Jordan Beaven

I haven’t felt real in a long time, I don’t feel like it’s me talking every time I speak.

I don’t feel like my limbs are actually mine.

Places that used to feel familiar to me are now daunting, alien, as if I’m watching something incredibly overwhelming as if that place is unfamiliar and I have no idea where I am.

I am close to tears or crying a lot of the time but it doesn’t feel like the tears are mine or that I am indeed actually crying all though tears fall down my face.

It feels like I’m invading the world as it all feels as if I’m on a different planet. It makes me wonder that, if aliens existed, if this is how they would feel if they came to planet earth.

I cannot see the world for what it is anymore, nothing and nobody feels safe. I feel in a constant trance as everything seems dangerous and unknown.

I feel invisible as if I’m not even actually alive and like I’m a ghost watching people.

I feel an intense fear of everything but also not caring about anything at all, all at the same time. Not being connected with anything.

Looking at people whose Face ID be able to recognise and know it with the name as the person they are feels unfamiliar and strange. I don’t recognise faces anymore even if they are right in front of me. If a person was stood next to me or is near me I cannot look at their face as they don’t feel real.

The urge to touch someone just to know that there is a genuinely real person in front of me is real. It seems in my head that they’re just visions and that if I were to reach out touch them my hand would go straight through them.

Through my eyes right now life feels like an illusion, as if nothing and no one is real. As if they’ve just been generated to seem like there’s life but I’m just waiting for the screen to break and for the world to go dark.

The screen is already dim and it’s a struggle to see the colour through my eyes. The strange me in a strange world is a really strange situation.

I feel it’s better to not talk because when I do I don’t feel as though the sound is coming out my mouth or that my lips are moving. It feels as if this is some form of artificial intelligence software that is playing through out all of my senses.

Food doesn’t seem real, I don’t really taste anything, I don’t feel as though I’m hungry. I don’t feel as if I really feel anything and that everything is just an illustration imprinted into my mind.

I constantly feel as if I have to swim through a misty, thick heavy mud surface of water, trying to push my way through and constantly being held back and getting stuck not being able to see through the mist and fog that is blocking everything in front of me.

I don’t really react anymore, I’m just so disconnected and unlifelike that that the only thing I think is real is that I’m not.

This is the hardest thing for myself to try and put into an order that makes sense to my head because the truth is nothing makes sense to me anymore.

I can’t put anything in my head into an order that makes me able to process anything. I can’t focus on a conversation as the sounds and words mean nothing and it’s like I don’t really hear them.

It’s as if my life and my vision of the world and my existence is like I’m looking through a smeared and stained window as far away as I can be. Nothing feels as though it’s in reach, nothing feels as though it’s real.

I don’t know who I am, my name doesn’t mean anything to me, I don’t feel as though I’m 23, I don’t feel as if I’m alive. Yet, being alive brings me incredible pain but pain I’m unable to describe.

I can feel pain both mentally and physically although it doesn’t feel as though it’s mine and I don’t know where the pain comes from or where it is.

I feel as if I’ve been programmed and I just float by in existence as if I’m on autopilot just getting on with it because I’ve been programmed to do it.

My thoughts do not feel like mine, my feelings don’t feel like mine although there is something I feel so intensely I feel as if I’m going to die from it but again I don’t even know what that is or how I can even put into words what I mean and how to explain it, I can’t even think of a word or sentence to describe it.

I wish I could feel the world again, to be able to find safety in places and things. To be able to be present in the moment, to be able to look at people and to see things as if they are real, I wish I could hear the worlds and sounds of life, to be able to see what everyone else sees, feel how everyone else feels, to connect with things how everyone else feels.

I want more than anything to feel grounded, to have my feet firmly touching the ground, to feel grass and know what that feels like again, to feel the wind against me, to be able to taste the most amazing meal, to be able to know what my favourite meal so that I can devour the smell and the taste and the textures of it.

I want more than anything to feel connected, to feel as though I’m truly there in conversations that matter, to experience the joy that others feel.

I wish my strange world would become a real world, full of light and bright colours, full of the most amazing sounds and smells, to feel the floor beneath my feet, to feel my limbs move, to feel present in the moment.

I have this craving to be alive, to live, to see, to smell, to taste, to hear and be able to touch everything and everything and feel something.

This is normal to me and it really freaked me out to know so many people have no idea what I’m talking about and that it’s not normal to have this.

It’s scary, I don’t know if I’m ever going to see the world as I once saw it, how most people see it. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be me but I don’t even know who that is, I don’t know what he likes, I don’t know what his favourite song is, I don’t know what his favourite colour is, what is happy dance looks like, if he can sing. Can that person feel and are they actually alive? Is that person kind? Are they nasty? What are their ambitions? What Memories do they have? Where is their safe space? What Tv show is their favourite? What books do they like? How do they dress? Are they funny? Can they drive? Can they socialise? Do they make the world a better place? What’s their favourite drink?

Will I ever find me or will I just continue to feel strange in a really strange world?