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Ffffffucking christ.
Simply drinking water stings—feels like frostbites in my throat.
It’s been burning bad.
Like, real bad.
Started just this morning when I woke up.
A bunch of sores, itches and wounds upon inspection through a foggy camera lens.
To make matters worse, I’ve been a snotty mess—mucus drips down my throat and I’m forced to choke on it. Cough on it.
Choking on air’s already bad enough.
It’s filthy.
It’s disgusting.
It’s ugly.
My body feels like absolute hell.
Thank god for it.
Dissociation is no stranger to me. It hits me every once in a while with a gift basket of mental numbness in hand and then slowly pulls me out of my own body, leaving a sad self-operating husk with no sense of time, reality or physical presence. I can be walking around a mall and next thing I know, everything around me starts to distort into a fog, and I’m left to question if anything around me’s real—the people, the chattering, the lights, the walls, the floors, my own body—everything just starts feeling like a lucid dream.
I actually think “derealization” is a better term for it. It’s a more specific kind of dissociation that pertains to the feeling of everything around you suddenly seeming surreal or dreamlike, while dissociation is a more general term that pertains to a mental disconnection or numbness from your body or environment. I’m not too sure, but eitherway, I commonly experience a weird mix of both.
A couple months into my dissociative (and progressively worsening) experiences was when I started to discover “grounding” techniques (basically habits you can do to keep yourself from floating away from reality). Simple things like counting from 1 to 10, enumerating objects around you, feeling for your forearms or practicing box breathing can help in snapping out from dissociative experiences. And while it’s not a very common or well-known technique, I’ve found fidget spinners to be incredibly effective.
I’m currently in the middle of summer vacation and I had just gotten home yesterday from a grueling week of visiting relatives left and right. It was around 10pm; my sister and I took our usual elevator ride up to the 30th floor of our residence, and, for a split second, I had this sudden hit of hyperawareness, followed by a weird feeling of disconnection the moment the elevator doors opened.
I walked down the long hallway of doors, being unable to comprehend the distance it stretched out for—the end of the hall seemed close, yet far at the same time. But it didn’t bug me as much at the time; all I did was comment on it jokingly to my sister, “why do things suddenly don’t feel real?” to which she responded, “what?”
We unlocked our condominium, dumped all our bags on the couch and got dressed into our house clothes, all while I was beginning to feel a bit weird.
The moment I sat down on the side of the bed with my laptop in hand, it hit.
Not too rapidly, but almost like a soft, gentle tug, followed by a slow pull.
It was patient.
My body locked into its position as I slowly felt myself leaving my own body.
Fuck, is this happening? This can’t be happening, right?
My mind begged my body to move.
Move something. Anything. My head, arms, elbows, even just a small stretch.
It didn’t budge.
It felt nothing.
Numb.
So, so numb.
I started scanning the things around me.
The chair to my left,
my laptop in hand,
my sister sitting on the same bed in front of me,
the doorway to the living room,
the white walls,
the dim lights,
the tiled floors,
am I still here?
Where are we?
Something budged.
My fingers that were positioned directly on top of the keyboard.
Yes, yes that’s it.
But it didn’t feel like my own.
It’s opening tabs, typing something,
it knew what my mind wants,
but I wasn’t the one moving them.
Numb.
Discord.
It’s typing,
messaging,
my sister.
“dude i cant get myself to move bro can u hit me with a pillow idfk whats going on (help)”
I wait for a bit.
I feel just a small hit on my leg.
What was that?
Was that a hit? A slap?
My legs went numb again.
Didn’t work.
What the fuck is happening?
My fingers started clacking away on the keyboard.
Searching things. Messaging random people, finding possible answers.
Who’s typing?
I looked at my laptop from a second lens.
Like I was watching from someone else’s point of view.
I read,
Functional freeze? Maybe that’s it. I just need t o
move
to
myown bed,
s l e e p
t he re.
I can’t move.
I can’t move.
I can’t move I can’t move I can’t move.
Move.
Numb
Budge
What?
I said
M
ove
so
numb
if I
just
“Dude, just go to bed.”
My sister tossed a pillow to my direction.
My body finally budged.
I was moving,
but it wasn’t me.
It’s so numb.
I faceplanted into my bed.
Felt like nothing.
I couldn’t feel anything.
Tried to sleep it off.
