Existing

I’ve been so dissociated recently that I can hardly tell what’s real.

I feel nothing most of the time, and when I do, it’s blunted. I hear my friends’ voices over the phone, but I don’t really feel that they’re real until I see them and touch them. Then the memories of them resurface and it’s like oh, of course and I feel it and I know them. But it’s all hazy—far away—until then. Right now, I don’t really feel that there’s a world outside of this place. It’s like this hospital unit is the only place that exists, and once people leave, they stop existing.

I’ve helped fix this a little by taking my socks off, putting my feet on the floor of my room with the lights off, and just kind of thinking about things that are upsetting me. Doesn’t bring the emotions back, but it makes certain aspects of the outside world more real.

Like tonight, I thought about when He used to take us to the city on rare occasion to meet His “friends.” I thought about being in the car and then being in a room with two of them (formally dressed, like businessmen or stock brokers—upper middle class men) in a high rise hotel and being laid on the bed. And now, I feel certain that those passing flashes of storefronts, high rise hotels, and black ties exist. I think about them and I feel it in my chest—they’re real. But anything else? Questionable. Questionable at best.