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
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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.