dissociation.
I move through the day as if trudging through sludge--incredibly slowly, yet it becomes so overwhelmingly exhausting and repetitive it seems fast when I get through it. I'm somehow hyperaware of every movement I make, yet every action comes with a sense of detachment. It feels as if I live in a video game, and if I was just conscious enough to make decisions for myself I could reach out and pixels would consume my hand.
I can't remember things at all. I don't remember my childhood, and every memory is more of a loose grasp on old emotions and stale smells, covered with the bittersweet filter of nostalgia. I forget things easily; it's not just misplacing things, but forgetting important events in my lifetime. My brain is stuck in this neverending cycle of forgetfulness.
There's a feeling of constant apathy engraved into the core of my bones. It feels like I have two brains--one floating above my head and drifting through my subconscious, and the other one in this body that doesn't feel mine that directs how to be a proper human. When I say I have a mask on when I'm around other people, it's just an umbrella word for: I constantly feel displaced and out of touch with reality but I still manage to feign normalcy around these people that I feel alienated from.
There's a constant fear that everyone I know is a robot, or that paranoia that sneaks up in the back of my head that the monsters I see in my dreams are right behind the corner. I don't shower for days on end because I constantly forget that I should. I'm scared to look at my reflection because my eyes turn black and my mouth morphs into an unnatural smile and oops I'm having a panic attack. I'm scared to look at my reflection because even when my demons aren't controlling my reflection's face, I don't recognize the person there because I don't know who I am but that sure's not me. When I'm around people it feels like my energy is getting drained slowly through a syringe in my head and suddenly I feel like collapsing but maybe that's the sleep deprivation.
I can't remember my own name and I have a tendency to stare off into space without realizing it, not because I'm engrossed in thinking but because my thoughts lead me down a rabbit hole where I lose all touch with reality and if someone punched me in the face while I have a dissociation fit then I'm not sure I would notice. I don't exist as a person, I exist more as a thought, as a feeling, not a corporeal being. I have no sense of time and I can blink and it will be 4 months and I still haven't grown as a person or learned anything. I can't study properly because I can't absorb information like I used to and by now I've given up.
Sometimes I can't remember how to speak English even though it's my first language and resort to making motions with my hands because the words have a certain shape to them but I have to move my hands over the shape to get the word exactly right or I resort to speaking in a mixture of broken other languages. I can't focus enough on a single task to ever finish it until right at a deadline and my mental health has tanked thanks to insomnia. My eyes are constantly unfocused and I can't remember when the last time it's snapped back to reality because I've never seen a clear color (or at least I don't think I have). I keep thinking "I want to go home" but I don't know where that is anymore. I'm so floaty and gravity doesn't exist, but also I'm so numb that I rely on getting hurt to remember that I have emotion.
I'm made of TV static and hushed dreams and tired, tired, tired empty all the time and I just wish it would stop.
