I am still at the stage where i don't know many alters, seeing other systems already knowing all their alters makes me feel very invalid because i dont know who anyone is, in fact, i dont even know who I am. It's terrifying, in some days i can ignore it, the empty feeling of being unsure who i am, or what i like, or what my name is, but other days i feel the agony, the anxiety, of being a hollow broken shell of a person.
The way i got medically recognized was my psychologist basically saying i have friends in my head i created to cope with trauma and that i dont need them anymore, as if they'd magically dissapear if i ignore them long enough. News flash, they don't, they never go away, they mess with my sense of self and my identity all the time, i've changed pronouns and gender multiple times, i changed interests suddently, i would talk differently, move differently, i would sometimes become so engrossed in a fictional character i would become them for a moment or a week, i would forget to talk to people im close to or i'd suddently hate that person for no apparent reason, at times i even forgot i knew somebody or i wouldnt recognize them, like its not random people, its family and friends.
I used to have frequent episodes of not recognizing myself in the mirror, of not believing the world was real, everything seemed to be in a layer of fog to me, gray, distant and blurry. There were afew times where i had no control over my body, one i was screaming at my mother something i dont remember anymore, but she had grabbed me by the hair and pushed me to the ground, so i was probably telling her to stop, as i yelled i didnt feel like myself, it was like i was to the side, im not sure how to explain it. Second time was when i was washing the dishes, i dont remember what events lead up to it, but i just know i was out of it, i remember it was on an era of my life where i was suffering throught what was basically social death, at school i was treated like i didnt exist and as if i was some sort of monster waiting to kill everyone, that made my dissociation so much worse.
Going back to the dishes, basically i was seeing myself wash the dishes, but my vision looked like i was watching myself through a TV screen, like tunnel vision but literally, i wasnt controlling what i was doing, i dont remember if i finished washing it, i think i did, i dont even remember what i did next, nor what happend before and how i started washing the dishes.
Dissociation in my daily life
Ever since i was a kid i used to stay in my head alot, i created worlds and stories to try and forget all that was happening to me. I don't remember those stories anymore, nor the characters i made, i actually can't even remember alot from that era aside from trauma, i think i was 10. I also remember having an imaginary friend i used to interact with, i was 8 i think, i can't remember the exact ages, but i remember the imaginary friend looked like my childhood friend, i was then told that imaginary friends are the devil's work and i stopped interacting with him. I remember always referring to myself as "us" or "we", before i even knew what DID was. As i grew i started to find that weird and purposefully stopped using we/us, it actually took alot of effort to do so, but eventually saying "i" became natural.
I used to have moments where i hated looking at myself in the mirror, others where i would feel like it wasn't me and times where i'd feel like i was myself again, but it'd mostly be a feeling of not knowing who i was and feeling out of place. Nowadays i can recognize that the person in the mirror is me, but somedays i still don't feel like it's "me". Before i had alot of moments where i would feel like reality was fake, that people were made of rubber or that they weren't real, it made me very apathetic to other's feelings. I think i still feel like this because i still don't really care about how other people feel nor believe them, but i don't say that out loud and i still comfort people, i just don't feel like they're really there or that i am there, i just feel like things don't actually exist and that all this is just my imagination or something.
I end up missing life's moments due to being stuck in my head too much, one of the best ways i've found to hide my dissociation is to watch videos or listen to music, i can just tune out my brain, enter it and stay in it without anyone bothering me, if i want to run away from a situation you can bet i will grab my headphones, listen to music and imagine different things or talk to myself. Though before i would stay hours staring at the wall thinking, thinking and thinking. I'd talk to myself as a kid alot too, i don't remember the conversations i'd have, but i do remember i talked whispering alot because my mother got angry at me for it.
I recently had my phone stop working, and i so quickly went back into my head, i'd spend hours pacing back and forth thinking and talking to myself. I learned to entertain myself and since as a kid i had no one to play with since my parents and siblings were too busy i think i may have found a way to cope by "creating"(?) these voices in my head, i mean i don't know if creating is the right word, because i don't remember going out of my way to create them, i just remember they were there and would comment on random things in specific moments or would engage in my debates with myself. Plus i do have to add that i had gone through alot of traumatic things as a kid, specially neglect, but mostly physical abuse. My mom excuses her behavior by saying i was a difficult child, that i didn't listen to her so she had to scare me in some way, well, it worked, now i feel i'll get punished all the time and if someone tries to high five me i think they are going to hit me and i hide my face.
Well to hopefully finish this blog post, one last example of dissociation i have is well, forgetting things, if you tried to get me to talk about what happend yesterday i'd probably only remember very specific moments, or maybe not even that. When i try remembering things that happend, sometimes i can remember, specially if i feel like myself, but if i feel like i'm someone else, i can't remember anything. But it isn't something i notice, its more like gradual, like i rapidly forget each day that passes by, mostly because im not actually living it, im more so floating by, i may do things but that doesn't mean i'm 100% there, sometimes im just on autopilot. Sometimes i feel like i just woke up, like what do you mean its 6:25 PM already?? What happend in the last few hours?? Was i even here? I used to obsessively check the day and time all the time so i wouldn't lose track of anything, it worked, until it didn't anymore. It's exhausting having to mask this disorder, right now i'm looking into how to build communication between alters, wish me luck. Well thanks for reading this.