just arrived from Amazon

for 9 months I had depersonalization. I had no face and no self, no freedom. I stopped seeing myself in the mirror, I only saw a stranger. existence was a contradiction and reality felt like a big delusion. people were things, emotions were processes. I was seeing the world like I’m outside of it as if I’m an alien. the eyes that I was seeing with weren’t my eyes, and body the I felt wasn’t mine. everything was paradoxical. I didn’t exist, yet I existed.

My loved ones felt like strangers, I have information about them, but I had no self to recognize them as who they were to me. Seeing my mother as a stranger and as an object or a thing was something that I couldn’t tolerate. I panicked and cried on a daily basis.

I wasn’t broken from reality; I just saw it from a very distant angle. this angle forced me to see that everything that I know about everything is wrong. I had no model of reality and no model of myself and I was lost in nothingness. I suffered in silence. no one understood when I explained my strange condition. psychiatrists are not familiar with it. on average, it takes around a decade for a sufferer of depersonalization to receive the correct diagnosis. some doctors told me that I’m psychotic, others told me that I’m schizophrenic.

I became obsessed with difficult questions that no human can answer. How could we be conscious; how could we be at a specific time; what am I, etc. these questions tortured me and horrified me. For every second of every minute of every hour, I looped over the same questions. Many nights I cried myself to sleep because I knew nothing. I lost hope and thought many times about ending it all.

I tried to ignore it and suppress the questions. I tried everything from supplements to anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. Nothing worked. I fought it with every bit of strength that I had. At some point, I had a realization. I stopped suppressing the questions and stopped trying to ignore my perception. I went along with it and surrendered. I decided to redefine the world and remodel myself.

You never come back from it; you integrate it. I didn’t recover; I went out from the other side of the tunnel. That 9 months changed me forever and opened me to keep changing forever. I’m not just an ego anymore; I’m an ego and a self. I’m not separate anymore; the self within me is the self within you and we are all fundamentally one. The world isn’t an impossibility; it’s a miracle.

After 3 years of it, I’m a different person and the world is a different world. Depersonalization was the greatest revelation in my life and the most painful low and I am grateful for it. I romanticize it because, after it, life itself became a romance.