You'd think I'd be the last person to post something like this, so here goes

I recently had long debates with a family member of mine, who told me I was just running away from my problems in real life, and it was true, my entire life, the only things I found pleasure in were escapes, like video games, daydreaming, and now LDing. In dreams, I literally have no memory of the outside world. I've found myself willingly return to that world once I've figured out I've forgotten what it was like for anything to be real. It's the ultimate virtual reality. But in pursuing my hobbies, not just lucid dreaming in general, I neglected real life, leaving my life outside of the hobby or the dream to suffer until I became an expert at it and moved on to something else. I realized this was true but I still want my lucid dreams.

These days, I've been depressed, and I feel conflicted, because I want to pursue LDing again, but I also want to improve real life, and I know you can do both, but I don't know how, and it's eating me from the inside. My dreams are now either forgotten, or abnormally violent. Something is stopping me from pursuing the dream world again, but I can't just return to reality now with what I've experienced. I want to stop escaping, yet some part of me still wants it. I know there problems in my life like my low self-esteem, short temper, sensitivity, among others, but there's still that deep longing to go back, to experience something that is unique to myself. I feel like I've been ostracized from both dream and reality.

Thanks for reading this, any advice or commentary would be appreciated.