Dissociating

I’ve apparently reached a strange stage in my unwanted and crushing journey of life without my daughter, one that I wasn’t familiar with despite that psychology degree or these recent months of forced attendance in the school of hard knocks. It would appear that my brain, in yet another last-ditch effort to protect and shield me from the actual harsh reality, has begun to dabble in a bit of dissociation.

My internal narrative has occasionally shifted to a third-person omniscient point of view, where pronouns such as “he” and “him” dominate and create some distance, one assumes, from what has happened. 

I sit there and feel sorry for “that guy,” who will receive a phone call on the morning of May 22 that will change everything forever. 

“That poor guy,” I ponder, “living his life that week, going to bed the evening of May 21, not knowing what was about to happen,” 

Or, “Man, that guy will have a lot to work through the next months after that, and he’ll write stuff too painful to contemplate yet still for some reason express them, anyway, and share them with anyone willing to slog through that despair; I don’t envy him having to call forth all those emotions, and I don’t envy those who care about him having to watch that.”

Or, “I can’t imagine this happening to me, and can’t imagine how this guy will make it through all of that.”

Or, “He’s waiting for it to get better; who’s going to tell him that at least for the next several months it will not get better?”

You get the idea. It’s really kind of disconcerting, because over and above this occasional third-person narrative there is another one in the first person that’s wondering why the hell we are thinking like this. Or why I am thinking like this. We? Who knows

I’ll cry for this guy as much as I’m crying for her, but then of course much like the realization that you’re dreaming while within the dream itself breaks that pseudo-reality, the third person suddenly becomes first again, and I lose any potential benefit from the buffer that the dissociation may have provided.

It’s odd, but perhaps a bit understandable and not unique to me. I hope so.

And so does Hank.