To be clear I'm not actually diagnosed with Schizophrenia and I'm not necessarily trying to self-diagnose either because I don't wanna be cringey, but lately I've been noticing some things that make me worry I might be developing it or be somewhere on the spectrum judging by my research and what I've noticed. It might be nothing, but It could also not be and I honestly don't know. Lemme just quickly go over what I'm talking about:

I used to work at a local Dollar Tree as a stocker, and when they first hired me they had me work early mornings starting at 5 AM. I don't have a car or a licence so that meant waking up around 3 AM and walking the 2.5 miles to work in the cold and dark mornings. For the first few weeks everything seemed normal, but maybe after a month or two of working there some weird things started happening. I began to notice vague shadowy figures out of the corner of my eye that would dart across the ends aisles or just be there for a second while I was working. I brushed it off the first few times, but it just kept happening several times every shift. One time one of them randomly flew over my left shoulder, which scared me enough to make me jump. Before that point I was able to just kinda ignore it thinking I was just tweaking a bit, but that time pretty much confirmed that I was actually seeing things. I mean it actually visibly affected me and made me move, which was just totally bizarre.

During this time I mostly just saw the figures, but one time on the way to work I clearly heard the crosswalk "wait" sound. I was just walking down a dark neighborhood street and there it was. Nobody really believed me or thought anything of it when I told them, but I know I heard it. I wasn't anywhere near a crosswalk and it echoed around me like the crosswalk voice man was there with me in spirit telling me to wait. I actually heard it a few times because it echoed around me a bit. I kinda rambled but I swear I heard it and I'm not making any of this up. Eventually though my boss moved my shift forward three hours to start at 8 AM and the symptoms went away, which leads me to believe that this was at least in part caused by sleep deprivation. I don't think that's the whole story though because it went on for a good while and I usually got at least 5-6 hours a night, which definitely isn't 8-9 but I think it should've been enough for 18 yo me to function okay.

I have other stories besides this one that happened before and after, but I feel like it's the most telling out of all of them. To gloss over some others, I've:

- Experienced what I think were derealization episodes at work on two separate occasions

- Heard the word "hey" randomly while walking alone at night when I knew for certain there was nobody around

- Been startled while trying to fall asleep by a blurry vision of a hand holding some black object and a sound similar to a "boo", which just happened recently

There's other things but visually and auditorily at least that's my experience. This post is already very long. Is this a cause for concern? Should I see someone? I would appreciate any thoughts.