I put the majority of this post behind a trigger tag because it's a long story that involves childhood sexual abuse and emotional abuse.
About two weeks ago, experienced the strongest depersonalization I have ever experienced in my life. I've experienced dissociation since I was a kid, but my experiences have been mostly mild. I experience really strong derealization fairly often, though.
Anyway, my dad and I had a very serious conversation recently about things that happened in the past.
Possible trigger:
On my 10th birthday, my older cousin sexually abused me. I told my mom about it right away, and she told my dad. My cousin is the son of my mother's sister. My parents and I never ever spoke about it again. My mom already had a lot of problems with her sister, so I guess this incident was the straw that broke the camel's back. My mom totally cut ties with that side of the family. We didn't see or speak to my aunt and cousins for ten years. There's a lot more to this story, but long story short I blamed myself all that time. All I could see was that something happened to me, and my family fell apart because of it. And since we never spoke about it, nobody ever told me that it wasn't my fault.
When my family finally reunited after a decade, it was clear that some of the family (mainly my grandmother, and partially my aunt) blamed me for the long estrangement. I was treated like an outcast. It was terrible. After the initial reunion, every time we would get together as a family, the experience was so painful. I wanted to throw up and die. I would spend the whole time watching my family get reacquainted with one another, like they were in a snow globe and I was a terrible monster banished to the outer realm doomed to agonize as I watched them and their happiness bloom without me and my monstrousness in the way.
Adding insult to injury, it seemed like everyone had given my cousin a pass on what he had done to me. I was the one who was a victim, but he got all of the support and love. I was the one who was made to feel wrong.
On a separate note, I also have specific issues with my grandmother. My grandmother is not a kind woman. I think she has Histrionic personality disorder, but can't be certain. When we used to talk, she used to make humiliating comments about my weight (I'm overweight) all the time in front of family, friends, strangers -- anyone.
If that wasn't hard enough to deal with, she told me to my face that if I hadn't made such a big deal about my cousin, the family would never have broken apart.
That was 3 years ago, and I haven't spoken to her since. My grandmother is old, who knows how much longer she has to live, but I don't care. I can't talk to her, I can't be near her. And I can't be near my family when they celebrate and love the one who abused me while also putting me down.
It's now been over 20 years since he abused me, and over 10 years since we reunited as a family. I recently made the official decision that I could not be around that part of the family anymore, at least for now. I'm still nursing unhealed wounds.
I told my dad about all of this, and for the first time in over 20 years, we spoke about all of this stuff -- what my cousin did to me, how the family broke apart, how the family treated me, how he failed me as a parent (his words, not mine), and so many other things.
It was the first time that one of the adults of my childhood actually acknowledged me as being a victim, actually gave me sympathy and love. It was the first time that someone who was involved said, "It wasn't your fault."
In many ways, even though I'm an adult, I'm still that little girl crying in the corner under a blanket waiting for someone to see me, to acknowledge how real my pain is. You would think that after waiting so long, I'd be overcome with joy that it finally came.
But I wasn't.
First off, even though I finally got that moment that I've been waiting so long for, it doesn't erase the emotional history of what happened. I still experienced what I experienced -- that all is very real, and will always be real.
I felt like a computer trying to tangle with two contradicting commands, before finally shutting down. I slept for almost 2 days straight, and didn't wake up until I had a terrible, paralyzing nightmare that literally scared me out of bed. When I woke up from that nightmare, I was already standing next to the bed, screaming, looking around with wild eyes.
The next day is when the depersonalization hit me hard. I could barely function. It was like trying to control an unwieldy robot using a primitive control system -- even something as simple and automatic as walking was problematic. Honestly, being outside and going to work that day was dangerous for me, because I think I could have possibly fallen and hurt myself. Everything around me was fog, and I was nothing more than an extension of the fog. My eyes were seeing, but it was like watching television or like walking through a movie set -- nothing in front of me was real, it was all artifice. I did not feel sad, or angry, or anything -- at least not directly. It was like somebody else was having emotions, and the emotions were giving off electricity, and I could feel the electricity.
I'm slowly crawling out of that fog -- I've been able to cry a few times since that day, so that's good. It was really probably the weirdest (and in some ways, the most upsetting) psychological state of mind I have ever experienced.
In a strange way, though, I feel like it signifies some kind of changing of the tide. Maybe I'm just wishful thinking, and maybe I am just trying to find meaning in something that isn't there. Maybe I am trying to overcompensate all that misery with a false hope that equals in measure. But I feel like the depersonalization was my brain's way of restarting itself. I feel like right now there's this thing inside of me that's finally giving me permission to heal and put some of this burden down.
We shall see.