November 6, 2003
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when you’re sick and going to die
call me up and I will cry.
that’s what I wrote in everyone’s yearbook. yessir, I still like it.
I feel like part of the present today, like I’ve emerged from a long murky tunnel (no that wasn’t some kind of birth canal reference, although, I know, with me it’s hard to tell).
I learned to detach rather than dissociate. and yes, I know what that really means, and yes, I’m copping to it. there are whole chunks of my childhood, and even early adulthood, that I don’t remember. but learning to DETACH instead, well, it’s like riding a bike. once you get how to do it, you’ve got it. you don’t go back to the trike. woooooo! no more trancing out when it gets too painfull! or not even noticing when I’m IN pain. yeah!
in case you don’t know what it means to dissociate, well, you know when you’re driving on the highway for a long time, and all of a sudden you realize you don’t remember the last several miles? that’s dissociation. like everything, in small amounts it’s normal.
once in college, my boyfriend of two years started berating me, and then broke up with me. I got hysterical and cried…then, something tweaked, and I just stopped crying, and floated away. I could hear him, and I could kind of feel my body, but I couldn’t talk. I really really couldn’t. after an hour or so, it just snapped back in. freaked him the hell out though, which at the time, didn’t bother me any.
so, now I’ve learned that when the pain’s coming my way, HELLO, I can just step to the side, or just put up the hand. fucking pain, why would I want that anyway?
Comments (26)
Glad you can detach.
Man, I’m the polar opposite. I see that train a-comin’ and make a headlong run right into it.
Self preservation is an amazing thing, no? XOXOX
I love pain. I must.
I would have gone for revenge and told everyone you had to break up because he was growing boobs.
hon, that is so awesome. I don’t dissociate anymore either, just shut down. (sigh).
geez I think I “step out” far too much sometimes. Matt sees it happening… “hey dad, whatcha thinkin’ about?”
Not always pain. But sometimes, yeah. an angst place.
Awesome. Dissociation is great, but when I do it, I get dragged back down sometimes by imagining that it’s denial. It is a good thing, though. Thanks for putting it the way you did. I had never quite thought it through this way.
Hm. Denial… or compartmentalization? Sometimes you gotta just put that shit away somewhere, or it’ll eat you up. But I suppose that could be a long term problem too.
Detachment rocks!
I’ve never heard a better explanation of disassociation before. I do it all the time! Its worrying.
one thing…it makes it simple to trance if you’re into that sort of thing.
detachment and dissociation are both compartmentalizing, but detachment compartmentalizes on a network, so that information is always available…dissociation is like putting it in a box on a shelf in a locked cabinet, and not knowing where the key is.
re your involvement with porn as discussed on my site. I coulda guessed that!!!
Really difficult to do that… no?
Love the Dean Martin song
sometimes pain in small doses allows us to deal with PAIN in HUGE doses
thanks for the validating comment! sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy when I talk to her
Hmm. This is disturbing me. It’s too familiar.
amen
Pain is weakness leaving the body, but when you run out of pain…
…are you out of weakness?
I’ve never been able to trance out, hell when I was drunk I was never fortunate enough to black out…I remember every sickening, embarassing, terrifying detail of my life in brilliant technicolor…your way sounds soooo much nicer.
-M
I love you so much. You are my mentor.
You have taught me the world over. Thank you.
You are so wise.
I used to fade out, fade back in, fade out, fade back in…
I still do it sometimes. not like I did before though. sometimes I just need to be somewhere else.
ugh pain. fuck. it never ends. even when I’m happy, it hurts. it’s a different kind of hurt I guess. I don’t know. emotional weekend.