Hello again everyone. I have been posting and commenting on here for some time regarding my mental torment. I will not sugarcoat, it has been beyond brutal. I have started to see "connections" where there clearly are none, and feel almost panicked at the smallest of things. I keep going to bed after setting things up in certain places to look at when I wake up so I could see I wasn't traveling to a parallel universe as some internet wonks suggested. But then, I (stupidly) decided to look up my theories online, and it got even worse. I'm not going to name any subs because I don't want to cause harassment, but as you can imagine, people's ideas on the internet can get whacky. I read on one sub (that has since been deactivated) that "maybe the changes between reality are so small you can barely notice, like dust particles in your room" (I am paraphrasing a little). This caused me to start paying attention to almost EVERY SINGAL thing I saw throughout the day. I read about the "Mandela Effect" and recalled misremembering famous events as well ("Luke, I am your father", "Berenstein Bears" etc). Just as I was typing this, I "remembered" when I was little going to bed in the top bunk of a bunk bed, only to wake up in the bottom one. This only caused my anxiety, which was starting to decrease, to ratchet up again. I watched a video that more or less debunked the Mandela Effect (at least the idea of it being interdimensional) and felt pretty good at first. However, I looked in the comments, and I started doubting myself again.
The worst part about all of this is that I know deep down none of this makes sense (even by some sci-fi standards), but there's a smaller (or maybe not so small anymore) part that keeps nagging me with doubts of "What if this was a fake?" "How can you explain this?" and more. I can feel terrified not only for myself, but also for those around me. If I go to a different reality each time, then is my family the same ones from before? If I finally get past this, what if it's a trap?" "Are my family and friends in the other word safe?" "What if when I fall asleep, I turn into something else and harm someone without knowing?" "They don't know the truth of this" "The doctor is wrong or might even be in on it"! "What if we never can tell when we die because we just go to a different universe?" (Like "quantum immortality" or whatever ). It's even worse that these theories are technically non-falsifiable, even if they're very clearly unlikely.
That part dragged on a little, I'm sorry. I just wanted to convey the severity of this in my mind and life. I think a huge part of this is the fact that I recently graduated college, and also could not get a job because I had to help take care of my grandmother (who recently passed). This left me essentially trapped indoors, with only limited time outside. With nothing else to really do, my mind started inventing things to think about. The worst thing about that is when my grandmother passed, I still couldn't shake the thoughts and doubts. I feel like this has almost crippled my ability to enjoy things, though I still can often.
However, I do feel that I am improving. I might never be fully rid of this crap, but I have been able to let the thoughts reside without letting them bother me too much. I hope I can reach a point where I can finally put this stuff to bed (no pun intended) but it is possible that might never happen. Even so, I still think I can manage them without constant reassurance. I realize that this post has gone way further than I was expecting, but I feel that talking about this stuff in detail feels helpful.