The Moment I Knew Reality Wasn't Real

For years, I had this unsettling feeling that something about life wasn’t quite right. Not in a dramatic, "I’m living in a dream" kind of way—just small things. Conversations that felt too rehearsed. Coincidences that were too perfect. A creeping sense that events weren’t unfolding naturally, but following some kind of script.

The moment everything clicked for me happened on an ordinary day. I was at a café, sipping tea, scrolling mindlessly on my phone. Then I noticed something strange. The man at the table next to me was typing an email on his laptop. Nothing unusual—except, as I absentmindedly glanced at his screen, I realized he was typing the exact words I was thinking.

Not similar words. Not a rough paraphrase. Exact. Word for word.

I froze, my heart pounding. I looked at him, then back at his screen. My mind raced for an explanation—maybe I had seen something earlier and subconsciously predicted it? But no. This wasn’t a prediction. It was real-time. As I kept watching, his fingers moved across the keyboard, mirroring the thoughts forming in my own head.

I wanted to test it. I deliberately thought of a random sentence: "The sky is not really blue, it's just scattered light."

He hesitated for half a second, then started typing. "The sky is not really blue, it's just scattered light."

I nearly knocked over my tea.

I stood up abruptly, too shaken to stay there. The man didn’t seem to notice me at all—just kept typing, lost in his work. I walked out of the café, my mind racing. What had I just witnessed? A coincidence? A hallucination? Or was it something deeper?

That’s when I started noticing other things.

Streetlights that flickered at the exact moment I looked at them. Conversations that restarted like a broken record if I wasn’t paying attention. Strangers who gave blank stares when I asked unexpected questions—like they hadn’t been programmed with a response.

The world wasn’t just predictable. It was too predictable.

I don’t tell many people about this. They’d just call me paranoid, or say my brain was playing tricks on me. But I know what I saw. I know what I felt.

And ever since that day, I can’t shake the feeling that none of this is real.