One night when we are eating in front of our dining table, everything seems normal, everyone asked about how each other’s day is. Talking enthusiastically with each other and really engaging to know everyone better. Things were going like it usually does every night.
But as I started to listen to what they were saying, I felt a strange feeling where for a moment, I don’t have an Idea whose person I am talking to.
It is not because I literally don’t know the person, but It’s because It is like I don’t know them personally that I can’t fit in and blend with them anymore. I felt like a stranger in my own skin in that moment.
Feeling like a stranger or being a stranger in general is a very tough pill to swallow. It makes you uncomfortable and moving seems to be harder everytime because you don’t know the people around you and what they will think of you, or atleast you feel like you don’t know them.
It can happen anytime you faces a situation where it is unusual to you. Like when your friends is talking about something or some stuff and you have no clue about it, or you can’t relate to what they were talking about, you may feel like a stranger to them eventhough you know them well.
In Psychology, there’s this thing called “Depersonalization” where a person suddenly feels detached and distant from others and themselves. Many describe the feeling of watching themselves, as if from above. Once-familiar object seem strange.
Depersonalization is considered to be the third most common mental disorder, only behind depression and anxiety. Although this is not always the case where you feel like a stranger even to your ownself, it is important know that this disorder exists so that we can ask for a professional help while it is still early.
It is hard to experience a situation where you are a stranger to it or when you are a stranger even to yourself. It can get your anxiety level rising up and you may begin to think that you are becoming a psychotic and would soon be in a psychiatric ward.
There are a lot of factors that causes this nightmare feeling but like what the writer Antoine Roquentin said in his novel “Nausea”, existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance. It must invade you suddenly, master you heavily or else, there will be nothing at all.
Whatever it was, there’s nothing stranger than feeling like a stranger next to someone or even to yourself, only to suddenly find yourself in some kind of house or temple that surprises you and also reunites you with your ownself and the world.
