maybe it's the strong/weak dichotomy my head is stuck on but like... reading subreddits about people who have similar problems to me is always so goddamn infuriating like sorry but I"m literally better than all of you.
been doing research on dissociation and specifically depersonalization/derealization and like... sorry baby you're talking about wanting to go back to normal, this is normal. you got it 3 months ago? I live like this. you just accept that nothing is real and yet you exist. nothing affects you and yet things still happen. stop trusting your brain and realize that your perception is fundamentally flawed and all you're able to do is test theories until you find something approximating truth.
I can't trust anything inside my head until I've done it in real life at least twice and honestly probably at least five times if we're being honest. maybe you're dreaming maybe you're awake does it matter? perception is flawed and reality is interpretation anyway. just because you're more aware of the imperfect approximations your mind is working on every single microsecond of every single minute of every single hour of every single day doesn't mean you're any more in control of it. other people do function the same they just don't realize. they're just not aware. awareness doesn't change anything. you just have to learn to let go and fall into the water. the air in your chest will bring you to the surface if you just relax and let it follow the laws that you do not see but still rule your life.
This is reality even if you cannot see it. you can experiment until you see the effects of electricity even if you don't see the electrons themselves.
you can't see the invisible fire but you can watch the mop head burst into flame and fall to ash and you'll know it's there.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
nothing feels real but you have to simply accept that it still is. your perception determines your own reality but it doesn't control the reality of others. you are a quantum state that is unresolved by your own vision but that becomes grounded in either yes or no by the observation of someone else.
your life is not your own, your reality is controlled by the people who have an actual grip on it.
I guess I'm happy that people who can't handle it often do in fact recover. people who used to be normal until a year ago someday will find that normalcy again.
couldn't be me. this is just my life and I've learned to accept it for what it is.
my sense of reality is fractured and I'm finding my way in a dark room by kicking every chair and smacking my head on every cabinet corner but I've learned how to navigate it.
if you put your hand close enough to a wall without touching it, and feel really really really closely, you can feel the turbulence of the air itself bouncing off the surface. you can feel the energy of an object even if you cannot see the object itself.
you might not be able to see the wind, but you can see the flattened prairie grass. the thrown trash and debris in the wake of a dust devil out in the hot desert valley. you find the neighbor's empty above-ground pool thrown over a fence halfway into the road and you know what happened even though you didn't see it.
I guess to people used to seeing things it's terrifying to be suddenly blind. but for someone who doesn't remember what sight is, it's not that strange.
honestly the worst part is living in a world where everyone else can see, and where everyone refuses to understand that you are blind. and you're blind, so you don't even realize other people can see. you just know they speak in riddles and things that seem to be lies.
they talk about feeling emotions in a way that you have never truly felt. they talk about knowing things with a certainty that you distrust with every fiber of your being. they speak of senses that you fundamentally lack. and you start to realize that you are simply different from them. that you view the world by intuition and auras and air pockets and memory of where things would be if all the other data you've collected were to hold true
and sometimes you're wrong.
another mistake and you learn to stop assuming things are consistent in the way you want them to be.
people do not exist when they are gone
they spring back into existence the moment they return to your sight
object permanence is a skill babies learn
it is a skill you have to trust with the faith of a believer in a god they will never see proof of
at least your god proves itself to you
in a thousand consequences and a thousand stinging thorns and a thousand soft kisses that come from somewhere you cannot understand
but you must trust that they exist
even if you cannot believe it
faith is the substance of things hoped for
the evidence of things unseen