As the cake is cut, I go to the bathroom, ostensibly to check my insulin (which is fine, even though I didn’t get a chance to run with everything going on, so I’m a little bit off). Really, I’m doing it to take myself out of this scene for a moment. Because it’s not my scene. When I was a kid, I could trick myself into thinking that the birthdays were really my own birthdays, that there was a direct, to-the-day correspondence between the age I was and the ages of the bodies I was in. Then, when I was twelve, it happened: two birthdays in the same week. And suddenly I realized that what was happening to me was neither precise nor predictable. The birthdays had never been mine.
A birthday—a real birthday—is yet another thing I will never have.
I tried to pick a day for myself. August 5th. That lasted for a couple of years. But ultimately it felt arbitrary, a lie I was telling myself to feel better. And the moment I saw the lie for what it was, it was hard to believe it.
So I taught myself not to miss it. To know I was different, and to accept that.
That worked better. But it’s not working anymore.
The sounds of a birthday party through a closed door are unmistakable: the colorful bubbles of conversation, the heartfelt laughter, the feet of small children running around the people acting like larger, older children. I recognize these sounds and know their chaotic delight, but only through a door.
I know Gwen has to return to the party. I know she’ll be missed if she’s gone for too long. Once upon a time, I didn’t know what that was like, to be missed. Now I do, and I understand why I can’t avoid the love being sent Gwen’s way.
I must dive back into the festivities. I must swim within the conversations, swim from gift to gift, wish to wish. Some people swim to get somewhere. Others swim to stay in shape, or to get faster. Right now, I’m going to swim so I won’t drown.
Comment from M:
This is pointless.
Comment from Someone:
I understand.
Comment from M:
Not possible.
Comment from Someone:
Listen to me first. I have depersonalization/​derealization disorder. You might not even know what that is. I didn’t, until I found out I had it.
Like you, I have periods when I feel completely separate from my body and from the world around me. It’s a hard thing to put into words. The best I’ve been able to come up with is that it’s like everything you see is part of this video game. Only with a video game, you know you’re holding the control. But my DPD/DRD is like I’m watching the video game but I don’t have the controller. I am convinced that I’m an avatar, not a person. I am convinced that the divide between the massive number of thoughts in my head and the actions around me is too wide to be crossed. I’m not just isolated from the world; I’m isolated WITHIN MYSELF. My thoughts are the only active things that I can believe. And that can be very frustrating and very confusing and very painful.
For a while, I thought I was going crazy. It was only when I found out that what I was experiencing had a name and that I wasn’t the only one who had it (2% of the population has DPD in some form) that I could start to actually take action against it. It’s not possible to make it go away, but knowing what it is and how it works means I can contain it a little more—contain it by naming it, both to myself and to other people.
I am not saying you have DPD and/or DRD. But I am saying that whatever it is you’re facing, the odds are nearly 100% that there’s someone else who is also facing it. Acknowledging it and naming it and understanding it as much as it can be understood are the most important things you can do. You say you want to die. I felt that way, too. But you also don’t want to kill the body you’re in. That means you want to live. The fact that you’re talking about it—even with strangers—is a good step. You are on your way to acknowledgment.
Comment from PurpleCrayon12:
Thank you for sharing that, Someone.
Comment from M:
I appreciate what you’re saying. I do. But with me, it’s different.
Comment from Someone:
How?
Comment from M:
You experience separation from your own body. I am in a different body every day.
NATHAN
It’s not that I’m completely antisocial—I just don’t go out of my way to talk to people. At school, sure. I talk to friends. I talk to teachers when I have to. I talk to the guidance counselor when she “checks in” on me, even though what I really want to tell her is that in a high school where kids are dealing drugs and getting pregnant and beating the crap out of each other in the hallways, her attention would probably be better spent on other kids, not me.
Once school is done, I’ve usually run out of social energy. If my mother has asked me to go on some errands, I’ll do them. But otherwise, it’s straight home.
I’m walking home on Wednesday when a car pulls up beside me and a woman rolls down the passenger window.
“Excuse me!” she calls out. And honestly, my first reaction is to wish she’d try someone else. But there isn’t anyone else around, so I stop. I don’t say hello or anything, but she smiles and acts like I have.
“I’m a little lost,” she says. “I was hoping you could help?”
“Sure,” I tell her. Though now I’m thinking, Can’t you just use your phone?
Before I can ask where she needs to go, she gawps at me and says, “Hey, aren’t you that kid who was possessed by the devil?”
Now I totally regret stopping, because this woman has to be in her fifties or sixties, and she must have better things to remember than a news story from three months ago.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell her.
“Of course you do! You were picked up at the side of the road. Said the devil got you drunk or something like that. It was hysterical!”
“I’m gonna go,” I mumble. Because something always stops me from being fully rude, I end up in this awkward state of halfway rude.
“Oh, don’t worry about it!” the woman calls out. “Vigilabo ego sum vobis!”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. I won’t bother you too much longer. Can you just give me directions?”
I want to get the hell out of there, but still: only halfway rude. So I say, “Sure. Where are you going?”