I'll bite, and on my main account, too. Screw it.

My whole life I've felt like a human trapped in a bear suit, in a cave full of bears. Like I can understand the bears and their bear talk, and can communicate too, but no matter what I do I can't convince them that I'm actually human, either because they won't believe me or because if they did, I could be torn apart. It's really the only way I can describe this feeling. The feeling of not quite being human in a world of humans. I think it started seeing "shadow people", which are pretty much exactly what they sound like. My mom convinced me that they were demons or angels, but I switched around conclusions often. I was frustrated that nobody else seemed to see them. That probably started the feeling of being different, but I also had childhood OCD pretty badly, so the depersonalization is probably related to the anxiety. I was also physically abused and learned the neat trick of turning off pain and thinking clearly in crisis, like living outside of myself. By puberty, I was distressed by the changes I was going through and started living near constantly in a semi-disassociative state.

Now to the meat of the story. I believed I was a lot of things. I believed I was an alien. I believed that I was imprisoned in a human host, and the reasons why changed between it being a form of punishment, and being for my own safety. I was fragmented in sub-personalities, each with their own personality and backstory. They would argue in my head all of the time. I knew they were "me", but in fragments. I believed that I could see and feel things other people couldn't, and that those were people living their lives, but on a different plane. Sometimes I didn't know what I was, but it was definitely not human. Sometimes I believed I was a shapeshifter, but only on the astral plane. Then I met people who shared the same sort of strange beliefs. I met a werewolf and a couple vampires, one who literally drank blood. We threw energy balls and shut down vortexes to other worlds. I even believed that I got converted into being a half vampire.

What happened? Well, like most of the people who band together under this shared belief, we went to college and didn't have time. I had a emotional crash in college and started taking antidepressants and going to therapy. One by one, each fragment said their goodbyes and assimilated. One represented my childlike wonder and nurturing side, and she said her goodbyes on my 18th birthday because I didn't need her anymore. One went away because I realized that she was a coping mechanism, she would tear me down and be as abusive as possible because I wanted to make sure that the world couldn't hurt me worse than I could hurt me. After a lot of therapy and consideration, I finally came to the understanding that I always felt so alien because I was the wrong gender. I was trying to be someone I wasn't because I thought I was "supposed" to. The disassociation, namely after puberty, was me coping with dysphoria.

I still see shadow people sometimes. I can't help but smile a little when I do. As crazy as all of those adventures and ideas were, they helped me through some tough shit and brought me to friendships that required a deep trust. I don't think I will ever be able to develop another friendship with the same level of trust and comradarie again.