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For years, I thought that the way I am is just part of my unique personality and I wondered why I never met anyone who seemed to ever feel the way I do. This is why the breakthrough I've had feels like such a relief.
I've made choices in dealing with serious things that have caused a lot of regret and confusion. Possibly knowing why is what makes me sad. Why did I never find this out before? How different all my life could have been had I known.
My "breakthrough" came from learning about something that's called Depersonalization and/or Derealization.
Because I spend so much time inside my head, trying to figure myself out, I finally decided to look up reasons for the way I think and feel. I ran across a forum where someone was asking the same question I was: "Why do I have such a constant feeling of surreality?" There are apparently a lot of people who wonder the same thing.
Now that I have some idea that this inner personality of mine is not unique to me, I have to figure out what to do about it. For the time being though, I just need to wrap my head around what it all means.
Once I learned about "DP/DR" (and I believe that Derealization is my main problem), the first thing I did was cry for about an hour. Then I spent most of the night having flashbacks of my life. So many things have been screwed up because of the way I have handled things. At the time I was making certain choices, I didn't even understand why but I'd sometimes look back and wonder what the hell was I thinking. There are major regrets from some of those choices.
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| most of my life feels like this - unclear or misdefined |
I don't know when I started having these feelings, but I do know that without God, I would not have been able to deal with the constant regrets and consequences caused by them. Still, I can't help but think that it took me until middle age to know about this. So much wasted time! I was thinking last night that this is probably why I write stories to make myself seem more real to the world. I think that when I write I'm trying to live the life I can't grasp any other way. I'm still trying to deal with learning about the DP/DR so I'm probably not making much sense right now.
It's not easy for me to put myself out there (and I'm going to hurry and post this before I change my mind), but I don't want anyone else to not know about this. There may be someone out there, like me, who never heard of this and so have been wasting precious time from their life just wandering through thinking that they are alone.
I guess I will have to find the courage to talk with my doctors about this. Just knowing about it myself is almost too much to handle and, ironically, seem to be creating even more of a surreal feeling.
Here are some references I have found, in case you want to understand what I'm talking about:
