badstar

I've been debating over whether I want to actually discuss this on LJ or not for a while now, largely because I really had no reason to just up and say "Hey guys guess what!" as just another wacky thing in my life lately, but as I sit here and think about it and how much it's actually contributed to a lot of the more interesting ideas I've had lately, I think it stands to be mentioned, at least as a lead-in to some of the things I want to try to write out in the not too distant future. Unfortunately some of those ideas are just so...well, ridiculously difficult to put into words that *I* find understandable, let alone communicative to others. but I will try.

Anyway...first off, I've mentioned this one once or twice on LJ before, usually just a random musing of why the hell do I feel like this...but anyway...so occasionally I get these inexplicable, completely irrational and unfounded feelings of being completely alone and abandoned in the world, like no one cares about me and no one ever will. Sometimes it lasts just a few minutes and goes away, sometimes goes on for hours, and then I'll go to sleep for the night or take a nap or something and wake up and feel just fine again. (Please I know the knee-jerk reaction, at least some of you that I've known for a while are thinking "Oh, but I'm here, I'm your friend, I care about you." and may even be reaching for the comment link as you read this. Please understand that I *know* this, and my feeling this way has nothing to do with you or anything you may or may not have done and is not a reflection of how good a friend you are.

I don't generally talk about it much for two reasons: 1. In the past when I've tried to talk about it in medias res, its only ever tended to make me feel worse. 2. I've been experiencing it for so long that I'm so used to it that I can get through it without anyone ever realizing that there's something wrong and no matter how bad I feel, I always know rationally that it's going to pass. (If this is now making you wonder if this was what was the problem if you've ever caught me in one of my rare bad moods, all I can say is that it's possible but not likely. When I'm in a bad mood, it's generally the result of something external.)

Over time, a few people have noted that this is wholly unsurprising given my past. it's interesting to note, however, that I remember this happening when I was three or four...which was three to four years before things went to hell. I have a pretty damned good memory of my life, even that far back and I can think of nothing that should have ever made me feel that way.

The second thing...I can think of precisely two people I've talked to at all about this, possibly a third. This I have first memory of mentioning it to my grandmother at some point in I think third grade, but it had been happening for a while before that- and what I had said at the time was that I frequently feel like my life isn't actually happening to me, but that I'm reading it as a story in a book. Her response was to ask me if my mom was treating me so horribly that I wished it was a story...now this WAS after the point where my grandparents had convinced me that my mother didn't love me, and as a result I wanted to have nothing to do with her though due to court orders and all that stuff, I had no choice...but even looking at that, I knew that my mother wasn't as horrible as my grandmother was implying so I just dropped it and never mentioned it again until some years later when I said something similar to my mom, who just looked at me and said "You're weird." by this point, I was long used to it and it wasn't having an adverse effect on my life so I just let it go.

Anyway...this is one of those things that have been a continuous occurrence in my life. I'm not always sure that I'm actually the one living my life, I sometimes feel like I'm inside someone else's head as they're going about their life. There's no definite boundary between when this feeling stops and starts- sometimes I wake up feeling like that. Other times I just suddenly realize that I feel like that and have to wonder if it just started and that's why I realized it, or if it's been going on for a few minutes or hours or what.

Its a bizarre feeling. it comes with a certain feeling of being insular as well...I guess the feeling that I'm actually inside someone else's head, therefore no one realizes that I'm there creates a sort of transparent buffer between me and whatever's around me.

Sometimes I can consciously snap this feeling off. A lot of the time I can't. Again, I always know rationally that yes, it's me, no there's no one else there, yes, this is my life. but occasionally I have to ask myself those little questions- how do I know? I just do. Yeah but how do I know? Prove it. I can't prove it. Just have to wait til the feeling goes away. It always does. Sometimes takes a few hours, less frequently up to a few days, but it goes away.

I found out a few months ago that there's a word for all this- it's called depersonalization. Apparently it's a fairly common thing that most adults experience at some point in their life, usually as a short-term reaction to some sort of trauma or extreme stress...not so much an ongoing thing that starts in childhood and seems to occur without some sort of provocation. What I've been told is that it falls into the much milder end of the same spectrum as dissociative identity disorder.

Also, at times, I'll be dreaming and either be unsure if I've had the same dream before or if I'm replaying something that really happened in a dream...or vice versa while awake...I'll be unsure if something's happened before, or if what's going on is similar to a dream that I had.

And the last thing...I know that I've mentioned this to a few folks at times, usually in conversations that meander into "where is my life going..." territory...and that would be the feeling that I'm something huge is about to happen (not a feeling of doom sort of thing, just something extremely huge and significant of some sort) or that I'm at a constant crossroad, or just about to jump off of some proverbial cliff into the great unknown. Yeah, apparently there's a word for this, I just happened upon it last night by accidents, but presque vu...it's related to deja vu. (Perfectly illustrated in this quote from Catch 22: And there were other moments when he almost saw absolute truth in brilliant flashes of clarity that almost came to him.)

In case it's on anyone's mind to suggest in response to reading this...I have just started seeing a therapist, it's something I went back and forth on for months, after being involved in a discussion back in June that hit just a little too close to some of the things that have gone on in my mind...as a direct result of said conversation, I talked back and forth with this individual on and off for several months before I finally went ahead and made an appointment.

y ya esta.

How has all this contributed to recent ideas I've had? Well...I'm stiil working on verbalizing that coherently. But I'll post more about that when I make some sense...