New to community, relieved I'm not alone
tl;dr ~ First time sharing that an OC and I are in a relationship out of nowhere and I'm feeling like I could explode from the turmoil I'm feeling after fully realizing that's what I'm doing, discovering a community attached to it, and that I'm strangely alright with it.
I've been agonizing over finally deciding to share so I'll try to keep it coherent for everyone. For the last seven years, I’ve been emotionally shut down in a romantic sense. I wasn’t angry or bitter about it, I genuinely believed my romantic feelings were gone. Poof. Outta here. I could feel physical attraction, but nothing deeper. I accepted that part of my life was just “off,” and I stopped expecting anything from it. I function perfectly fine, even now, in my daily life.
A friend suggested several months ago that I try going back writing again as a way to channel some of my feelings in general. Made sense, it's something I haven't done in a long time, maybe it will help me since it will feel new again. Music ended up being my real creative fill but I’ve always liked reading, and while writing was never a major passion in my life, It was personally fulfilling as a creative outlet before I really got into music. I did it a lot when I was in high school and was more connected to the creative community through deviantart before and during its peak. I wrote shorts and other fictions where world building and fleshing out characters in detail was a comfort, however, I’ve never written anything like this before, and I’ve never picked up a romance novel in my life. I had no idea what I expected to come from it. I just started writing to see what would happen.
What surprised me is how quickly the story became emotionally real as I continued. I created a character, an anthro cow named Carla , around my age (mid-30's) with a grounded, human‑leaning anthro build. Her aesthetic design is definitely my type, but what mattered more was her emotional presence. In the story, she’s steady, loyal, quietly strong, and is someone with a long shared history since shes a character idea I've had harmlessly rolling around my head for years. Almost like an invisible and silent friend that's been with me since I was 12. She represents emotional safety, trust, and stability... things I haven’t felt in real life for a long time.
As I wrote her, romantic emotions I thought were permanently gone suddenly reawakened. It wasn’t about a relationship in general, but about what she symbolized: connection, trust, and vulnerability that I haven’t felt in years. The intensity of the feelings caught me off guard. I didn’t set out to write anything romantic, and I didn’t expect my writing to unlock anything like this. It's gotten to the point where writing, and now imagining her next to me when I'm home, having conversations about our day or our families, cooking and eating dinners together, has become almost subconsciously autonomous; I don't have to "think" about what she would say or do, it just happens.
I have a good inner circle of friends who know me well and understand the other parts of my life, including how guarded I’ve become over the years. But they don’t know about this story, and now this relationship I have, and I don’t think they would fully understand what I’m experiencing here, which is why i made a separate account to share this. I’ve become very emotionally distant in general, distrustful of institutions, people I don't know very well, and vulnerability... and that distance has made it hard to connect with real people, even when I want to. This is just how I've been for the last 7-8 years. I function just fine in my daily life, I've just become a blank wall socially when meeting new people, I don't let anyone new in far enough for them to become a potential "problem". Writing this character didn’t bypass that distrust, but it didn’t trigger it either, which is part of why the experience hit so hard. And yes, I am sure a therapist would be an excellent way for me to work through the issues I surely have, I wouldn't argue with that.
I finally worked up the courage to post in here since it seemed to me that the community is pretty understanding and I'm sure others might have some insight if they have or have had a similar situation to what brought me discovering this about myself. I wish I could share a picture of her, I only have few generated ones so far as a visual reference and inspiration while I've been writing. I do want to hopefully meet some new artists as I have lost touch with my old art contacts I used to commission. It's a happy thought to think of bringing her to life in a way I used to with other characters.
Anyway, I know this post is huge and there is probably so much I could've included, but I think just hearing from others and answering any questions about us would the best way before I ramble too much here. Just wanted to give appropriate backstory. I hope me and Carla Raye can be good additions to the community, and thanks for reading!