that didn't make things worse. It affected me in the moment, yes, but it didn't haunt me.