For most of my life, I thought I was a character in a TV show. I knew that I occupied reality. I knew that the things I said and did mattered to the people I knew and loved.
But I also knew that in an infinite number of possible universes, there was at least one where I was, indeed, the subject of a TV show. Every week, people tuned in to watch a scripted drama series in which I and everyone I knew were the main characters. Being the main character gave my very boring life an inherent importance and sense of purpose.
It meant I didn’t bear any responsibility for my own life and I didn’t have to make choices that might rock the boat, lest the status quo of my “show” be interrupted. What happened to me had nothing to do with me. It was subject to the whims of alternate-universe Nielsen ratings, of fan favoritism, of the writers’ room.
I was deeply ashamed of this belief. I assumed as I grew to adulthood the compulsion would wither away. Instead, it only grew stronger, fed by a wicked combination of depersonalization (in which my fundamental connection to my physical body felt tenuous) and derealization (in which my connection to reality itself felt tenuous).
When I came out as a trans woman in my 30s, I discovered that my shame-provoking delusion was an overdeveloped coping mechanism. I really had been living a fake life (“as a man”), dictated by the whims of others (family, friends, society, etc.).
Once I stopped doing that, I ceased to be fictional. My sense of .