The Sticky ​ I don't know how to explain this…
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The Sticky
​
I don't know how to explain this without sounding insane, so I'm just going to say it clearly: I think I'm losing the ability to tell what's real.
It started small. Three weeks ago, I'd be walking to work and someone would turn to look at me. Not a normal glance. A full rotation of the head, eyes locking on, and then they'd turn back. It happened maybe five or six times that week. I told myself I was imagining it. People look at other people. That's what people do.
Then it was every single person.
The woman at the coffee shop. The man on the bus. The teenager across the street with her headphones in. All of them, the moment I entered their field of vision, would turn and stare. And I realized they were waiting. They were \*waiting\* for me to notice that they were staring.
"You're being paranoid," my roommate Derek said when I brought it up. "People don't orchestrate—"
"I'm not saying they're orchestrating anything," I said. "I'm saying they're all doing it."
He looked at me in that way people do when they're trying very hard to look normal while thinking you're not normal. Then he went back to his phone.
The second phase was the conversations stopping.
I'd be in a room—the grocery store, the library, the break room at work—and people would be talking. Normal talk. Then I'd get close enough to hear and the sound would just... stop. Mid-sentence sometimes. One moment there's chatter, the next moment it's like someone muted the room the instant I entered it.
"Did you do that?" I asked the cashier at Whole Foods. My voice sounded very loud in the sudden silence of the produce section.
She looked at me like I'd asked her to explain quantum physics. "Do what?"
"Everyone stopped talking when I walked in."
"I didn't notice," she said. But her eyes moved to something behind me. To where Derek was standing. He was looking at his phone very carefully, the way people do when they want you to know they're not looking at you.
That's when Derek started filming me.
I found out because I saw him doing it. Phone up, camera app open, pointed at me while I was making breakfast. When I asked him about it, he put the phone down and said he wasn't filming anything. But there was a four-second delay before he answered, and his jaw did this thing where it got very tight.
"Why would I film you?" he asked.
I didn't have a good answer for that. I still don't.
The third phase was worse because it moved inside my head.
I'd be thinking something—normal thinking, like "I should buy milk" or "that person has nice shoes"—and then I'd realize I couldn't remember when I started thinking it. I couldn't trace back to the moment the thought began. It was just \*there\*, fully formed, like it had always been there, like it had come from somewhere else and I was just... aware of it.
And sometimes I'd get the sensation that I'd had a thought, but I couldn't remember what it was. Like something had reached into my head and pulled it out while I was looking away.
I went to a doctor. I told her I was having intrusive thoughts, that I couldn't focus, that I was tired all the time.
She prescribed me anti-anxiety medication and sent me on my way.
I took it for three days and then I stopped because I realized that the medication itself might be part of it. What if everyone—Derek, the doctor, all of them—were feeding me something? What if the pills were the thing that was supposed to make me \*stop noticing\*?
By that point I wasn't sleeping more than an hour a night. But I was seeing so much more clearly.
It was the reflection that broke me.
I was in the bathroom getting ready for work and I caught my reflection in the mirror and there was a lag. My face moved and then the reflection moved maybe a half-second later. Just like watching a video with out-of-sync audio, except it was my face.
I stared at it. Moved my hand. The reflection moved. But not at the same time. Always half a beat behind.
"Derek!" I screamed. "DEREK!"
He came running. I pointed at the mirror. "My reflection. It's not syncing."
He looked at the mirror. He looked at me. He looked back at the mirror.
"It looks fine," he said.
"It's delayed."
"It's not delayed, man. It's a reflection. Reflections happen instantly."
But that's not what I saw. I saw the moment where my reflection was catching up to me, where the version of me in the mirror was trying very hard to match what I was doing in real time, and it was almost fast enough that Derek couldn't see it, but I could see it, I could \*see\* it, I could see the seam where reality was breaking.
I went back to the doctor. This time I told her everything. About the staring. About the conversations stopping. About Derek filming me. About the reflection.
She didn't prescribe more medication. Instead, she asked me very careful questions about whether I'd been using drugs, whether I'd experienced trauma, whether anyone in my family had ever been diagnosed with psychosis.
When I said my uncle had, she used the word that changed everything.
"Schizophrenia," she said. Very gently. Like it was a sad thing.
And I understood right then that this was the trap. That this was what they'd \*needed\*—a diagnosis. Now when I tried to explain what was happening, it wouldn't be real anymore. It would just be symptoms. The thing people say when they mean "the person is broken."
I started researching. And that's when I found other people online. People who understood. Who had noticed it too. Who could see the inconsistencies in how the world worked, how people moved, how reality kept stuttering and skipping like a corrupted video file.
"They're watching all of us," one poster wrote. "Once you see it, you can't unsee it."
