I can feel the strings attaching my soul to my body loosen

Yeah, I know you, dear reader, probably know me in real life. I mean it's much more probable than some random person chancing on my blog. Sometimes, you're a guy who's into me or something. Let me know if that's you, I guess. But also do you even want to date me, after seeing some of the stuff I write? Some of you are friends. I don't know how I feel about you seeing this side of me. It's okay, I guess. I hope this doesn't change the way you see me. The point is, I'm not writing for you. I'm writing for someone who might gain anything from my words, whether it be comfort or understanding. I suppose these two groups aren't disjoint. Anyways, that's the warning that I'll give. Or, I don't know, it's just something I wanted to say before I strip myself naked with these words (figuratively, of course). Oh, and also I don't mean to write an overly edgy post.

I have this one really vivid memory from before primary school. I was standing on a little teal stool in front of the bathroom sink. Well, the stool was to the side of the sink, so I could get closer to the mirror in front of the sink. There I was, 6-or-something year-old me, staring at myself in the bottom right corner of the mirror. I examined my every feature. "Is that supposed to be me?" I asked myself in my head. I moved, and the girl in the image moved. I touched my face, and tried my best to convince myself that the nose I was touching was the same as the nose that I saw in the mirror.

I don't remember what came before or after this moment, which I suppose is how early childhood memories go. Maybe everybody goes through that when they're a kid and they realize that they're a person or something. There was a brief trend that I saw on Tiktok about the moment when one gains consciousness when they were a child. Does everybody get that? Was this an instance of that? I'm inclined to think not. It felt kind of like the inverse. I mean, I had never questioned that I was myself until that moment. From that moment on growing up, I've had brief moments where I questioned my own existence and who I am and why I'm in this body. Stuff like that.

Another instance: I was in the 3rd or 4th year of primary school. In Singapore, we have to pick an after-school club to join, and I joined the Girl Guides (British Girl Scouts). I had changed to my cute little Brownie, a novice Girl Guide, uniform and I was talking to my friend before the club started. We were walking down the hallway that lead from the stairs to the classrooms upstairs to the cafeteria. I don't know when or how it happened, but suddenly, I found myself sunk in clouds and fog. It felt so much like I wasn't able to control my body, but whenever I thought of saying x, I said x in that conversation with my friend, who I assumed didn't notice that there was anything off with me. I thought that I was probably a little sleepy, and so I pinched myself. Well, it felt more like I thought to myself to pinch my arm, and my body did that. I felt the pain, yes, but I was still lost in the fog in the back of my mind.

It's really scary when it happens. I really, really hate it when it happens. It's not permanent. It happens quite rarely. The times in between, it's easy to forget about those moments. I just write it off as being tired and potentially sleep-deprived. I'm not entirely sure now that they're connected, but something about the feeling reminds me of sleepiness or being in a half-awake state, but drowsiness doesn't come with feeling like you're controlling your body from a thousand miles away.

I don't remember exactly when I came up with this. I have a upper limit in terms of age, and that would be when I started listening to emo. It must have been about 8th grade. It was when I was listening to Fall Out Boy a lot (shoutout to Wilson (Expensive Things), which I felt described my life a lot). There's this lyric from Hold Me Tight, Or Don't that inspired the analogy that I use to explain this feeling I get. "And when your stitch comes loose/I want to sleep on every piece of fuzz/And stuffing that comes out of you."

It feels like my stitches are loose. It's like God or whoever the almighty creator of man is did a pretty bad job with me, and forgot to make sure that He pulled the needle tight as He sewed my soul onto my body. Do you see the imagery, too? When the stitches connecting a patch of cloth to another comes loose, you can kind of pull on it and see the stuffing underneath. It's still connected, yes, but it's loose.

Ignore the last two lines of the song. They're not really that relevant to the analogy.

Also, I'm not even religious, and I don't think I can get behind organized religion. I think this imagery, or this experience definitely inclines me towards a higher level of spirituality than most atheists. So much so that maybe I should call myself agnostic. Actually, I am agnostic, now that I look at the definition (someone who believes that it's impossible to determine whether or not there is a god).

I think this is dissociation, specifically something known as derealization or depersonalization. I hesitate to call it anything, though, because I don't want to be overreacting and believing that my problems are bigger than they are. My therapist recently brought it up once, but she didn't really tell me how to fix it. I think I mentioned that I thought it was probably because of sleep-deprivation, and I think she just told me to fix my sleep schedule (which is very valid), but I don't know if that fixes anything. I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was cognizant enough and scared enough of the dissociation that I wrote about it for 10th grade English. We had to write scary short stories for Halloween. No deaths allowed, but some blood is okay. I wrote about a man who experienced dissociation a lot. I don't remember the details, but I think his younger sister died young or something. The story consisted of the man in a dissociative state wandering into the woods at night for one reason or another and chancing upon a girl that looked like his younger sister. She was holding a knife. The climax of the story consists of the man stepping forwards and grabbing the knife with his hands.

