When I sat down to write today, I opened a draft I started in March entitled, “Battling Burnout,” which I had ironically felt too burnt out to finish writing. At the time, I could not think of anything valuable to say. “Hello, my dears, I am exhausted and think I might have taken on too much, so here’s a post saying nothing.” Sounds a bit blasé, don’t you think?

Really, though, I have been avoiding writing because what little I have to say was unpleasant. March and April (thus far) have brought in more than just burnout. We have had an onslaught of springtime illnesses, familial challenges, and a severe depressive episode that kicked me in the teeth. It is this last point that brought me back to my blog.

I recently had a dissociative episode. Dissociation happens to everyone, as at its core it refers to losing touch with reality. People dissociate when they are tired, absorbed in a book or a movie, daydream etc. It is our brain’s way of checking out of our current circumstances. However, dissociation can also develop as a trauma response. It is often linked to maladaptive daydreaming and is mentioned as a comorbidity in people with ADHD (I imagine because it involves a decreased ability to self-regulate).

For those who have never experienced maladaptive dissociation, there are a few different ways this can go. There is depersonalization, which many people refer to as an “out-of-body” experience, where it’s like you can see yourself from the outside. There is also derealization, where the world around you seems fake. Sometimes it feels like you are watching a movie or looking through a foggy window. There is dissociative amnesia, where one blocks off important memories as a means of self-protection. Then there is identity confusion, where one temporarily enjoys an activity they would otherwise abhor, and identity alteration, where one separates their sense of self into distinct parts (of which they may or may not be aware).

All of these experiences can be distressing. I personally experience depersonalization and derealization. Since a young age, I would get the distinct impression that I did not belong in this reality. As a very young child, I questioned whether I was an alien, or a changeling. As an older child, teenager, and adult, I sometimes get the distinct impression that my life as I know it is a dream. At these times, I feel as though I could wake up at any moment and I would be several years younger, back in my childhood home, and none of my wonderful life would have happened.

I am cognitively aware that those scenarios cannot happen, and a part of me tries to tells me so whenever dissociation occurs. Nevertheless, it upsets me greatly, even though on the outside I am all but catatonic. I go numb, and my loved ones describe my voice as different and flat. Whenever this happens, I find myself suddenly engaging in reckless behavior to try to snap myself back to reality. This has resulted in some dangerous scenarios, the most recent of which involved taking off on a drive late at night up the US-101 North.

Something I feel passionate about is authenticity. I want to connect with people in solidarity and maybe help someone feel less alone. As such, I decided to write down what it felt like to experience depersonalization/derealization, and how the various parts of myself interact in my head when it happens. This is my account of what happened the night I last dissociated. If you experience depersonalization or derealization, know this: you are not crazy, there is help, and you deserve to be safe, supported, and healthy. I love you. Happy reading.

“Horror Movie Highway”

My empty stare watches the horror movie highway travel past at 65 miles per hour. Visibility is limited to the road before me. To my left, nothing but the invisible southbound highway and the inky ocean I know lurks over the cliffs. To my right, nothing but unseen fields and barbed wire fences. Periodically, trees loom over me as if to grab my car from the road and hurl it away like a beetle on a picnic blanket. My hands grip the wheel, white-knuckled, cold and cadaverous. Am I on a mission of death, or have I already found it? I feel nothing. No remorse for running away, albeit temporarily. No concern for my spouse, my children, or my own life. 

Somehow I still use my blinkers, cruise control, and my low-beam headlights. I proceed safely and cautiously, despite the disease in my head telling me to swerve, to step on the gas, to make a tombstone of one of the barren trees standing in the dark like a gallows. Although my emotions are neatly reigned in, tucked away beneath the weighted blanket of dissociation, my thoughts are wild. They shout over one another, untamed, centered around decay, departure, the desire to run away from home. The coastal air swirls around me and oblivion peeks through the mist, open maw smiling with white, painted lines simulating teeth. My pulse thumps in my left ear, only the left, always the left. Its steady bass keeps time for the discussion between my hidden personality, my illness, and the numb voice of my rational faculties that seems to be the only thing left of me in this alien body:

Just keep driving until he calls, and if nothing happens before then, it’s a sign you should go home. That’s manipulative. You narcissist. As if he has nothing else to do but worry about you. He wasn’t worried before you left, why should he be worried now? Shut up, shut up. I just wanted to clear my head. A likely story. You are hoping to get in a car accident so this can all be over. That’s a good point. You will get in a car wreck if you don’t keep your eyes on the road.

Maybe I should turn back. Don’t turn back now, coward. That car behind you is going too fast. Get in the slow lane. I know I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt. Oh, as if that’s not why you’re out here. No one ELSE has to be involved. Is that a curve up ahead? I can’t tell. Fuck around and find out. Shut up! Pay attention, watch for animals. We can’t hit an animal, we wouldn’t be able to cope. Who’s we? Um, hello? This idiot is insane. You’re insane. This is why you should keep driving. Your family doesn’t need this, need YOU! 

Focus. I’m trying to…Wait, what’s that?!? Why is the sky ahead orange? It’s hell, waiting for you. Shut up! No, it’s an exit, near the power plant. Their lights must be on. Lights aren’t all on in here, are they? On that we can agree. Look, this is ridiculous. Pull off here, and we can turn around. He’s not going to call (why would he) and this is dangerous for other people. You’re a terrible driver. I know. And you don’t want collateral damage. No. So pull. Over. Now. 

“Click-click, click-click,” my car’s blinker protests as I dogleg to the right. The burnt color of incandescent bulbs paints the damp air orange, completing the Halloween façade. I pass by the power plant, driving under wet branches that drip the occasional splatter onto my windshield. I think of the ghost stories my cousins used to scare me when I was younger. I imagine the sound they made, like feet dragging along a metal roof. Primal anxiety breaks through the mental barrier keeping my face stoic, my body stiff, and the chaos contained within myself. I feel my breath catching and clawing in my throat, like a fox trapped in a burning burrow. I reach for my phone, tap my passcode in as I creep down that stretch of abandoned asphalt, and the screen lights up with a name. The name of my partner, my spouse, my home. 

“Hello?” He sounds worried. My voice sounds tinny and hollow in my ears. 

“I’m coming back.”

“Okay, good. I was worried about you.” A likely story. Shh. There’s the southbound entrance, on your left. “How long were you going to drive for?” 

“Until you called…or I needed gas. But it’s scarier outside than in my head. It looks like Sleepy Hollow out here.”

“Foggy?”

“Very, and you know how bad I am at driving at night. I don’t want to cause any wrecks or hit a deer or something….also, it was unfair to leave without explaining. I’m sorry. I put you in a position you should never be put in, and it was wrong.” 

“I forgive you.”

“You shouldn’t. But I appreciate it.” 

My eyes still feel like they have been glued open. My hands still strangle the steering wheel. My words come out without feeling as we stay on the phone, devoid of my spirit locked away in that internal dialogue with my illness while my spouse discusses logistics with my rational brain. It isn’t until I overhear him inviting our puppy to cuddle that a single tear breaks through the glaze that covers my eyes. As it carves a salt trail leading to my chin, the belligerent voice of depression slinks away to a corner of my mind. It sulks there, a reminder that I am unwell, on the brink of entering into a dimension I dare not explore. But tonight, I am going to survive, and I am going home.