And that was true. I couldn't unsee it. Every conversation that stopped too quickly. Every reflection that was just slightly out of sync. Every person's eyes that locked onto me the moment I entered a space. It was all coordinated. It had to be. The alternative was that I was going insane, and I knew I wasn't. I was more sane than I'd ever been. I could see the patterns that other people were too blind to notice.
They've recommended I go to a hospital now. A psychiatric hospital. Derek set up the appointment. I saw the paperwork. It said "Acute Psychotic Episode" and I almost laughed because that's how they \*describe\* it. That's the lie they've settled on.
I'm supposed to check in on Tuesday.
I won't be there.
Because here's what I've understood: the hospital is where they put you to make you stop seeing. They give you drugs that quiet the part of your brain that notices the lag, that recognizes the staring, that sees the reflection's delay. They want you medicated and compliant and blind again.
Derek has started leaving pamphlets around the apartment. Information about "support systems" and "treatment options" and "you're not alone." But it's clearly a script. Nobody actually talks like that. And the timing of it—the way he leaves them exactly when he thinks I'm not looking—proves he knows exactly what he's doing.
I've been recording my thoughts like this because at some point, maybe soon, I'll stop being able to communicate normally. At some point I might say something that will make them think they were right all along, that I really am sick, and I need them to know—anyone reading this needs to know—that I was sane at the beginning. I could feel it slipping away but I could still trace the moment it started. I could still see the connection between the staring and the conversations and the reflection lag. I could still hold onto the architecture of it.
But I can feel the sticky. That's what I'm calling it. The sticky part of my mind that's making everything hard to think through. Where thoughts get caught and I can't quite extract them. Where I lose track of what I was going to say mid-sentence.
Sometimes I can't remember if I've already lived through certain days or if I'm living through them right now. Derek will ask me if I took out the trash yesterday and I'll know the answer is yes, I can \*see\* myself doing it, but I can't remember \*when\*. Was that Tuesday? Was that two weeks ago? Was that today and I'm forgetting immediately?
Is this real?
I need to know if this is real.
There's a moment—there has to be a moment—where I can still figure out if this is real or if my brain has just decided that none of it is real, and Derek is right, and the staring is just people looking, and the reflection is just a reflection, and the thoughts that appear fully formed in my head with no origin are just thoughts and not something reaching in and placing them there.
There has to be a moment where I can still tell the difference between the two.
I think that moment is almost gone.
I think I'm almost out of time.
And the worst part—the thing I can't say out loud because it will confirm that I'm broken—is that I'm not even sure anymore if I want to stay on the side of what's real.
The sticky side is so much... quieter.
#entertainment
source
​
I don't know how to explain this without sounding insane, so I'm just going to say it clearly: I think I'm losing the ability to tell what's real.
It started small. Three weeks ago, I'd be walking to work and someone would turn to look at me. Not a normal glance. A full rotation of the head, eyes locking on, and then they'd turn back. It happened maybe five or six times that week. I told myself I was imagining it. People look at other people. That's what people do.
Then it was every single person.
The woman at the coffee shop. The man on the bus. The teenager across the street with her headphones in. All of them, the moment I entered their field of vision, would turn and stare. And I realized they were waiting. They were \*waiting\* for me to notice that they were staring.
"You're being paranoid," my roommate Derek said when I brought it up. "People don't orchestrate—"
"I'm not saying they're orchestrating anything," I said. "I'm saying they're all doing it."
He looked at me in that way people do when they're trying very hard to look normal while thinking you're not normal. Then he went back to his phone.
The second phase was the conversations stopping.
I'd be in a room—the grocery store, the library, the break room at work—and people would be talking. Normal talk. Then I'd get close enough to hear and the sound would just... stop. Mid-sentence sometimes. One moment there's chatter, the next moment it's like someone muted the room the instant I entered it.
"Did you do that?" I asked the cashier at Whole Foods. My voice sounded very loud in the sudden silence of the produce section.
She looked at me like I'd asked her to explain quantum physics. "Do what?"
"Everyone stopped talking when I walked in."
"I didn't notice," she said. But her eyes moved to something behind me. To where Derek was standing. He was looking at his phone very carefully, the way people do when they want you to know they're not looking at you.
That's when Derek started filming me.
I found out because I saw him doing it. Phone up, camera app open, pointed at me while I was making breakfast. When I asked him about it, he put the phone down and said he wasn't filming anything. But there was a four-second delay before he answered, and his jaw did this thing where it got very tight.
"Why would I film you?" he asked.
I didn't have a good answer for that. I still don't.
The third phase was worse because it moved inside my head.
I'd be thinking something—normal thinking, like "I should buy milk" or "that person has nice shoes"—and then I'd realize I couldn't remember when I started thinking it. I couldn't trace back to the moment the thought began. It was just \*there\*, fully formed, like it had always been there, like it had come from somewhere else and I was just... aware of it.
And sometimes I'd get the sensation that I'd had a thought, but I couldn't remember what it was. Like something had reached into my head and pulled it out while I was looking away.
