What ever is happening to me, it can’t be real. Everyday now feels like a waking nightmare. Each day that passes, it gets worse.
I’m a nobody. I’ve always told myself and others that. For me, it was an excuse, an easy way out of things. If I tell myself and others that I am someone insignificant, there would be low to no expectations of me. Nobody will expect anything, and nobody should expect anything from an insignificant, unassuming nobody like me. Now I wish I hadn’t been doing it so much.
It happened very slowly, literally bit by bit. I came home to my hometown from university for my semester break. As I approached my family home’s picket fence, I was expecting warm barks of welcome, but no. Our family dog, THE family dog that I took care of for eighteen years of my life, was viciously barking and snapping at me. I tried to reach for the gate, but he came snarling and attempted to bite me. This was very unusual for a dog like him. I really couldn’t enter the house until my father calmed him down, chained him up, and let me into the house. At this time, I thought it was just that the family dog was old and as it was the evening times when I came home, I figured he did not recognize me.
Things got worse when I got back to the university. Admittedly, I’m not the most famous or recognized person at the uni, but I couldn’t help but notice how weirdly people are staring at me. Some looked confused, other looked genuinely terrified. I tried approaching the student council president, who happens to be in my circle. As I greeted him, a sense of unfamiliarity radiated through his eyes. And even though I did have a conversation with him, it turned out particularly strange. He kept making me repeat my name as if trying to remember it. And he seemed so uncomfortable while talking to me.
As the days pass by, it became more ominous and uncomfortably uncanny. People I knew at the university would look at me with confusion as I try to approach them. Even some of my professors, some of whom were my professors from my freshman year until now, would seem utterly confused when they see me in their class. At first, I was in denial. Looking for even the slightest of a logical excuse. I thought maybe people were pulling a prank on me. But this has got to be the most elaborate and grand prank I’ve ever experienced. How can every student in the university be part of this? And why me? As far as I am concerned, I’m not the one to be taking this kind of treatment from everyone.
I came home yesterday, to the house that I’ve been coming home to, for the last twenty-two years of my life. And instead of warm hugs and beaming smiles from both my father and my mother, I am met with confused eyes and smug frowns. The warmth of a home now replaced with uneasiness and confusion. I unknowingly tried to enter the home, only to be driven away by my father.
I’m as confused as everybody. Now, it feels like I’m a stranger not only to actual strangers, but to the friends and family that I have known all my life. I tried confiding to my closest friends only to be avoided by them and met with the usual “I don’t know you”. I tried coming back to my home multiple times over, and again and again I was chased away, even had the cops called on me.
It’s only getting worse. Now everyone looks at me with baffled expressions and suspicious eyes, almost as if I didn’t even seem human to them. And….
….and…..
I…. can’t seem to remember…..
m-my…own….name?
What the fuck is happening.
When I try to say my name, I’m met with a mental block, like my brain can’t seem to look for the right name to say, even if I try my hardest to remember.
Please, to whoever is reading this, please tell me to remember.