And I mean in like, The 2011 Japan earthquake where our days literally got faster, COVID because … Y’know. COVID. Etc.
What’s a time in your life you experienced something like that, when was it and what ended up happening to you?
9/11, 2008, MTHFR diagnosis, COVID shutdowns.
I had a crippling migraine. I thought I was going to die. I crawled to the bathroom and ran the tub, tears streaming down my face. I felt so weak, every movement made my head feel like it was going to explode.
I got my partner to grab me some water and Advil as I lay in the bath. I stayed there all night: head pounding, wishing I was dead, dreaming of drilling a hole in my skull with a power drill just to relieve the pressure behind my eyes.
Eventually, it passed, but it lingered for the rest of the week, consistent, though much less intense.
The following day, I got a call from my mother. She was worried about me. It turns out she’d had a dream that I had died in a bathtub, and she wanted to check in.
Later that day, I saw an article on quantum immortality, and remembered a part from the game Alan Wake, where a TV segment you can come across discusses the theory.
Essentially, at certain moments there is a quantum break, which creates alternate realities, where you, or you conciousness shifts to a universe where you are still alive, but also creating alternate versions where you die.
so basically,you never experience your own death
Sometimes I wonder if I did die in that bathtub. The world I woke up in only seems to be getting stranger and stranger each day.
Or perhaps not. Who knows? There are many mysteries in life. And to many, that’s what gives it meaning.
Who am I to question the incredible strangeness of existence? And who would I be if I pretended to know its secrets? …Evidently, nobody of consequence.
Horrible and weird experience aside, to anyone else reading this: That could have been a brain bleed or aneurism. Not that I’m a doc, but if you ever have pain that severe immediately go to a hospital.
you’re not wrong, in my case i just suffer from chronic migraines, have my whole life. MRI didnt pick up anything unusual, all general tests came back negative, by all defintions i have a “healthy” brain. i live in canada, and the former conservative government cut a lot from healthcare in our province just before covid, so now it takes forever to see a doctor or a specialist. im still getting more tests done, itll just take a while since im in no “immediate” danger, lol.
NDP are trying to re open some hospitals that were closed and build new ones now that they are in power. so hopefully it goes back to like it was before the cons, or maybe better. either way is fine with me, lol.
Hope your path forward is quick and you get a solution to your ails!
I remember explaining having the same phenomenon of a feeling that that was what happens to peoples conscience, everyone has their own dedicated server for their own life to continue, essentially.
I love hearing other people’s brains sharing the same concept as me, wild when a planet of 7+ billion can do that.
9/11. It was the only time in my life I saw newspapers publish extra editions.
For those too young, extra edition as in “extra, extra, read all about it,” when a news story is so big that the newspapers publish a whole nother edition later in the day.
Talking of the news on September 11th, 2001, I had that day off and was sleeping in that morning when my sleep was interrupted by my (landline) phone ringing, I groggily answered and it was my best friend frantically telling me to put on the news. I fumbled, still half-asleep, for the TV remote while mumbling “what channel?” and she said “any channel!” just as I turned the TV on and, sure enough, whatever channel it was on was showing what was happening.
It’s a funny trope in film and TV to have characters generically tell each other to “turn on the TV/radio/etc.” without specifying which channel or whatever, and the required plot-fueling info just happens to be broadcasting live on whatever station is already tuned in. That’s the only day I remember that actually happening to me in real life.
I remember the first plane hitting and just gawping at the TV. That seemed bad enough. Fucking passenger plane hitting a skyscraper. WTF? Then the second plane hit the other tower and while the guy on the news was still umming and erring, I knew immediately that it was deliberate.
I was in 7th grade at the time, and for whatever reason we didn’t have the news on in the morning before school like usual. I get to school and everyone is freaking out, but I couldn’t get anyone to tell me what was going on, just “omg we’re all going to die.” Then I get to homeroom (8am PST) and our teacher had the news on and it was just “holy shit.”
Yep. I was 18 at the time and I was absolutely dumbfounded. I literally could not believe what I was seeing. Buddy said someone attacked the tower with a bomb or something and we turned on the TV just minutes before the 2nd plane hit. Was fucking unreal.
For me too. Watching that footage where it’s live and the second plane hits and everyone is speechless trying to process. Longest 5 seconds we will ever witness, it’s 5 seconds that went from “oh my an accident how could this happen” to “the world is not going to be the same after this, there’s no going back”
2016 Brexit referendum was quite a turning point.
2016 - woke up and swore at the TV twice that year.