I went to a doctor. I told her I was having intrusive thoughts, that I couldn't focus, that I was tired all the time.
She prescribed me anti-anxiety medication and sent me on my way.
I took it for three days and then I stopped because I realized that the medication itself might be part of it. What if everyone—Derek, the doctor, all of them—were feeding me something? What if the pills were the thing that was supposed to make me \*stop noticing\*?
By that point I wasn't sleeping more than an hour a night. But I was seeing so much more clearly.
It was the reflection that broke me.
I was in the bathroom getting ready for work and I caught my reflection in the mirror and there was a lag. My face moved and then the reflection moved maybe a half-second later. Just like watching a video with out-of-sync audio, except it was my face.
I stared at it. Moved my hand. The reflection moved. But not at the same time. Always half a beat behind.
"Derek!" I screamed. "DEREK!"
He came running. I pointed at the mirror. "My reflection. It's not syncing."
He looked at the mirror. He looked at me. He looked back at the mirror.
"It looks fine," he said.
"It's delayed."
"It's not delayed, man. It's a reflection. Reflections happen instantly."
But that's not what I saw. I saw the moment where my reflection was catching up to me, where the version of me in the mirror was trying very hard to match what I was doing in real time, and it was almost fast enough that Derek couldn't see it, but I could see it, I could \*see\* it, I could see the seam where reality was breaking.
I went back to the doctor. This time I told her everything. About the staring. About the conversations stopping. About Derek filming me. About the reflection.
She didn't prescribe more medication. Instead, she asked me very careful questions about whether I'd been using drugs, whether I'd experienced trauma, whether anyone in my family had ever been diagnosed with psychosis.
When I said my uncle had, she used the word that changed everything.
"Schizophrenia," she said. Very gently. Like it was a sad thing.
And I understood right then that this was the trap. That this was what they'd \*needed\*—a diagnosis. Now when I tried to explain what was happening, it wouldn't be real anymore. It would just be symptoms. The thing people say when they mean "the person is broken."
I started researching. And that's when I found other people online. People who understood. Who had noticed it too. Who could see the inconsistencies in how the world worked, how people moved, how reality kept stuttering and skipping like a corrupted video file.
"They're watching all of us," one poster wrote. "Once you see it, you can't unsee it."
And that was true. I couldn't unsee it. Every conversation that stopped too quickly. Every reflection that was just slightly out of sync. Every person's eyes that locked onto me the moment I entered a space. It was all coordinated. It had to be. The alternative was that I was going insane, and I knew I wasn't. I was more sane than I'd ever been. I could see the patterns that other people were too blind to notice.
They've recommended I go to a hospital now. A psychiatric hospital. Derek set up the appointment. I saw the paperwork. It said "Acute Psychotic Episode" and I almost laughed because that's how they \*describe\* it. That's the lie they've settled on.
I'm supposed to check in on Tuesday.
I won't be there.
Because here's what I've understood: the hospital is where they put you to make you stop seeing. They give you drugs that quiet the part of your brain that notices the lag, that recognizes the staring, that sees the reflection's delay. They want you medicated and compliant and blind again.
Derek has started leaving pamphlets around the apartment. Information about "support systems" and "treatment options" and "you're not alone." But it's clearly a script. Nobody actually talks like that. And the timing of it—the way he leaves them exactly when he thinks I'm not looking—proves he knows exactly what he's doing.
I've been recording my thoughts like this because at some point, maybe soon, I'll stop being able to communicate normally. At some point I might say something that will make them think they were right all along, that I really am sick, and I need them to know—anyone reading this needs to know—that I was sane at the beginning. I could feel it slipping away but I could still trace the moment it started. I could still see the connection between the staring and the conversations and the reflection lag. I could still hold onto the architecture of it.
But I can feel the sticky. That's what I'm calling it. The sticky part of my mind that's making everything hard to think through. Where thoughts get caught and I can't quite extract them. Where I lose track of what I was going to say mid-sentence.
Sometimes I can't remember if I've already lived through certain days or if I'm living through them right now. Derek will ask me if I took out the trash yesterday and I'll know the answer is yes, I can \*see\* myself doing it, but I can't remember \*when\*. Was that Tuesday? Was that two weeks ago? Was that today and I'm forgetting immediately?
Is this real?
I need to know if this is real.
There's a moment—there has to be a moment—where I can still figure out if this is real or if my brain has just decided that none of it is real, and Derek is right, and the staring is just people looking, and the reflection is just a reflection, and the thoughts that appear fully formed in my head with no origin are just thoughts and not something reaching in and placing them there.
There has to be a moment where I can still tell the difference between the two.
I think that moment is almost gone.
I think I'm almost out of time.
And the worst part—the thing I can't say out loud because it will confirm that I'm broken—is that I'm not even sure anymore if I want to stay on the side of what's real.
The sticky side is so much... quieter.
#entertainment
source
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