We, as humans, live in fear. Fear makes us blind to beauty or our own reality. Our lives have limitations and restrictions such as death. With these, we become scared and soon make an alternate reality to feel safe as we begin to morph our perspective on life. We begin to believe the fantasy we live in is our true reality. An alternate reality is a safe place, a place where we feel accepted.

The harshness of our reality is like a continuous burden on our shoulders, and we soon become fearful because we have lost hope. The life of a human being may feel deplorable and pathetic, yet we want to escape that mindset, so we begin to live in the fantasy we make in our heads. We put on masks and filters to disguise the way we live life, to disguise the sadness and anger that lurks in our lives. An example of this would be how social media portrays a life that we don't have, so we create a reality that is unreachable. Our perspective is morphed, and our way of life is transformed into something that’s not true. Soon fantasy and reality are divided by a thin line that is almost indistinguishable.

We are slaves to our own mind, which can be seen when our mind involuntarily makes illusions that affect our perception on everyday life. The illusion that you’re accepted and safe in this dark world is inevitably a fantasy. As humans, we are vulnerable to hatred and anguish in our day-to-day lives. The only way we can feel safe is by making an illusion of a world of acceptance where we are protagonists in our own stories.

My experience with this was in late 2016. I started getting into social media, so I could get in touch with my friends more easily than before. After a month of barely using it, I became infatuated with the subject. Quickly, I started getting addicted to how many likes and shares I got on a post. I started blocking any sort of real social interaction. I was obsessed with editing my posts and seeing what my friends were doing.

Soon, all I cared about was my social media page. I was consumed by the feeling of a sudden dopamine release that stimulated my brain every time someone liked my post. The life I put out there was all fake, yet in my head, I thought it was real. My life was pinned on how people viewed me with smiles and happiness, even though it was all fake. That life I was portraying was fabricated, and I had become a fraud. I was consumed by my phone screen for hours and hours each day. I became obsessed with other’s lives, and I tried to assimilate mine into theirs. I just wanted to be happy.

I became scared. Scared of the life I created, scared of the life I already had, and scared of the person I had become. I became scared of my reality.

Still to this day, I have found no resolution to my own innermost fears, but a feeling of emptiness and a lack of insight into my own wellbeing.