Once for brexit, and again for the US elections.
Never have I had so little faith in humanity.
oh my God it’s been almost 10 years hasn’t it? It feels like it was maybe 3 or 4 to me.
In the USA the news story the next day was something like, “Most common search query in the UK: ‘What is the European Union?’”
Honestly I’m still surprised the UK didn’t undo it and rejoin. But the world is a crazy place all over.
Much lighter than the other comments, but waking up to the Luka Doncic trade was nuts
DUDE! I barely follow basketball and I was like WTF? One of our radio stations had Luca’s Mom as a recurring guest and she’s hilarious. Gonna miss her too.
When Russia invaded Ukraine… It may sound like the first thing that came to my mind but for a few days I thought Russia would attack my country as well. Before, I was feeling very safe in my country.
Of course that’s only the direct impact on me personally. Let’s not forget how Ukrainians feel
I even remember the moment I heard. My husband came to me and our baby, we were playing on the bed, it was a Thursday. He asked if I had heard yet. I asked what, and he told me that Russia attacked Ukraine. It felt so surreal. It felt like being held at gunpoint to r*pe your sibling.
We don’t live in Russia or Ukraine, but we have close friends and relatives in both countries. For about a week I couldn’t concentrate on our daughter. My head was somewhere else which felt awful, but was also the first time I had allowed myself to think about something else and not give her 100% of my attention. We went to demonstrations (well who cares) and kept doom scrolling, which felt more urgent, more necessary to stay in touch with what is happening. We realized how we didn’t see the obvious for years. Which was very painful, since my husband was always interested in politics, also back when he lived in Russia, and got me into being more political myself. We were way too naive about it.
We kept asking our friends and family how they were, what they planned to do. Some fled immediately. Some a bit later. Most stayed. With time, the imminent feeling of threat and impending doom numbs down to low key anxiety. So many years down the drain. So many futures waisted. They stole their futures.
I remember I kept telling my daughter “one day we will tell you about a war between our countries that lasted for 1 day when you were a baby”. 2 days. 10 days. 30 days. I stopped counting at 100.
Now I just hope we will have time to go there. Will my grandparents be able to see their great granddaughter? Will she meet her grandpa in Russia? Will she ever be able to play with her cousins in rural Ukraine? I had planned to spend summers there, to get to know this side of my spouse’s family, and hoped she would get to learn some snippets of Ukrainian there. That’s how he knows the language. And now I just hope that his cousins will not die. The fat one lost about 2/3 of his body weight so far. I’m not surprised being in the military does this to you.
Damn I even remember the pigeons. That stupid pigeons. We had pigeon problems on the balcony and in March 2022 they built a nest and it had eggs in it. But the day prior they bombed an orphanage. Or a children’s hospital? Or a maternity ward? God these assholes bomb everything, don’t they. And I cried and we couldn’t do it, we couldn’t bring ourselves to remove the eggs. We had freaking pigeon babies with incredibly proud pigeon parents who were, btw, super progressive, crazy emancipated pigeons, both were looking for the eggs and babies equally. We gave them names when they hatched and watched them grow older. And then fuck nature, about two weeks before they would have left the nest, a fucking crow ate Hittin first, and poor Putler was so, so scared, and we tried to shelter him and even lifted the rule of no feeding no water, but then the next day, he was dead as well. The parents were devastated. We were devastated. We were powerless. We still are. We couldn’t protect them. We couldn’t make a change even when we tried. We were powerless.
The universe stood still, and then it started going with a different pace and in another direction than before.
Not sure where I am going with this, I think I’m just grateful someone else found this moment… Majorly significant.
💛
You found the words I didn’t find. Sometimes it’s good to just write down all of your thought I guess.
Back in 2014 I thought we are witnessing the beginning of WW3 and even went so far as to head down to the shops and buy enough food for ~ 2 weeks.
Call me cynical, but in 2022 I felt more like “You guys are surprised about this? Really?”
Back when I was living in Germany in 2020, I took a walk around the small city my family used to live. Everything was fine and normal.
But when I walked back home, everything changed for the worst.
Why? Because it was day Covid was declared a pandemic.
I still think about the walk that changed everything!
When my mom called me at 5AM to tell me that my dad had a heart attack and was unresponsive
Every Thursday morning
