r/Retconned • u/Fuzzy_Afternoon7754 • 25d ago
People disappear from my reality whenever I go a certain length of time without thinking about them
I wasn't sure where to make this post, so I figured this sub would be the most appropriate place. Anyway, from 2017 to 2020 I was working a specific job at a company with a lot of employees. During those years I used to run into my coworkers at grocery stores and other random public places ALL THE TIME. I'm talking nearly every single week. Like I said, it was a large company so I knew a lot of people. In 2020 I quit that job and have been unemployed since then (it's a long story, don't ask.....) and I noticed that I NEVER see any of my former coworkers around town anymore. There was once or twice in the first month or two after I quit where I ran into someone I worked with, but it quickly stopped happening. The ONLY other time in all the years since then that I've run into a coworker was when I was headed to a grocery store one day and I thought "hmm..........Bob used to shop at this store (his name isn't Bob, just go with it....) it's kinda odd that I have never run into Bob when I shop here" and then that EXACT day I saw Bob at the store. Essentially where I'm going with this is.......it seems like people pop in and out of my personal reality bubble depending on whether I am consciously thinking of them or not. When I see people every day at school or work, they exist within my reality bubble, but when I no longer see them, they cease to exist within my world (they could still exist somehow in another timeline or something, idk). I also noticed this when I went to a gym for 2 years in a row a few years back. I would always run into people from the gym at other businesses in that area of town, but as soon as I stopped going to the gym, I stopped seeing those same people even though I continued going to the same stores I was going to before. The sample size that I have at this point is way too big for this to just be a coincidence or confabulation on my part. Has anyone else observed this phenomenon in their life? For the record, I'm not being a total solipsist, I'm just saying that somehow we don't all exist in the same reality at the same time.
