Hi… I’m Gabby. I am 16 and I have DP… On June 1st, 2001 I was hit by a car. My whole entire elementary school saw the whole thing from beyond the backyard gates during recess as I walked back from getting pizza with my then best friend Jovon. I was only 11 years old. Now at 16 I guess I can say that I’ve grown accustom to my constant “Who am I?” “I’m a part of someone else’s imagination” feelings. But the road to (almost) being used to everything is something no little story can really describe. I spent 14 hours in the hospital, puking from trauma and saying sorry to my crying mother. Everything is still a blur…the X-rays, the questions, the stitches, the doctors faces. Everything. I only know the situation by short glimpses into what may have happened. I was there, but I really wasn’t… I had always felt like there was a big difference between who I am, the person representing me in reality, and the little voice inside my head. I could never grasp the concept of mind, body and soul being one. Maybe that was from other trauma… like my cousin molesting me in the pool in his backyard when I was 6, or when I fell off my bike the next summer and spilt my left eyebrow in half. Who knows… All I know is a week or so after being hit by a car I felt as though I was watching life happen, as though it was all on TV. I would have these moments that I would zone out completely and start thinking that everything and every person was a part of my imagination. Or worse…that I was a part of theirs. When I finally started moving again, when the cast came off and stitches healed, going to places I had gone to 100 times before became an issue. I knew where these places were and I knew how to get there, yet just before arriving I would get nervous and worried that maybe they aren’t there anymore, maybe they were never there at all. All the while, however, I knew they were really there and they did really exist. The worst place became the mirror… I would look at myself for 10 or 15 minutes at a time and begin to not recognize myself. I would ask things like “Who am I?” “Is that really me?” aloud. Then my voice would sound like someone else was in the room, and that someone else…was the person in the mirror. Writing of it like this scars me. I would watch my face and start seeing it dissolve or start turning, as if it was the water in a toilet being flushed. In public I would start thinking regular thoughts..like “nice shoes” or “what a horrible haircut” and then I would look up at these people and my stomach would turn because I felt as though there was a giant bubble above my head, showing the world what I was thinking. I would literally have to look up to make sure there wasn’t a giant bubble and I wasn’t really in a cartoon strip in the Daily News. Other times I felt like my thoughts were so loud that you can hear them outside my head. I would look at my mother and she would be this complete stranger. Her voice was odd, her face was unfamiliar…Yet all the while I knew she was my mom and that her voice was the same as it always was. I didn’t feel real. I didn’t feel sane. I didn’t feel happy, or sad, or upset, or excited..I felt as though I was in black and white, boring and ten octaves lower the everyone else. Depressed, obviously. But it was more than that. It was…detached. Literally, detached is the only word I approve of to describe how I felt. Explaining it was a useless act that left me in circles, because nothing could explain it. All I wanted was to have someone understand and not think I was crazy. I knew I had it…I knew something was wrong. I knew I wasn’t really crazy, just out of it. Going to shrinks never helped completely. They’d listen and nod and agree that my childhood was, indeed, fully of trauma and pain… I’ de talk in circles some days and not talk at all in others. Days that I talked ridiculously were the days I wanted someone to understand. Days that I was silent were the days I had given up and didn’t want to be looked at as crazy. I’m still not on medication for it. I don’t want it and my mother absolutely refuses. She’s been on Zoloft for as long as I can remember. And more recently Risprodol… or however that’s spelt. She thinks I will become a zombie, more out of it then I already am. I’ve just let talking do the trick for so long, until it creeps up. Most things aren’t constant day after day feelings anymore. It fades in and out. When I read others stories, especially from the people my age…I get this glimmer of hope. There really are people that get it. There really are people that know that being so unreal, is real. I like that. I like knowing that. Re reading this makes me want to add more. There’s so many feelings that come with this. Doctors telling me I had it helped. It having a name helped. Talking about it here really does help. I still have those days when everything doesn’t make sense and everyday-without fail-no matter where I go, I worry that my destination doesn’t exist or has suddenly moved. It isn’t something I’m really used to, as much as it’s just this part of me I let linger. Days where its constant detachment can leave in depressions that last days, but I eventually bounce back…We all, eventually, bounce back.
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