Reality Never Felt Real to Me

Why reality feels like a suggestion and how I learned to rewrite it

I learned early that the world was made of stories, not facts. I was a child of improbable dreams and poorly lit locker rooms, who was taught that the impossible could be outpaced if you just laced your shoes tight enough.

Other kids played tag. I ran sprints before sunrise with people who believed that becoming superhuman was mostly a matter of hydration and delusion. We were always chasing something, whether it was times, titles, visions of who we swore we’d become.

Somewhere between the suicide drills and the team dinners, I learned that reality was optional. You could override it with effort. You could charm it with vision. You could bend it, ignore it, laugh in its face, so long as you kept showing up, and maybe taped your ankle first.

And here’s the part no one tells you: when you grow up around people who treat dreams like deadlines, you forget what’s normal. You stop asking if things are realistic and start asking what time practice starts. You begin to believe almost religiously that if you can just out-suffer the moment, you’ll arrive somewhere better.

That’s the thing about believing too soon: it ruins you for anything ordinary.

So no, reality never felt real to me. Not in the way adults used to describe it to me, with their tax brackets and tempered expectations. Reality felt more like a suggestion. A rough draft. A version of life someone else settled for before remembering they could edit it.

And I’ve been editing ever since.

Lesson One: You Can Train for the Life You Want

Since I was a kid, I knew I could push further than most. My body bent to the will of a mind that believed in the value of exertion, in chasing something greater than the discomfort of the moment. I didn’t have the words for it then, but looking back I was training not just for championships, but for life. For persistence. For pattern recognition. For a kind of alertness that would later become strategy.

I grew up in dusty gyms and foggy mountain camps, chasing a ball across continents with people I could call best friends and rivals in the same breath. I can’t remember all the names of the small European towns we trained in, only the feeling of early wake-ups and shared silence before the drills began. I remember the cold showers. The language barriers. The nights spent in bunk beds trading hopes in half-translated jokes.

We were young, but we were building something sacred. A kind of unspoken pact: show up, even at 60%. Especially at 60%. Because showing up was the real practice. That’s where character was built, and leadership revealed itself—not in shouting, but in presence. In staying. In running the final lap when no one was watching. My best friends were my fiercest competition, and the pressure wasn’t a problem—it was a privilege. It carved me.

What I learned was, when you’re constantly benchmarked against excellence, people with dreams larger than life and the drive to race you to the top, you evolve by default. Even when you don’t want to. Especially then.

Lession Two: Why Consistency Is Bullsh*t (Unless You Have This)

There’s a myth we keep selling: that consistency is king. That success is about grinding it out alone. That if you’re really committed, you don’t need anyone.

I bought into that lie later in life. Proved it to myself by running marathons. Taking on solo missions. Going full monk-mode. And it worked, until it didn’t.

Burnout doesn't knock. It breaks in. And what I realized is this: Consistency without alignment is punishment. What I’ve realized is this: true, sustainable success happens when consistency meets community.

You don’t need an army. Just aligned peers. People who show up after work, after hours, when they’re tired and not trying to impress anyone. People who will give you 100% on some days and 20% on others, but who always give something because they’re building the same thing you are. Together, that becomes a force.

That’s how you build a life worth living: with people who share your direction, even if they take a different path to get there.

Lession Three: The Blueprint Beneath the Dream, Everything You Want Is Actionable

Everything you want, every version of the life you keep secretly sketching in the corners of your mind at its core, actionable. It may not always be simple, but it can be touched, moved toward, shaped by your hands. And that, in itself, is a kind of miracle.

A skill, no matter how foreign or formidable at first, can be learned. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t grow up with it, weren’t born into it, or didn’t inherit the instincts that others seem to carry like second skin. Fluency comes from friction. From the awkward, ungraceful beginnings, and from the times with no applauds. The only difference between those who seem naturally gifted and those who appear left behind is the willingness to stay curious long enough to cross the threshold from confusion to capability.

Train for your next life. Edit your skill set, mold your mind again. If there’s a skill to be learned to get you where you want to go, do it. But pay attention. Even with all this in place, the next part is the most important one.

Lession Four: Pretending Is a Portal

I’m not religious in a traditional sense, but if I believe in one thing, it’s the creative power of thought. The ability to imagine something with such clarity and belief that life bends ever so slightly to make it happen.

I still pretend I’m further along than I actually am. Wiser, more self-possessed, more prepared for the so-called real world and all its unspoken tests. As if I had already lived through the lessons I had only just begun to encounter.

And of course I’m never truly ready, not in the way readiness is typically measured, by credentials or years or external validation. But I’m ready, and I’m hopeful, and unreasonably impatient with the pace of time and the polite rules of progress, which, when combined can make for a strange but effective kind of drive. Something volatile, not quite stable, but undeniably energetic.

What I learned is that pretending isn’t the betrayal people often mistake it for, it isn’t a mask designed to deceive or a lie built to manipulate. But rather, a ritual and private rehearsal for the life you suspect you might be capable of living, if only you were brave enough to try it on before you felt deserving.

It’s not inauthentic to act as though you already contain the wisdom you are still growing into. To pretend is to declare that you are no longer content to sit in the waiting room of your own life, and that you are willing to risk looking foolish in order to feel free.

Most high-performers will never tell you this, because the myth of mastery is cleaner, easier to sell, more palatable to the masses who want a straight line from A to Z—but the truth is far less glamorous. They smiled when they were nervous, they spoke before they were sure, they launched before they were ready, and in doing so, they created a version of themselves that eventually, with time and practice and failure and small wins, became real.

Dreams crave stories. Building visions demand storytelling about the effort you put in, the people you met on the way and the ups and downs of your journey. Make it big, make it yours, adjust it to fit the end goal. Become extremely good at telling it to the people who you need onboard, because it’s your entry to your new life. The story that inspires you, will eventually lead you to bigger leaps. Tell it as many times as you need to believe it to shape it to the reality of your liking.

What I Know Now:

• You can train for the life you want, but you need a community that holds you accountable to the highest version of yourself.

• Consistency only matters if it’s pointed in the right direction and shared with the right people.

• Skills are buildable. Fluency is just friction repeated.

• Pretending is a portal. Not fake, just future practice.

• Your story is your map. Tell it. Even if you’re still lost in the woods.

I still don’t see the reality as I’ve been told. I have a naive understanding of it, which has lead me to many great things. I’ve learned to respect the way it responds to clarity. To persistence. To repetition. The way it subtly shifts when you believe in something long enough to chase it until your feet blister and ego wears out but your voice gets steadier.

This life I’m building? It started as a sketch. A long shot. But I kept showing up for it, even when it didn’t make sense.

And that’s how fiction becomes fact.

That’s how dreams become real.