Trigger warning: mentions of derealization

I am a stranger to myself. I am a three-dimensional being, swinging in a reality that doesn’t fit my piece of the puzzle. 

The sun will glare at me, taunting me to think faster. I have been here before but only in my dreams. I have lived through this again and again. Again and again. I am trapped in a thin layer of film. My actions are a decade old computer; they lag and teleport me outside of where I strive to be.

My shadow is not compatible with my body. It moves alone and mutes my tracks. As I look behind me, I see nothing but empty space. It is waiting to be filled as if I hadn’t traversed through before.

I turn ahead, continuing to stock the room with a figment of my imagination; I am watching myself through another’s eyes. My actions are stagnant and flickering in and out of perception. 

I am traveling around a room with no end, yet there are white walls everywhere. There is a whistle that rings into my ear like a static buzz of white noise. It rises to a crescendo; it is a children’s novice choir.

The familiar eeriness of a view is nothing, yet it holds hands with recognition. Not even the crickets dare to utter a single chirp from their hiding place in the tall grass. There is lightning. There is sun. There is a rainbow. There is water in an empty field. Nothing is anything. But the scene matches like a perfectly sculpted canvas. 

I am hearing a variety of orchestras playing their symphonies, but I can only listen to one. There is no applause when they end. No one was in the room to hear the woodwinds chiming in a soft breeze. No one was in the room to play. No one played. 

Who is in the mirror? Peering back at me with empty eyes glazed over. Surely not me. It is not me. Her hair is a raven-colored tar that hangs like a curtain on top of a blurred face. I know it’s me. It is not me. 

A matte black alarm shrills its song in the night. I slap it quiet and turn to run. It screams its song again. And again and again. Before I have time to exit the room, the alarm is there to assure me I can never leave this loop I have somehow tied myself into.

I can see everything in my view; I can touch and feel the soft fabrics of my t-shirts or the lustrous glide of my sheets that have tucked me in to sleep. They do not exist to me still. A snap of magic and they’re gone. Only, there is no magic. They are gone. 

Are we living in a game? A simulation of real life. If I die, will I get two more lives to redeem myself? 

There are giant iron balls sitting in a big room of black. At opposite ends of the room, they start rolling towards each other. Instead of getting smaller, they continue to grow larger, yet I know they are supposed to be small. I wake up to escape this dream, but it plays in my mind as if it’s supposed to stick with me. This is not a one-time occurrence. I have experienced this dream more than enough for me to know every detail about an empty room.

How is it that I can see myself through a window? I am viewing a patient from outside the room. I am the patient. The glass isn’t there to separate us anymore. I am falling forward into the room, but I keep on falling. I keep falling into pieces that will have to be swept up. Once the broom is located, it’s too late. I am dissolved. The only person left to see is me, myself, watching from behind the window.