Stuck in a dream

[BirdSeed]

Hello. This is long, sorry.

Something started happening to me when I was 18 (I'm 21 now). It is very difficult to describe and I'm wondering if this will sound familiar to anyone.

I feel like I am stuck inside a dream, going through the motions of life but not experiencing it. When I talk to people it's like I'm talking to a ghost who isn't really there in front of me. I think if I tried to reach out and touch them, I couldn't because they aren't real. It's like I'm in several different places at once, and I'm observing myself from a distance. Sometimes it feels like I don't exist or I might wake up from this dream any second. This makes life very mundane and insignificant.

This feeling terrified me when it started and I had a couple of panic attacks. But it's been 3 years now and I'm used to it. I can't even remember what "real life" feels like any more. Taking real breaths of air, eating real food, etc. I live in a kind of dreamy, vague version of the world. Everything lacks colour and life. I'm not sure if something's wrong or if this is just my imagination.

Around the time this started I met a woman. I was the happiest I'd ever been when I was close to her and I still think about her constantly. Nothing else in my life even comes close to how I felt spending hours chatting with her about nothing in particular. She lost interest in me almost 3 years ago but I've hardly gone a minute without thinking about her. It's hard to sleep and I often wake up crying about how I lost her.

Sometimes I want to hurt myself. I'm not going to. I have a family. And I'm terrified of death. But at my last job I used a chainsaw, and couldn't focus on my work much because I was fantasizing about hurting myself with it. I knew something was wrong because these thoughts almost excited me, and I never feel excited.

Since then not much has happened. I've had no desire to find work anymore or do anything at all. I lost my virginity to a prostitute. I've been spending a lot of time lately staring at things hoping they'll start to look real, but they don't. I haven't told anyone any of this but now I'm sharing it with strangers on the internet.

I appreciate the time you took to read my nonsense, thank you,
BirdSeed

[Dibs]

Hey man ...

I won't pretend to understand exactly what you are describing, but it certainly had a ring of familiarity to it.

Is it possible that what you have been going through is accompanied by a withdrawal into your head? In other words, you're 5 senses are still working fine, you still see and hear things, etc ... but the information from those sensory organs is getting lost in an ocean of inner dialogue?

That is sort of like what I feel A LOT. I feel like I have occasional moments where I "wake up" from the dream for a short period, only to go right back into it for weeks at a time.

The only thing I have found to work is mindfulness. I have been using meditative practices to try and become aware of what I am filtering in through my 5 senses, as well as the thoughts and emotions that form the landscape of my mind. It seems to work with practice.

I don't know if your experience with that girl was a trigger for you or not ... but it seems like this type of "dream state" can sneak up on someone and overtake them without any real notion of what started it.

I wish you all the best ... it sounds very difficult.