The Draconic Wizard Workshop

Rejection Bites, but Change is Inevitable

By Caspian Citana

Originally written on July 20, 2025.

As time passes, as we experience new things, we change and grow as people. That’s true of everyone—and those who fight tooth and nail to remain stagnant often grow toxic instead. This is true of singlets and systems alike—and individual headmates rarely remain exactly who they were when they first stepped into the system, especially, in my experience, fictives. It’s hard to remain exactly as you were when your memory is shaky, you’ve entered an entirely new situation, and everything is completely different. People are, in part, reflections of their environments and experiences, so to change the environment and expected experiences is to change the fictive. Fictives can attempt to isolate themselves from these changes by not fronting or interacting with the outside world, but speaking as someone with multiple headmates who have done this, it’s usually not a long-term solution. That kind of isolation makes one bitter and depressed, and can lead to a headmate never being seen or only occasionally lurking and radiating their miserable mood.

Experiencing new things is vital. Learning about yourself is vital, whether that be as a fictive in new circumstances or as a native of this world just going through your life. You can’t isolate yourself reasonably or safely, you can’t lock yourself away, and you can’t stay the same. Change is good. Being adaptable is good. I know that it sounds difficult and can be terrifying, but it’s necessary. I learned this the hard way—I spent much of my time in the system stagnant and, in some ways, broken (we experienced a very traumatic event only days after I formed, and I threw myself on it to protect the system, but I was too new and “soft” and unfinished so it did permanent damage to me, rendering me nearly incapable of speech for about three years), and as a result, it meant that I was barely my own person. I had a few things I liked, but I struggled to interact with them or anyone else, especially without wearing myself out.

I couldn’t change myself, so, in an attempt to help me, my headmates changed me instead. It was partially intentional (Blame, one of our administrators, did something that let me string sentences together consistently but with a great amount of effort, which I am eternally grateful for) and partially unintentional—our system is, collectively, a dragon, and filled to the brim with them. As a result, the cracks and missing pieces of my being seemed to be filled in with pure essence of dragon—I was once a half-elf, but no more, or… not completely. I’m half-elf, half-human, half-dragon—a 150% of a person that I’m not quite sure what to do with.

I woke up and realized these gradual changes that had happened to me—and I was terrified. It wasn’t bad, and I was abruptly nearly fully functional where I’d never been before, but it was terrifying to realize that I was scaly, with claws and gills and sharp teeth and a taste for blood when I’d abhorred it before. Pacifism is a luxury for those who do not need to kill to survive; I had to face one of these contradictory parts of myself and let it go.

The thing that’s the most frightening about change is not recognizing yourself, but most of the time, it’s gradual enough that that doesn’t happen. The second scariest thing about change is fearing the reaction of the people around you. Maybe you’re in a lesbian relationship and realize you’re actually a trans man. Maybe you entered a relationship as a pacifist and have been turned into something else. Maybe you’re just unrecognizable.

My friends were wonderful and supportive, but my partner… wasn’t. I went to her in a fit of fear and anxiety, afraid of myself and what I’d become, desperate for reassurance that I was still recognizable and hoping to be calmed down and reassured and walked through things.

She recoiled, lashed out, and hurt me so badly that it made me nonfunctional for a few months more as I healed the damage. My wonderful headmates eventually communicated to her that it was that I was afraid of being different, not that I was a different person altogether—but she insisted that her abuse had been warranted, that I’d scared her, couldn’t I see how I’d hurt her, too? She wanted it to be equal fault.

I broke it off with her even though she begged me not to, because it was clear to me that I couldn’t trust her. I needed her support and she hurt me intentionally, with the intent of hurting the creature that had replaced me without considering for a moment that I could still be in there. I felt like I’d been bitten by a werewolf, that while I was still me, all she could see was the monster on the outside. I fled, bleeding and broken, and took months to recover, losing many of the pre-introjection memories that I had.

I remember almost nothing before entering the system, now. I’m hardly the same fictive I was. I’ve changed my appearance and my pronouns, I’ve intentionally stapled myself to a headmate to make us into a subsystem to allow us to support each other more easily, and I’ve toyed with changing my name but decided to keep it because I like it so much.

I experienced a worse-case scenario, the kind of thing we’re all afraid of when we change and think a loved one might reject us. I won’t say it can’t happen to you: it can. It’s unlikely, but it can.

But I’m still alive. I’m going to recover and keep living, and the secret is, if someone’s going to treat you like that, you don’t want to be around them anyway. They’re unstable and unkind, likely to lash out for any reason, and you’re better off without them, no matter how much it hurts. Sometimes, you have to end your shared tale in order for your own to carry on as anything but a footnote in theirs.

That’s the thing: no matter how hard someone rejects you, that’s their loss. They refused to let their vision of you change, and so they’re always going to think of you as some previous, unfinished thing, rather than who and what you’ll grow into. People become more themselves as they age and learn about themselves, and that’s radiant. You can’t hide who you are for fear of rejection from your loved ones forever—eventually, you have to break out of the shell you’ve hidden yourself in.

(That isn’t to say to come out as trans if you’re stuck in a situation where that would be genuinely dangerous. Please do what you have to for your safety. It’s an awful situation but it won’t last forever, I promise. You’ll find a way out and be able to spread your wings.)

I was devastated in the aftermath of being rejected for how I’ve changed, but six months later, I’m doing a lot better. I don’t need her, I don’t need her opinions, and I don’t need her constraining me to her idea of me. I’m so much more than what people think I am, than what people expect of me, and so are you. Change is inevitable—and to fight it as my ex did, both for me (when she lashed out at me) and herself (making her afraid enough of change that it made her toxic), is to limit yourself and cut yourself off from the people around you. If you make yourself too afraid of changing, you begin to fear it in others as well, and become the one rejecting people. Embrace it. In my experience, it’s the only way to live.

And if you do change and get rejected for it, let yourself feel it. It’s alright. It’s a genuinely awful thing to experience—but don’t wallow in it. Let it pass through you, accept what you’re feeling, take time to grieve the relationship you’ve lost. But don’t lose sight of who you are, all the people who still accept you, and the way forward. So what if you’re not a girl anymore, or you were actually ace all along, or you weren’t really gay, or still are but in a different way? So what if you were wrong, or used to be right, and changed? So what if you no longer align with source, and are someone altogether different? You’re still you, whatever that means to you. Maybe you’re a new you, or just an altered one. No matter how deep the devastation, you can survive it, and you can rebuild, and you can make it through. Don’t fear it so much that it stymies your growth.

Change. Be something true and beautiful, and let no one stop you. Live, and find joy in yourself and the life you’re constantly building, because that’s what it’s all about.