Hi! I’m new here but have been lurking for a bit. I guess I’ll use this as an intro post too, to sort of force myself to start posting. My symptoms hit me full freakin force today, and I would say I’m more curious than freaked out. That fact alone disturbs me.
The too long didn’t read question: How did you react the first time you saw something? Did it scare you? Should I be worried that I’m not freaked out at all?
BTW I am going to make an appointment tomorrow. The rest of this post is mostly for me as I need to verbalize this somehow, please don’t feel the need to read it all!
Build up
I’ve never, ever had visual hallucinations and to be perfectly honest I never really believed people actually had them as clearly as I did today. I thought maybe people “saw” things that weren’t there like how you catch a fly out of the corner of your eye and it takes you a few minutes to see it again if you look for it hard enough. No, these were as clear to me as anything else! Like, I stared at them!
I had a nervous breakdown last spring after an insanely abusive relationship (I believe I’m still in the breakdown). It started off slowly, first depression, then anxiety, and then I quit my job. I wasn’t drinking or using drugs at all, in fact I lost almost 30 lbs over ~4-5 months because I was just in bed all the time. And then I became homeless.
After about 6 months of staying in a shelter, I slowly started working again and got my own place. That’s when things got bad.
Isolation and “hearing” voices
I’ve been in my apartment for ~6 months now. And when I say in, I mean IN. I have not left other than to get groceries and occasionally meet people. I built an app to help homeless folks so I force myself to meet with different nonprofits, although I usually end up cancelling out of anxiety and going back home. I do not have great credibility because of how many times I’ve bailed on people. A few understand, most don’t 
Lately, I’ve been “hearing” voices. I don’t hear them in the literal sense, it’s more like an “inner reading” voice…like, you know how when you’re really into a book and you can visualize the character’s voices? And if you’re really into the book you can sort of imagine the scene? That’s what it’s like for me, I can totally “hear” people throughout the day.
Occasionally I’ll fully immerse myself in the conversations, even gesturing and shaking hands etc. I rationalize this as me working on my social skills, except that I’ll do this for literally hours! Lately, many of these conversations are about how poorly my father treated me growing up, and I can work up a good amount of anger reflecting on this.
I should note that today, despite being my first day with visuals, was the first day I DIDN’T talk to myself at all (until I saw the cat). It may be the first day these entire last six months that I don’t talk at all (to myself or otherwise).
I saw my moms cat today
I saw my moms cat licking its paw on top of a chair in the corner of my room. I don’t have a chair there, and I haven’t seen my mom in over a year. It’s hard to articulate just how seriously real I saw this…the entire event lasted maybe 3 seconds as I just stared at it in disbelief. I wasn’t freaked out, in fact I actually said out loud “Kitty, what are you doing here?”. I believe this was the first time I said any words today.
After I said it the cat disappeared…I was really looking at my jacket bunched up on a coffee table. Somehow the coffee table (with my jacket on top) looked like a tall chair with a cat. There was no transition though and I don’t even remember blinking…it just was not there anymore.
I saw a dude fixing his bike
After this happened, I decided to go for a walk. It wasn’t because I was freaked out or anything, I just thought I would go. In fact, I was weirdly dismissive about the whole cat thing. For some reason, I purposefully decided to leave without locking the door. Like, as I closed the door and was going to put the key in I decided, nah. I have never in my life not locked the door, much less on purpose! My rationale was that if I lose my keys I won’t be able to get back in…I distinctly remember thinking this.
I recently started going on 30 min walks to force myself out of the apartment (and to get Vitamin D, which I read a lack of can lead to depression). As I was walking, I saw a guy fixing his bike behind a tree that I was walking towards - maybe a half a basketball court away.
I saw him for a good 5 seconds, but he seemed to be making motions that were just a tiny bit unnatural. The way he was bending over the bike seemed…“off” (I should note I’m getting a little freaked out now writing this, I wasn’t all day until just now).
This was on a main road, and at 4pm plenty of cars and the sun is just starting to set but still bright enough that the street lights haven’t turned on. As I’m maybe the distance from the foul line to the basketball hoop he “disappeared”, and I realized that I was actually just looking at an oval sign. There was no transition…he was there and I was staring right at him fixing his bike and then he wasn’t and I was staring at a sign.
Again, I didn’t really get freaked out. I kept walking and thought to myself, hmm, that’s weird. I didn’t even do a double take, I just sort of moved on. I thought about it maybe one more time until I started writing this.
Food and Krav Maga
This was the bit that compelled me to join this forum and start writing this. Since coming back from the walk I coded my app a bit more and took a nap. I then decided to go for another walk to buy M&M’s (I have not eaten candy since BEFORE I moved into my apartment!). I bought a family sized bag of it, came back, and ate the whole thing. Then I ate a half bag of mozzarella cheese. Then half a can of pineapple slices.
Then, as I’m looking for a video to watch I come across a video. It’s the one on the bottom left:
What disturbed me is that I very clearly saw the words “Krav Maga” instead of “Make a Neural Network”. I can’t articulate how clearly I saw this. I even hovered over the image (so that the preview plays) and hovered off it and I still saw the words “Krav Maga”. The only reason I even have this screenshot is because I took it with the intent of posting it on Twitter because I thought it was hilarious that Siraj would be doing Krav Maga.
It wasn’t until I was going to upload the image that I realized that it didn’t say that at all. That’s when I really became disturbed by it and signed on and wrote all this.
Like I said, I’m going to go set up an appointment tomorrow because I’m getting a little freaked out about what’s happening (although, I’m not actually freaking out which is what I’m most concerned about). I’m not sleep deprived, not at all stressed, I don’t drink or do drugs (or smoke cigarettes). Other than my weird eating binge, my diet is relatively normal I think. Anyone experience something similar? Is this the start of something really bad?