With the little voluntary control I had with my hands, I put my pillow over my face.
Numb.
What do I do?
What am I doing?
What did I do?
Where?
Why?
What?
When?
What is everything?
What am I?
Who?
Wh
Whhh
whhffffffffffffffffffucking
some
thing
any
thing
“one,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven,
twelve,
thirteen,
fourteen,
fifteen,
sixteen,
seventeen,
eighteen,
nineteen,
twenty,
twenty
one,
twenty-two,
twenty-three,
twenty-four,
twenty-five,
twenty-six,
twenty-seven,
twenty-eight,
twenty-nine,
Felt my forearms for a bit.
Numb.
Felt my fingers for a bit.
Numb.
My nails.
A little sharp.
That’s it.
Numb
My nails dug into my forearms,
desperately trying to hold onto something
anything
Still
numb
Dug deeper.
Still
numb
ffffffucking deeper.
Still
numb
so
numb
Crying
wh
Who
am I
And
softly,
I felt
something
but it
wasn’t
my nails
something
tugged it away
a weird rough
feeling
against my skin
but a little soft too?
a marker.
Follow.
I followed the feeling.
The gentle strokes of marker.
I don’t know what it’s trying to mark on me.
That didn’t matter.
I kept following.
I realized it was writing something.
Wh
Who’s writing?
Slowly,
and gently,
I put the pillow away from my face,
still covering a little bit
but enough for me to see
my sister
writing
a name
My name.
Oh right.
That’s me.
That’s
me.
“What’s going on with you? Why are you dissociating?”
I sob a bit.
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know it happens it just happens I don’t know I “don’t know it just happens.”
“You know, if you don’t do something about it—y- you always seem so unaware of your surroundings.“
Help
less
ly, I hic out a pitiful “yeah.”
I turned my body to face away from her.
Pillow over my face.
I felt nothing.
Saw nothing.
Processed nothing.
Wh
Wept
silently
Numb
A couple
minutes
later,
I feel
something.
again.
On
the back
of my shoulder.
A gentle
caress
a soft
touch
and it kept
a hold of me
Follow.
I followed the feeling.
The soft strokes of
someone’s hand on my shoulder.
Follow.
Slowly, I felt.
It was
a little warm
but also
a little rough?
My clothes were
rough and worn.
But just thin enough
for the touch to feel warm
and also a little rough.
It was soft
soft enough to feel softer than my own bed
My own bed.
Oh yeah.
I’m on my bed.
I’ve been on my bed.
My bed’s a little
hard.
It’s not a very comfortable bed.
The bed sheets are
a little wrinkly,
but just the way I like it.
My hair
it’s
kind of in the way.
It’s a little
messy.
Thick.
And also on my face.
What else is on my face?
Oh.
A pillow.
Also not a very comfortable pillow.
Just as hard as the bed,
just as wrinkly as the sheets,
and just a little soaked from my weeps of tears.
I should probably put this pillow away.
It’s a bit hard to breathe under here.
Move.
I said move.
…
You’re still weeping.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in-
“Dude, are you still awake?”
Uh. “Yeah.”
I felt a big force on my back.
A force shoving me to the farther side of the bed.
Wha..?
Followed by creaking, and a sudden shift of weight on my bed.
I felt something different.
Warm.
Something warm and close behind me.
Then, something familiar
just a moment ago.
On my shoulder,
a gentle caress,
a soft touch,
and it kept a hold of me.
Really warm.
A nice kind of warm.
A fuzzy kind of warm.
Breathe in,
breathe out,
breathe in,
breathe out.
Now,
Move.
I felt for my pillow,
it’s wrinkly, uncomfortable.
And shifted it to be below the side of my head.
My breathing, a little snotty and messy,
seemed to steady.
Warm.
It feels nice.
My body gently eased to the warmth.
My mind slowly melted to the touch.
And I drifted,
not away,
but to sleep.
Feels nice.
FUCKING hell what the fuck was that about?
I woke up to a stuffed nose, a burning throat and an aching body.
Looks like I slept in a stiff and not-so-comfortable position.
Wow, that my throat burns and it still does.
My body feels like absolute hell.
Thank god for it.
It actually caught me by surprise to see little wounds on my skin. You know, the little wounds from me digging my nails into my skin? To feel something?
Well I feel them now.
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