(Please excuse the unnecessary length and dramatics)
To feel like a changeling, one that grew so accustomed to the life of being human, that it slowly denied ever not being one. That it IS the real child. That its memories are its own, and not stolen from a body and self implanted. To feel like an actor that’s been playing a part for years, but has slowly forgotten the character, the set, even the play. Unable to even understand the reality of the situation, he continues on, trying to form a cohesive plot with the scraps he can remember. To feel like a robot, programmed with memories of a human and sent into the real world. A robot so advanced, that it can fake humanity almost perfectly….Almost. It can never feel truly human, always a mental outsider to this world of beings that it just can’t bring itself to act like, because it is not one of them. Whether better or worse, it is having a harder and harder time being a fake. An amazing automaton, but an automoton none the less. Never able to feel quite right. Feel excitement, happines, pain, love. It all seems to be someone else’s emotions, someTHING else’s emotions, events, and life, merely imprinted on this not-quite-human. That’s how I’ve been feeling for a few years. I also feel like a test has been recently conducted, not conciously, not purposefully, but the result has kind of reasserted this feeling. First love and heartbreak. Now the problem isn’t that I feel so depressed about it. I do feel depression, but it’s indirect, a byproduct of the fact that I don’t feel depression about it. An event that should have left me in tears has only left me the same as I was before, disconnected. Feeling like nothing has really happened. Like self nihilism. There’s a bridge that sits over a moderately busy highway not 5 minutes walking distance from my domicile, and I often find myself staring over the edge. I just stand there and think, “why not?” because, to me, it doesn’t feel like I’d be actually terminating a life. More like I’d be going back to the forest, back to the elves. Maybe finally walking off of the stage, content to leave my performance. Or having myself shut down for good. I never do it, because if there’s one thing I DO feel decently, it’s the instinct of self preservation, though that’s been getting old. I think I do want to live, but what I’ve had hasn’t been life, not quite anyways.
9 comments
Well, I hope you write more. I, myself, can’t really grasp how one would come to have (developed) the mental/psychological configuration/processing mechanism to live as you have… dissociative disorder, result of early hurt/trauma – I dunno. Thanks for sharing. I hope somehow you undergo a re-configuration or dissolve perhaps the seperation/barriers/fragmentation that seemingly exist in your mind/psyche. I’m not as smart as you, so perhaps forgive my ignorance here; just appreciated your writing, and thought to comment. All the best.
I understand exactly what you’re talking about here and have all the same feelings. I too feel like an actor playing the horrible “role” of this life that seems to be someone elses. This is someone elses body, someone elses life, and here is my soul trapped inside a body and life that isn’t mine. Someone elses memories. I too feel that when my body dies it isn’t actually “me” that has died. You put it so, so well. Feels like some giant, stupid, barbaric experiment our creator is playing on us.
@searchingformeaning
Thank you for the kind words. Truth be told, I wouldn’t really know what to do or where to start, as I am brand new to this website. No need to apologize for you ignorance. Not like I can criticize you for being ignorant on a topic I also don’t understand. Cheers.
@rach
Though similar, our thought patterns are not identical. I do not believe that I am being conspired against by some greater power. Nor do I think that my soul is actually trapped in any way. It’s more of a self nihilism than a form of paranoia. I believe that I do not exist, in the fullest sense. Perhaps I’ll take searchingformeaning’s advice and write a more complete literary effigy of my thoughts.
@ Heresy :
I look forward to reading your “literary effigy”.
This site is not particularly conducive to developing long-term mutually-supportive relationships, though I hardly think that you or most others who come on here are really looking for that; just more a place to share your story on, and perhaps get some helpful/supportive feedback; or for one to simply share something that they think would benefit other users here.
Yes, you may – and hopefully you do – meet people whose “thought patterns” perhaps ‘resonate’ with (/are closer / “identical” with) yours, or otherwise aid you in perhaps understanding, getting more insight, into your own state of mind and circumstances, hopefully to move forward at least a little better off. A few seem to come here simply because they are on the verge of committing suicide, share their story, interact a bit, and well, do what they intended to do.
Perhaps just reading other people’s stories here may help to modify your own narrative so that you’re somewhat better off. You could perhaps read the posts of rach who has also commented, to perhaps gain some insight into her circumstances :
suicideproject[dot]org/author/rach/
if you want to.
My mind’s a bit of a mess right now, so again 🙂 forgive me if this is also something of a mess.
Thank you, and take care.
Gah, sorry. Maybe it was the late night, but that comment I replied to rach with is all kinds of pretentious u.u Again, thank you for the advice.
You seem like a really nice person. I hope to read more of you.
I think you articulating how you perceive things may also help me, given where I’m at; and, er… you give me way too much credit – no, I’m not being modest – *I* do the pretentious thing a whole lot; if you stick around, you may pick that up. 🙂
Thanks, Heresy. All the best to you.
I know I’m going off topic but I must say this: the way you express yourself is soo articulate. You a good writer-look into that maybe?
Hopefully you can one day “get off stage”. I guess it is something you need to work on?
“First love and heartbreak. Now the problem isn’t that I feel so depressed about it. I do feel depression, but it’s indirect, a byproduct of the fact that I don’t feel depression about it. An event that should have left me in tears has only left me the same as I was before, disconnected. Feeling like nothing has really happened.”
It /seems/ to me that you are complaining about the absolute best case scenario regarding first loves: not being the slightest bit impacted, at all.
“Oh, poor me, i’m not sad about something i hoped would hurt enough to make me feel alive! Woe is meeeee!”
It just strikes me as rather odd that anyone would be sad about not being sad; as if being sad about something was what you wanted, and you’re upset that an often saddening event did not end up making you feel as destroyed as you might have hoped.
It seems silly to be sad about not being sad.
Perhaps it deserves a comparison to “being happy about being unhappy.”
I’m so sorry that you’re so sad about not being sad, and unable to be happy about being unhappy. Or something.
We do have free will and the responsibility to choose our choices wisely, but we don’t always have access to the right choices, nor do we always control which choices are available.