u/wandererof_

I have this curse of observing too much. Well, calling it a curse is too much but sometimes I genuinely feel like it's a curse. But I've come to realise that we all have different emotional abilities and we all should be grateful for it.

But it wasn't like this until recently. Since I was a kid, I'd read people's faces, the way their eyebrows scrunched or their lips curved or the way they moved their hands and whispered, I could see it. Decipher it and it affected me. Like I'd know if a person didn't like me, they were angry, disappointed or jealous. It would make me take actions which were too much for a kid, and I'd end up crying due to most of it. Everyone would get pissed that I'm too sensitive, I cry too much and too easily. This tag stays with me till this date lol.

I started to expect too much as well. I thought the way I can read emotions, others can as well. I started to expect people to know how I'm feeling through my face or understand things I didn't say, but that wasn't the case. The world was all about words. Until you speak out, people won't understand what you mean. And it makes sense but as a kid and teenager it didn't.

I never spoke about my feelings. Expecting people to know without words. All my childhood, and then I simply forgot how to use words. As I grew up, I understood that I should speak out but I lost words. People would misunderstand my words, they'd decipher it completely wrong and I'd cry at it too. And the feeling of being misunderstood and being helpless at what are the right words to express, was so painful that I shut down.

I stopped expressing. I started to stop expecting and sacrificing my emotions deeply. There would be sudden outbursts of emotions at times and my family would suffer, because they had no idea what was going on.

It wasn't just with family, my friends too. I started to cut off from friends, expect too much, I'd put all of my expectations which should have been distributed among my family and friends equally to just 2-3 people. They got overwhelmed, anyone would. But one of them still stayed, I cherished them dearly so I never cut them off completely and they understood something.

But this observational nature was still there. I would know when they didn't want to talk or when they wanted to talk to other friends and it hurt. But I didn't have a way to escape, until I started writing. I started to put a voice into poems and it helped a lot. And somehow I started changing this observational nature into genuine empathy for others. Empathy is an one way emotion, so the expectations of it being reciprocated vanished. And I started looking at life a bit differently.

I still do suffer from observing too much but now it's like a lens through which I can read people better. I know who is a good person and who isn't just from one conversation, and like it's not that I judge them but I just observe the way they speak about certain things, the way they react or the things they find valuable and the things they find funny. And according to that, I'd distance myself from people who'd hurt me in future. I won't say I'm always right about it but till now, I have always been right about it.

And this was my journey about it, yes I'm over sensitive, I'd cry too easily, I feel too much, I observe and read too much, but that's okay. I can look at nature differently, write about it, understand people better and love life more, so it's fine.

I'd like to hear from more people about it. What was your journey with it?

There are so many stories alive all around the globe. People, their lives, their experiences share so much about what it means to be alive.

I have always wondered how life meets different people differently and how this difference changes a person's perspective.

It's so much to learn from, to reflect on and to love on. Because it's so beautiful.

I am here trying to explore what's the true essence of a life for other people, would love to hear and learn from the experiences you share!

I have been planning to sell digital products like predicted papers or specifically designed notion templates for a very specific niche of students but I'm kind of confused on how to make people buy it individually. Like one person may buy it and share it with rest, then it will be a very huge loss for me.

I'm building an instagram platform and a telegram community for the audience and stuff but it's my first time trying to sell a digital product and manage it.

Any kind of tips will be appreciated! Looking forward to learning more!

I've been trying to seriously start linkedin for a year now. I'm 20 and still in college. But damn linkedin seems such a scary place man!

Like all these people posting such seriously, networking, branding and having so many connections, skills, portfolio and what not!

Being a nobody, it feels so intimidating to start networking like how do I get to know people and build a presence while I'm learning?

How do I network and make genuine connections?

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There was this friend of mine in school, we were best friends from the first standard till sixth standard and then we kind of drifted apart and were just classmates- Friend basis, not too close just normal.

And I passed out school and during that time I was going through stuff which made me cut off from every person from school, I didn't want to associate with anyone and in that hype I deleted everybody's contact and everything except one of my close friend, so I lost touch with her. But recently, it's been a year or so, I always see her in my dreams, like every other day, and I always kind of miss her for no reason. I don't know why..

I tried to search for her on Instagram but I Can't find it and as I lost touch with all of the people, I can't really contact them and say "Hey!". Like they wouldn't even remember me at this point.

But I genuinely wonder why? Why did I randomly start seeing her in dreams and miss her at times? We weren't even close? And I always seem to regret it sometimes as if I shouldn't have lost touch with her. Eh, why do you guys think this happens?

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So this has been happening to me for a while and I genuinely don't know if this is a "me" thing or if others experience this too. Last night I had what I can only describe as watching an entire movie in my sleep, complete with plot, characters, world-building, and it cut off RIGHT before the climax. I woke up genuinely frustrated like I just got cliffhangered by my own brain.

The dream started in this carnival-like park with only one ride , a Ferris wheel. Long line of kids waiting. But the Ferris wheel wasn't normal, it emitted some kind of false light that made the kids addicted, almost hypnotized. They'd ride it and just keep coming back for more.

Right next to it was a laboratory secretly observing all of this. Their whole purpose was to find ONE child who was resistant to the light. Because every single kid who rode it wanted to go back immediately.

They spot a dizzy little boy who stumbles out and doesn't line up again. They bring him in, offer him chocolates and toys if he cooperates with a checkup. He goes "no thanks, I just want to ride the Ferris wheel again." Lab people are disappointed, wrong kid.

