What if you couldn’t distinguish this reality from another one? What if there was always something making you question your surroundings? The brain is an incredibly powerful tool, and it’s something we haven’t even begun to understand. Especially when it comes to consciousness and “near-death-experiences.” Some people have lived entire lives in the span of a few moments, and they can recall every detail, every breath, every second spent. These experiences can drastically change a person. Someone on Reddit created a thread asking “Have you ever felt a deep personal connection to a person you met in a dream only to wake up feeling terrible because you realize they never existed?” and one user found a perfect place to share their chilling experience of living a happy life – then waking up.
A happy life that never happened
He said that his near-death experience was so strange that it took him 3 years to recover, and reality was never the same again.
“Throw away account cause this is really personal.
My last semester at a certain college I was assaulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive (note he was 325lbs I was 120lbs), while unconscious on the ground I lived a different life.
I met a wonderful young lady, she made my heart skip and my face red, I pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before I finally won her over, after two years we got married and almost immediately she bore me a daughter.
I had a great job and my wife didn’t have to work outside of the house when my daughter was two she [my wife] bore me a son. My son was the joy of my life, I would walk into his room every morning before I left for work and doted on him and my daughter.
One day while sitting on the couch I noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd, like inverted. It was still in 3D but… just… wrong. (It was a square lamp base, red with gold trim on 4 legs and a white square shade). I was transfixed, I couldn’t look away from it. I stayed up all night staring at it, the next morning I didn’t go to work, something was just not right about that lamp.”
“I stopped eating, I left the couch only to use the bathroom at first, soon I stopped that too as I wasn’t eating or drinking. I stared at the lamp for 3 days before my wife got really worried, she had someone come and try to talk to me, by this time my cognizance was breaking up and my wife was freaking out. She took the kids to her mother’s house just before I had my epiphany…. the lamp is not real…. the house is not real, my wife, my kids… none of that is real… the last 10 years of my life are not real!
The lamp started to grow wider and deeper, it was still inverted dimensions, it took up my entire perspective and all I could see was red, I heard voices, screams, all kinds of weird noises and I became aware of pain…. a ton of pain… the first words I said were “I’m missing teeth” and opened my eyes. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that I didn’t know, lots were freaking out, I was completely confused.”
“At some point a cop scooped me up, dragged/walked me across the sidewalk and grass and threw me face down in the back of a cop car, I was still confused.
I was taken to the hospital by the cop (seems he didn’t want to wait for the ambulance to arrive) and give CT scans and ***t..
I went through about 3 years of horrid depression, I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed, I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep hoping I would see her in my dreams. I never have, but sometimes I see my son, usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision, he is perpetually 5 years old and I can never hear what he says.”
The author of the post finished by saying:
“I’ve had many PM’s describing similar experiences and 3 posters stating such experiences are impossible, I’d say more research needs to be done on brain functions. Pre-med students, don’t assume you know everything.”
Some responses to the story were equally as terrifying. Imagine not knowing which life is the real one…
“You clearly had a pretty intense near death experience. There isn’t scientific consensus, so we can’t say for sure, but your experience may have been the result of a release of a massive amount of DMT into your brain from the pineal gland due to the amount of stress your body was under.”
“I remember reading somewhere that at the point of death time is compressed into an almost infinitely small space in consciousness. so maybe at that point of death you enter a new reality that is just infinitely experienced at normal speed but taking place in some quantum measurement of time.”
One person asked if he has ever seen the “inverted lamp” in this version of reality.
“I understand the anxiety of not knowing which reality is really reality.”
Have you ever experienced anything like this? Let us know in the comments!
Keep Reading: 19 Messed Up Dreams (We’ve All Had) And What They Mean
Sources:
- ‘Have you ever felt a deep personal connection to a person you met in a dream only to wake up feeling terrible because you realize they never existed?’ Reddit