I stand in an aisle at my local supermarket, a store I have been to hundreds of times before, but something's different. I tell my mom to hurry up because I'm starting to feel uncomfortable standing there.

I sit on the floor of my room, playing Cards Against Humanity with my friends. The music is a little too loud, and my friends are laughing at the cards that were just put down. I'm starting to fidget in my seat. Everything in me is telling them to leave, but I have to settle with laying down on my bed, looking strange as they sit on the floor below me.

I sit in my English class, raising my hand to answer the question my professor has just asked. She calls on me, and it's as if she's far away and the classroom has gone foggy. I'm too busy thinking about this feeling to answer the questions as fully as I had planned.

Sorry professor, I'm dissociating, or at least that's what the internet tells me.

Sorry friends, I'm dissociating, or at least that's what the internet tells me.

Sorry mom, I'm dissociating, or at least that's what the internet tells me. But that's not what I tell you.

It comes over me like a wave, or maybe more like a dark cloud, because many times I can watch it move overhead and linger above me. It's predictable. It's quiet. It's incredibly uncomfortable.

It happens often in settings where there's a lot going on: a room filled with friends, music and the fear of getting written up by the RA that lives on the other side of the wall or a grocery store filled with people pushing carts and having conversations.

It's strange, to say the least. It's also incredibly hard to explain. Everything seems foggy, but not the fog that comes with a muggy summer morning. When I describe it to people, I say it just feels weird. A friend compared it to being in a fishbowl. I'm obviously not a fish, but I would probably agree that's pretty accurate. The internet tells me it's derealization. Maybe that's what it is, maybe that's not.

What makes it so scary is that no one knows when it happens besides me, and there's not really a way to make it go away without removing myself from the situation.

I try rubbing my eyes or performing a mindless task like picking at the skin around my nails (a bad habit I usually do when I'm stressed or bored), but as soon as I pick my head back up, the realization hits that nothing has changed. It's like I'm trapped in my own personal cell.

As quickly as these moments come, once I leave the supermarket, classroom or whatever it may be, the cloud retreats back to the horizon, waiting for its cue to move back in.

It can be pretty easy to hide, the only factor that gives it away is that I just look generally uncomfortable. It's not every day that this happens, and it's not in all social settings. I love going to parties with friends or going out to dinner in bustling restaurants. This experience isn't just 'farfetched' or 'weird,' It's just that sometimes the situations that are minutely stressful to some are augmented and made uncomfortable for others.