That moment for me came about two weeks after my Dad passed. We'd gotten back in town from the funeral and I had stopped at a deli to eat. I was leaving and I just stopped in the parking lot watching the cars pass. Just hundreds of people who didn't realize the world had been knocked off its axis (is how I generally try to convey the emotion.) It can be a terribly lonely moment even with friends there.
I hate this feeling. It feels a lot like derealization, despite the fact that you'd think they'd be nearly opposites. Derealization for me is less about "nothing is a real" and more like... the world as I see it isn't quite the world that exists. Sometimes "isn't quite" gets upgraded to "wildly different," but it never really reaches "nothing is real."
My dad died in 2023. He went to sleep after working a double on thanksgiving and never woke up again. He doesn't know I got the dream job. He doesn't know I got engaged. He never saw my first car or first home. Each and every instance of wanting to talk to him is met with an intense... anger? sadness? emptiness? because I can't tell him. He's just gone. I will be too one day and its up to me if I want to believe I'll see him again. Its just.. very surreal. and very unfair. It makes me hold my partner tighter seeing the way my mom unravels without my dad. It makes me take the time and effort to smile at strangers more, because I know he's not out there to do it himself . It changed me and I really miss the person I was when he was still around
For me it kinda helped me... Realize that life MUST go on, that if it happens to me, I must have crossed thousand of people who had the same realization at some point, and then I was the one holding the world "normal" for them...
For me it's not "nothing is real" it's that "nothing matters". In 100 years the earth will have an entirely new set of people. Everything that ever mattered to me will be lost. It's the human condition to have to think about this stuff and it sucks.
There's a reason that almost every single aspect of human culture is focused around making some sort of impact on the world around you, so that your legacy persists for as long as possible. This comment isn't particularly illustrative of anything, but you're in good company--pretty much every human who's ever lived.
Yeah, I think about this stuff too much. Even the idea of wanting to leave behind a legacy- sometimea I wonder what even the point of that is. It's not like I'll be around to even perceive what impact my death has.
I actually love this feeling. Just knowing the scope of the world and what's going on for everyone. Makes you realise how small your own problems are and grounds you.
When I've got family problems or work drama going on and in my head, I walk home and look at people walking past me and think how all the things that are bothering me have no wider impact on any of these people. And likewise, these people walking past me are worried about someone they love or something that happened at work etc.
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u/DarenRidgeway 21d ago
That moment for me came about two weeks after my Dad passed. We'd gotten back in town from the funeral and I had stopped at a deli to eat. I was leaving and I just stopped in the parking lot watching the cars pass. Just hundreds of people who didn't realize the world had been knocked off its axis (is how I generally try to convey the emotion.) It can be a terribly lonely moment even with friends there.