Dissociation

     Go to work today. Become hyperaware of what everyone is doing. This guy is checking his email. Two others standing around talking about some drivel. It's meaningless. Everything is meaningless and everyone is too. We have our morning discussion and our leadership rails us about poor security practices that we're doing. That was the bad news they mentioned up front. Good news they mentioned afterward was the flight commander's wife gave birth to a healthy baby girl. (Wow. Congratulations. Our morale just sunk, and that news does absolutely nothing for us. I don't care about the damn baby. Never mind my thought how ridiculously stupid everything is now, but to make me feel better personally, the baby is great!)

    Already in a somewhat low mood, with a lack of mental stimulation in the work I do until lunch. I wrote the word "nothing" repeatedly on a journal page until it filled the entire page. The journal is littered for about two pages about how worthless I think everyone is and then I turn the knife onto myself and call myself pathetic and nothing. Take lunch.

    But when I come back, things are different. Something is not right. Nothing is real at this point. Everyone feels like actors or NPCs running on scripts. I am performing actions but I don't feel in control of them. I am a machine or robot moving and my real self is only watching it through a screen. I wander somewhat aimlessly to different rooms and stand idly. My head, what is this feeling? I feel incredibly detached and remote and absent. There is no me. There is a shell that looks alive but nothing inside of it. Stuck in a dream. An unfamiliar familiar caste to everything.

    I sense something is wrong and I leave. I start moving and I feel like my eyes are higher up and behind my body looking down, as if I were taller and had a wider field of vision. It's similar to the hallway in Willy Wonka that everyone goes down, and the room's walls shrink to the tiny door at the end. I bump into some of my leadership and he tells me I'm doing a good job and he says he appreciates me. I wanted to ask "Were you supposed to say that?" or "You were going to say that," because it felt like an NPC dialogue, a scripted interaction in a game.

    I leave and call my mom to get a reality check and tell her I am dissociating. I feel like I'm on the Truman Show. I feel suspicious of everyone I see. I only have some peace by being far away from everyone and staring at the sun and the grass. After some talk, she mentions some of the trauma I have and behaviors I exhibited when I was younger, and it makes sense to me that my dissociation now was reflecting that.

    Her call helps me, since I at least have someone to listen and talk to. I'm still hyperaware when I return to work. Still suspicious of my surroundings and my own behavior. How I too am part of these meaningless movements.

    Once work ends, I don't emote at all. I do not speak unless I am spoken to. I don't laugh, don't smile, don't cry. Then my shop and I play sports as part of the required PT, some ultimate football. That takes me out of my spell, but here we are now. Can't the day end right now, and I sleep, and magically sleep easily and undisturbed and heavily? How I could, just like the game, give my body a command to sleep and it does so and I can fast forward to the next day? Not sure what to do or think now. The autopilot mode ended, but now I'm just trying to find a way to be present, here, now, grounded in reality and emotion.

(I could tag this with the negative label but I'm not since I didn't feel as negative during this experience or writing about it as I did others)