Blue pill or red pill? That is the question. Everyday feels like a computer game gone awry, or like we're all stars in our versions of the Matrix films. Life too often feels unreal and like a virus is corrupting the download. We all have to be our own personal Neo. Déjà Vu or Matrix, the universe can be a tricky mistress.
Redditor u/mailseuuu wanted to discuss the times when life seemed a bit... off... by asking... Was there a moment wherein you thought it was a "glitch in the matrix"? What are your stories?I've lost track of the amount of times I lost an item only to discover it in a place I KNOW I scoured earlier. Or who hasn't had a television restart once you've turned it off? How about hearing distant voices in the night? Just me? Let's see...
Vanished
Magic Vanish GIF by VPROGiphyOne time when I was like 8, I was rolling a toy plane (I distinctly remember it was an F117 stealth fighter) across my desk.
It rolled off my desk and just disappeared. I didn't lose it. It just disappeared. There was nowhere for it to go and I never found it again.
The Shadow
I have a very visually distinctive necklace. Well one day. After I took it off just it disappeared . I looked and looked for it finally giving up and wrote my necklace off as lost forever.
A few weeks later I was dusting the ceiling fan when I noticed a shadow in the light globe. So I undone the globe from off the fan. Thinking the shadow was maybe a bug. No bug. The shadow was my necklace.
DOOM
I preordered the special edition of Doom 3 and it came with a little pewter figurine of one of the monsters in the game. I accidentally knocked it off my desk and never heard it hit the ground, never saw it again. My room was carpeted so like, there's a chance I might not have heard the sound it made, but I looked freaking everywhere for it and could never find it. I lived in that room for four years after that, constantly rearranging and moving around, never saw it. And there was nothing under the desk it could've fallen into either. So weird.
On Loop
Oh My God Omg GIF by BarryGiphyEjected the CD and the music kept going. Four of us in the car were like "we are dead, this is limbo, what is going on".
They... just... disappear...
I have a desk that glitches all the time. Whenever I eat on it and I spill a piece of my food, the piece just freaking disappears. It happened to me 3 times this week already.
I call it the "quantum table".
The spilled pieces are quite large (meat, or vegetables). They don't fall to the ground (I've checked hundreds of times). They're not beneath it either (it's a simple table, it has nothing underneath like drawers). They... just... disappear. That amount of spilled food should pile up somewhere! But they are just gone. Forever.
Damn Cats
When I wear necklaces I have a tendencies to spin the pendant when I'm stressed. I remember one day I was rapidly spinning a necklace on my way to one of my classes and the pendant flew off. I didn't bother to look for it. I had to get to class and luckily it was a relatively cheap piece of jewelry.
A few months later I move about 1.5 hours away to a new town. About a year into being there, I come home and what do I see sitting on my bed? My pendant. My then gf said she found one of the cats playing with it by the stove and figured it had been knocked under there and they dug it out. But... how?
See now I knew I wasn't alone. We all have moments that seem like their part of either a ghostly experience or we're all characters in a real life "Truman Show." And I'm not sure that's how I want to become famous.
Huntsville Tales
We visited the spaceflight center in Huntsville a few years ago and I got an A-12 (looks like the SR-71) coffee cup. I started drinking coffee in it every day and for more than a year, everything was normal. I wake up, go pour coffee, drink it downstairs, wash it, then go back to work in my office upstairs.
Sometimes, I get a second cup of coffee and bring it up to my office and then bring it down when I'm done to wash and reset for the next day.
On May 1 of last year, I forgot to bring it back downstairs from my office. Next morning, I wake up and go downstairs to have a cup of coffee like usual in my A-12 cup I got from the Space & Rocketry Center in Huntsville, AL. When I'm done, I wash it and put it away and go upstairs to start work...
...and there's the cup from the day before with an inch of cold coffee in it.
I bring it downstairs, trying to figure out what's going on and the one I just used is still sitting in the drying rack.
I now have two A-12 coffee cups. In the months since, they've both picked up a little bit of their own character, but at the time I brought the original and its doppelcupper together, they had the same scuff marks and were in every way I could tell identical.
I don't have an explanation for how this happened. I don't know how this cup somehow duplicated or why or how to do it again, but what I DO have... is two A-12 cups even though I only bought one.
The Drop
bunny rubbing GIFGiphyMy brother got a lucky rabbits foot keychain. I was tossing it in the air and catching it. One time it went up, but didn't come down. 30 years later I was working in the ceiling and found it on the heat duct that was covered by a drop ceiling.
Which One are You?
There was a girl at a place I worked that I flirted with for a couple months. It was weird because she sometimes seemed a LOT more interested than others, like aggressively.
One day I finally got the nerve up to ask her out and she said yes.
So that weekend, I show up at her house to picker her up, and when the front door opens, there are two of them - twins!