But then, there's this little girl who was just standing and watching the whole time. The lab assistant had noticed her but assumed she was just waiting her turn. Until they bring the boy out and this girl is standing right there and says "I know it." The assistant asks what she means, and the girl says she saw that light and she doesn't want to see it again. Without anyone ever saying a word about it to her.

They bring her in. Lay her down. The doctor examines her and finds out she's pregnant. This tiny little girl. Everyone in the lab is in shock. The lab assistant is panicking, begging the doctor to help her. The doctor says he's a pathologist, not an obstetrician, this is way beyond him. He ends up giving her a pill that essentially suppresses the pregnancy until her body is old enough to safely carry it.

While she's in the lab she befriends another girl named Isha. I don't fully know how Isha ended up there but they become close.

Then one day, zombie outbreak. They're suddenly teenagers, 17-18, and they have to run.

These zombies are terrifying. Not slow shambling ones. Fast, powerful, athletic, like they have the stamina and strength of lions. They somehow get into a car and the MC is driving. Then she notices something strange, one zombie matched the car's speed, looked directly at her, smiled, and backed off. Didn't attack. Just... left.

She tells Isha "I think they won't hurt me. I think I'm the safe spot." Isha is against it obviously but MC stops the car and jumps out anyway. And she's right. The zombies don't touch her.

So she covers Isha, gets this burst of energy in her legs, starts taking giant leaps, running on top of cars, jumps the barricade and they make it to the human side of the road. But the second they're over, the zombies start slamming the barricades with terrifying force. They run again, no destination, until they end up in this small, quiet, maze-like slum far from everything.

Two little boys see them and call for their mother, Amma. She takes them in. Tiny house, two boys, husband passed away. He had built this ingenious little bathroom with running water that you could adjust for warm or cold, and Amma had been renting it out to slum folks for a small fee to survive. The slum people are genuinely good and just come for showers.

MC and Isha stay there healing, talking to Amma, who had no news or electronics but mentioned hearing distant ground shaking and screams occasionally without knowing what it was. Isha says they need an escape plan before the outbreak reaches them.

Isha starts sneaking out with the kids exploring the slum's narrow routes. Then one day there's a violent bang on the door. Amma thinks it's a bathroom customer. MC and Isha freeze, it's the same kind of banging they heard on the barricades. They sneak out through a route Isha had already planned and end up at a school that seems to have some personal history with Isha.

The school is a shelter now. Strong tall gates that block inside views. Many people there, high-status ones who immediately look down on MC and the others. Inside, there's a room with a man lying paralysed, Isha's father. Isha isn't happy to see him.

Then Isha looks out the window and sees zombies climbing on each other to get over the gate. She screams. The high-status people rush the elevator, no room for MC and the others. Isha watches them go and says "let them. The elevator is the first place they'll reach." She leads everyone to the back staircase.

The stairs are muddy, suspicious. But they go. Then three kids from the slum come up the same stairs, carrying their pet birds and rabbits, having heard the school was safe. Happy reunion, until screams rise from below. "Run up, run up!"

One little kid gets caught. MC rushes everyone through a door. Two more doors inside, one ahead, one to the right. MC says she'll go first since she's resistant, and if it's safe she'll call them. She enters. Safe. They all come in and find an old man calmly mopping the floor.

He tells them the zombies won't enter because of the colour of the door. They hate it.

Isha immediately panics and turns on MC, "what if you were never resistant? What if it was just the colour of your dress that day?" She lashes out at the old man too, who says nobody would've believed him and he'd only figured it out recently anyway.

Then the old man tells them about a bridge. No zombies come near it. But it's more dangerous than any zombie because it forces you to accept death, shows you things that make you want to give up. But if you cross it, you get every answer you've been looking for.

MC and Isha decide to go alone, leaving Amma, her boys, and the slum kids behind in safety. Bitter goodbye.

As they walk the route toward the bridge, they discover a whole little town, zombie-free, self-functioning, like a hidden settlement. They check into a hotel and the owner turns out to be Isha's uncle. He gives them a room but openly despises MC. They also run into two old friends, let's call them Boy A and Boy B.

Then the uncle gets a mysterious tip that zombies are coming. He slips sleeping pills into Isha's tea, locks MC in her room, and runs off with Isha. Boy A sees him leaving and escapes. Boy B escapes too. MC is locked in, no idea what's happening. All four friends are separated.

We cut to Boy A playing cards with a group. One of the men is connected to the same organisation that gave the uncle the tip. He laughs and says something like "the problematic one is locked up, we don't need to worry anymore", describing MC without naming her. Boy A freezes. He saw the uncle take Isha but never saw MC with them and just assumed she was fine. He bolts up and starts running screaming "no no I have to save her."

On the road he runs into Boy B being chased by a horde of zombies. Now they're both running for their lives.

MC somehow escapes the room. Isha wakes up, confronts her uncle, and learns something crucial.

All four of them reach the bridge. The zombies stop. But then cars and vehicles start rolling *backward* toward them, and behind them is the zombie side. Trapped. Isha says "it's an illusion, keep walking."

And that's where I woke up.

I need to know what was on that bridge. I need to know what Isha found out from her uncle and if she is connected to this whole conspiracy. I need to know what the delayed pregnancy meant. My brain built an ENTIRE world and said "okay bye."