THE COLOUR OF MADNESS
A Blog About Living with Mental Illness
A Dissociative Experience
I’ve been trawling through some of our old writings recently and found the below. I think it is a reasonable example of a dissociative experience and ‘co-consciousness’ written by one of the others a year or so ago and I thought it might be of interest to some of you and maybe resonate with others.
xx Kate
P.S You can never have too many shoes and there’s nothing wrong with lots of pink sparkly birthday decorations!
The car park felt unusually still for the amount of cars packed within its concrete labyrinth. The muggy air was heavy and reminiscent of summer but the distinct lack of cicadas or overtired toddlers left the building feeling eerily silent and unfamiliar.
I made my way towards the escalator that would lead me towards the shopping complex and time stood still for me while I tried to recall exactly what it was I was doing here.
Even the cars seemed to drive past me in slow motion and without sound, it felt like a scene from a movie, the calm before the storm and I wondered for a moment if something terrible was about to happen.
A foreign yet familiar sense of impending doom washed over me as a group of men in army fatigues passed by to my left, suddenly my thoughts dissolved and merged further into a familiar anxiety, a panicky voice was crying out inside with a million simultaneous ‘what if’ scenarios, it was Ezzy, she was suddenly very close, my whole body started quivering with another persons fear and I tried to breath through her push for us to run away.
I’m not that good at holding Ezzy back, we were together so long we feel like separated twins and there’s a deep bond I struggle to detach from.
Ez hates military uniforms, they seem to be a trauma trigger for her, nobody else is affected though, not even me and I don’t feel that particular trauma emotionally like she does. I tried to explain to her that they were just on their break and picking up lunch. Picking up lunch, that was why we were here too!
She relented and stepped back a little as the escalator emerged out of the dark and into the bright bustling mall, we walked over to the busy salad place, I glanced at the options on offer but couldn’t recall what our husband had asked for, I wouldn’t be able to make a decision for myself now anyway, my hunger had vanished and they list the kJ content – Ezzy was still too close for any food related decisions.
I spied a shoe store and then my memory gets distorted and fuzzy, I am aware we purchased shoes we hadn’t budgeted for, I’m aware we chose and bought lunch, I’m aware they accidentally gave the husbands order to someone else and had to remake it. I’m aware we went back to work, I’m aware we got home, I’m aware that somewhere between that we did the shopping for our daughters birthday party on the weekend and that the house is now decorated.
But I can’t tell you how I felt as we did these things or how stuff looked or smelled or tasted because even though I was there, I was only watching. I don’t know who made those decisions, I know it certainly wasn’t Ezzy and I can hazard an educated guess based on our current bank balance and the sheer quantity of sparkly party decorations currently covering my lounge room, but although I was physically present, “I” wasn’t there.
2 Comments on “A Dissociative Experience”
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THE COLOUR OF MADNESS 
phillipa marlow…. or what… farewell, my lovely.. comes to mind
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Reblogged this on MiddleoftheHeart and commented:
Colour of Madness is at it again, surprising surprisingly Phillipa Marlow has arrived in town….
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