AM I BROKEN ?
What it feels like to live with dissociation, numbness, and a mind covered in fog.
Hi, I think something inside me has been disconnected for years, and I don’t know how to explain it anymore.
Years have passed, but the feeling hasn’t really changed. There is always this sense that something isn’t right, that something inside me isn’t working properly. For a long time, I thought there had to be a physical explanation for it. I thought maybe I had a tumor or some kind of neurological problem that would finally explain why I feel this way. But nothing was found. They don’t see anything physically wrong with me. And then I’m left wondering: if nothing is physically wrong, why does life feel like this?
I know I have depression. I don’t like going out, I’m numb, it’s difficult for me to be social. But I feel like there is something beyond the depression that I can’t quite explain.
Everything feels foggy.
My days are unclear, and my memories are unclear. Time seems to pass without me really experiencing it. Sometimes I suddenly realize that days have gone by, but I have very little sense of what actually happened during them. It’s Monday, for example, and I can have almost no feeling for how the weekend passed or what I did. It’s not just forgetting a few details. It feels more like I wasn’t fully there while it was happening.
That’s what makes me wonder if this is dissociation.
And the strange thing is, I don’t feel particularly anxious. I’m actually very calm. Sometimes I’m almost completely numb. That’s why it’s difficult to explain. From the outside, I might seem completely fine. But inside, it feels like I’m somewhere else, more like I’m disconnected from everything and from myself. I can be there physically, but somehow I don’t feel fully present in my own life.
Sometimes it feels like I’m inside a huge balloon. I have some space inside it, but there isn’t much. If I open my arms, I can touch the walls around me. I’m inside this huge enclosed space, separated from everything outside. The air feels like it’s slowly getting thinner. I can feel that I’m trapped inside it, and I want to pop the balloon somehow. I want to break through it and get outside.
I don’t want to stay inside this thing.
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I want to feel free. I want to feel present. I want to experience my days instead of watching them disappear. I want my memories to feel clearer and more connected to me. I want to be able to go somewhere and actually feel like I’m there. I want to connect with people, feel things, and have the sense that I’m actually inhabiting my own life.
Another way I can describe it is like having a huge elephant sitting on my chest. Or like there is a fireball inside me that has been stuck there for years. It feels like there is something enormous inside me that needs to break open, but it can’t. It’s just there, constantly, like a pressure that never gets released.
And strangely, I don’t imagine that explosion as something destructive. I imagine flowers growing from it. I imagine that if whatever is trapped inside me could finally break open, something alive could come out of it. Something could change. I could finally feel something again.
That’s what I want.
I don’t know exactly what this is. Maybe it’s dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, depression, or something else. Maybe several things are happening at the same time. I just know that I’ve felt this way for a very long time, and it is affecting how I experience my life, my memories, my sense of time, and my connection to the world. I’m still trying to understand it.
But I’m writing this because I have a feeling I’m not the only one.
Maybe you’re also walking around looking completely normal while everything inside feels distant and unreal. Maybe you also feel like you’re living inside a balloon that you can’t pop.
I don’t know how to get out yet.
But I still believe the balloon can be broken. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life inside of it.
I want to pop it.
I want to get out.
I want to feel free and actually live.