Nobody really asked me about my story. Or told me anything about it. I wanted to write a good psychological thriller there and make people uncomfortable, but I don't know if it accomplished that. I hope it did. It's supposed to be odd, but it's not really that unexplainable. At least, the unreasonableness and the irrationality of the man's actions can be explained by the dissociation. Or at least, that's how it works for me.

Generally, the later in the night, the higher the chance that I'll dissociate. Once, while I was staying up late with friends, someone said, "How much do you think you'd have to be paid to drink this whole bottle of oil?" The other guy said some pretty big number. I don't remember exactly how much. "Oh, I'd do it for 50 bucks" I laughed and said. The first guy looked at me funny. He said something about how there was probably as much fat in that bottle on his body (he has a low fat percentage), and that I would probably end up in the hospital. I amended my answer to 50 + hospital bills.

I touched about it a little bit in my last post about how the abyss calls to me. In those moments, when I do get dissociated, the abyss calls to me so loudly now. At that moment, I could see myself drinking the oil, feeling the disgusting oil go down my throat. I imagined the bloated feeling I'd get, and I reminded myself of the taste of vomit. Yet, it was so appealing. The siren call was so loud that I couldn't stop myself from saying I'd do it for just $50.

It's not even just a recent development. On the way back from orchestra in high school one afternoon, I remember sitting in the back of the car, staring out the window with my phone in hand. For some reason, I had the strongest urge to yeet my phone out the window. Just like with the oil, I imagined myself rolling down the windows and letting the phone drop from my hand out the window. I imagined my parents getting mad at me. I could almost feel the tears roll down my eyes as they yell at me at the top of their lungs, "Why did you do that? Don't you know how much money that was?" And yet the urge was still so strong. The scene played in my mind as I stared at the button to roll down the car window. I had to expend willpower to place my phone away from me, on the seat next to me.

I've been dissociating pretty consistently since coming to MIT. I think it really started when I stayed up until 6am one night. After that, I stayed up late with my friends and didn't get the sleep I needed on a regular basis. All we do is goof off, which is a lot of fun. It started off being something that I get when it gets past 1am, but the time the dissociation hits started to get earlier and earlier. I think it's stabilized at hitting at around 6 to 7pm. It also comes with a headache in the lower back of my head. If I have the time to, I put on my headphones and close my eyes on my favorite couch in the entry lounge. I don't usually fall asleep. The dissociation and headache sometimes gets better.

Maybe it is sleep deprivation after all. But there was a day not too long ago where I woke up with less than 5 hours of sleep completely lucid. This was after a couple days where I was dissociating for a good part of the day, even waking up dissociated. I was dissociation-free up until like 9 or 10pm that night! It made me really, really happy. I felt like a normal person again. It makes me jealous that my friends can stay up late and get little sleep and not dissociate.

Maybe they dissociate, too. Maybe what I'm describing is just sleep deprivation and I'm making a big deal out of nothing, because up until now, I was used to getting my 7+ hours of sleep and sitting pretty, and now I'm just a spoiled little brat who can't take a little bit of pain. Or maybe it is a problem and I'm telling myself that it's not a problem because I've spent too long with someone who told me that I'm an ungrateful brat. Or maybe he's right and I am.

But that whole thought process is irrelevant. I'm here to talk about my mild dissociation. Lately, it's been easy to slip into the anxiety spiral when I'm dissociated. My therapist makes it sound like the dissociation is anxiety-induced but I feel like it's more the other way around. I just care less about myself when I'm dissociated. It takes work to stop myself from spiraling, and I just don't care and don't have the energy when I'm dissociated. And so I let the bad thoughts chase each other around in my head and I just feel like shit and I'm okay with that.

Well, I see I've written for too long if all I can think of right now is bad, negative thoughts. It's been a really long post, and I'm proud of myself for not deviating until the very end. I seriously just sat here and wrote for like 2 hours straight. I guess I'm happy that this is a long, since it means that I'll weed out the people that don't really care too much about the topic. Good. I don't want people to judge me for this. Well, I don't want people to judge me in general. And I suppose part of writing this is for myself. It's nice to get your ideas concretely out on the page. It's part of thinking rationally or something like that.

Anyways, I was planning on writing an end of semester post, but got distracted by this one. I suppose you'll see that one drop sometime in the future, probably next week when I'm on the plane back home. I was also planning a pretty serious post for that one, so I apologize for the abundance of heavier topics these last few days. I'll write about something a bit more fun sometime. I guess? I don't know.