A few weeks ago, I was trying to explain to a friend how I’d been feeling for the past few years, day in and day out. The conversation went like
this:
“I feel like I’m not alive, like I’m watching life through someone else’ set of eyes, life a first person computer game. I consciencessly
know that I am alive, yet at the same time I don’t feel like I’m really breathing or in control of what I do from day to day. I am not really interacting with
people but with machines. At work and school, and almost every where else, I speak to people everyday, and while doing so I feel like I can see the gears inside their chest, just under the rib cage. I imagine that these human machines are really not very fun to talk to, as everything sounds the same. Words sound as if they are pronounced through 2 tones of variance. I really hate the tone and sound of people that irritate me, especially guys that think they can “Rap” lyrics from a Dr. Dre song and sound “Kewl”. I want to kill them, though realistically I know I’d never have the balls to do so. But then I imagine what would happen to that irritating ignorant ass if a Mack Truck rolled over them.”
After I had stopped talking for around 30 Seconds, my friend suggested maybe it was my parent’s divorce that prompted me to question reality.
I said I didn’t know, and that was that. That night I went to sleep thinking: “I really don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. I must be the only
person on earth that had these feelings of “Unreality”. I felt like crying, and or crawling into a hole. Of course I never dry, but lately I feel like I’m
going to, for really no reason.
And then, yesterday (Thursday) the subject came up in my Psychology class of the DSM IV (Diagnosis Symptom Manual, Forth Edition , or
something like that) which contained certain symptoms of specific psychiatric conditions. And one word stood out to me – Depersonalization! Finally, a word that made sense of what I’d been feeling since around 12. And tonight, Friday, April 26th 2002, I’m here, on this website, typing these words. An hour ago I felt like giving up on life and becoming a hermit, not the lovable TV hermits who live in nice cardboard boxes, but the kind who piss on your windshield and try to stab people like you and me, just because they feel like it. That’s what I felt like not 40 minutes ago.
Another thing that is very constant with me is seeing movies happen around me. I’ll be walking through a park on the green grass, and I’ll imagine Viet Cong soldiers emerging out of buried bunkers all around me, just waiting to ambush the Army Ranger platoon that passed just minutes ago. Bayonets drawn, the Viet Cong emerge from their underground cave and set a heavy machine gun on a tripod in the grass and quickly open fire, just cutting the US troops to shreds. And then a child screams. An air plane crashes into the ground with a terrific earthquake of a crash. A tank rolls over the fence, a rather modern M1A2 Abrams Main battle tank. Another scream, as more Victor Charlie emerge from underground, as if resurrected from the dead instantly, and finish off any survivors of the American platoon. Screams of horror, or death, maybe from a child, or dying G.I. When people are dying and they are frightened out of their minds, I don’t think it matters how old or young they are, their screams all sound the same.
And I just walk right by, without really paying any attention. I can see the violence so very vividly, and it seems so much more real than
life, I start to wonder if that burger I ate an hour ago was really that filling. And then a cycle of usual thoughts come to mind. How much of a failure I am and what the hell kinds of business do I have breathing and all this crap.
Life feels like a dream that I’m still trying to wakeup from. But typing all this makes me feel 30% better. Seeing this website on the
Disassociative Disorder makes me feel 73% better. Knowing that I’m not alone pretty much ensures that there’s hope for me and my kind.