Turns out they took turns working the job, and the one I asked out - not aggressive - was just as nervous as I was, so her sister was acting like a wing...girl (?) to encourage things to happen.
We all got a good laugh out of it, and I dated her for about a year. At work it was always funny to try and figure out who was actually working after that, although I did get better after we'd been dating for a bit.
Hannah
Season 15 Kiss GIF by The BacheloretteGiphyI woke up in the morning and saw a trailer for a movie named Hannah. I was then scrolling through my Google calendar and saw it was my friend Hannah's birthday.
Later on in the night I had some friends come over and we were about to go to a bar, I ordered doordash and the delivery girl's name was Hannah. I went out that night and got a girl named Hannah's number who I dated for about 6 months. Nothing else came up the relationship but that was an extremely bizarre coincidence and follow-up circumstance. It made me really consider the matrix theory.
All the Coins
I had a quantum carpet in my room as a kid. I remember spilling a jar of change on my carpet a mix of all stuff pennies, dimes, quarters etc.
I found like... A handful of the coins and that's it.
Wasn't a shag carpet that could hide the coins, not like 50+ coins all rolled away out of sight or anything.. But they were just gone.
Tossed
I tossed my first cheapo mp3 player at my desk and it never landed. I figured I overshot somehow and it was in my closet. Nope. Not in any of my shoes, not somehow caught in a fold or pocket. Wasn't under the desk or anywhere else. It simply ceased to exist. Never did find it.
Roku Away
Mobile App Streaming GIF by RokuGiphyMy roku remote. i was asleep, it was like 7:00 am and i wake up, I don't see the remote. i assume it fell off the side of my bed near the wall, I check under, nope. not there. nothing. It was just gone. Had a hard time convincing my mom.
Just Roll
I once found a 20 sided dice (that I had lost a few years prior in America) in the middle of a desert in Israel.
It was the exact same dice as well. I remember because it was the same coloring and had the same scratched off number as well.
I'm going to get my D&D group together to head off to Israel, I guess. We've collectively lost a bunch of dice.
Go Fish
Years ago I lost a can of tuna. I took it out of the pantry to make a sandwich, but then decided to just have cereal, and put it back. Before I got the cereal I changed my mind again and took the can back out of the pantry and set it down. I had been craving tuna on toast with extra tomato and had bought it the evening before specifically to make that.
I get the can opener and the can was gone. I looked all over the kitchen and never found it. I even checked the pantry and sure enough I was missing a can. I had bought a certain number like 4 for a dollar or something. This was in the 90's.
"abracadabra"
I was maybe around 5 years old. Pretending to be a magician. I put a pen in this big activity book and waved my hands over it and said "abracadabra" to make the pen disappear. The pen literally disappeared. The bulge you would see of a pen being in a book was gone. Looked through the entire book. Look around the floor. Couldn't find it. Never found it. We moved out of that house when I was 11 and never found the pen.
Trash Miracle
miracle GIFGiphyI dropped a piece of A4 paper at work and it landed stood up on the short edge. It wasn't bent or folded, literally a fresh sheet of paper just standing all by itself.
Whats more, it happened twice whilst I was at that work place. Never seen it happen again.
Fast Pass
I walked by my colleague who was having a conversation. The convo definitely continued after I passed. I walked another 150 meters, went up a staircase, and walked by a room. My colleague was in that room, talking to another person. I was shook. Later in the day I verified that I had indeed passed her.
I asked how she could have gotten past me and she just said "I'm a fast walker." You ain't THAT fast. She would have had to run up a different staircase, outpace me in the same hall but one floor above. I just didn't see how it happened.
I Awoke...
My bedroom at the time lead into the living room that you could see into the kitchen. We also had a bathroom that was directly off our room, in the corner. You couldn't get to it unless you were in our room.
I woke up one afternoon. I remember sitting up, checking my phone and lighting a cigarette.
I got out of bed, opened the bedroom door, walked into the living room to turn the thermostat up. I saw my ex in the kitchen fiddling around with the coffee pot. Then he started walking towards the back of the house, into the other bedroom. I said "Hey! You're up early." He looked at me, and kept on walking. I went back into our room and sat on the bed.
After a few minutes I called his name, and he opened the bathroom door and said "yeah?"
Apparently he was in the bathroom the whole time. I was very confused and super freaked out because I could have sworn I saw him in the kitchen. There's no way it was him if he was in the bathroom. It shook me up pretty bad.
Dream Repeat
Occasionally I will fall asleep and dream at night and recognize the dream from when I was a very little kid (I'm 31) and basically pick up from where I left off. This has happened with 5 separate dreams now.
As in I'll dream I'm in a particular place doing a particular thing and remember inside the dream that I left off here when I was 6 and this is what happened before I reached this point.
Sometimes the Universe is sending messages we need to hear. And other times it's just playing tricks on us. Start taking notes of strange happenings. the coincidences add up.
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Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.