I've never shared this publicly before but I've been reading through recent posts and realised I'm not as alone in this as I thought. So I'm going to write it down. Sorry if it's long.
Date: 21st June, 2019
Location: Near Stonehenge (yes, really)
Who: Me and my ex-partner Sophie
We'd driven down for the solstice festival - was going to be a brilliant night, stand at the stones, watch the sunrise alignment. We were camped about a mile away. Woke up around 3am absolutely freezing despite being in a sleeping bag. The campsite was silent in that completely silent way where your ears are ringing.
I remember looking out of the tent and seeing the sky was wrong. Not dark. Not lit. Just... wrong colour. Greyish-blue but not like twilight. And there was a shape in the sky but I can't describe it properly. My brain wouldn't process the shape.
Next clear memory is driving back to Sophie's parents' house. We hadn't packed the tent. We had no memory of how we got to the car or why. My phone was completely destroyed - not broken, completely fried like it had been exposed to something. Sophie wouldn't talk about what she remembered for about three months.
When she finally did, her account of the missing time was different from what I remembered. But we'd both been there. That's the thing that's messed with me ever since.