Stumble It!
Just looking at a load of photos I took yesterday and today (last day of uniform, first day of non-uniform; study leave starts on Wednesday. We’re growing up so fast it’s scary), which led to me to looking through my friends’ photo albums on Facebook. There’re all these photos of a kid with a big mouth and yellowish hair gurning at the camera, or looking smiley, or looking blurry when I jerked my phone around to see the photo too soon. She has her arm round people, they have their arm round her; she’s in castles and at school and lying on grass and half-asleep; she’s dancing and pulling bunny ears over other people’s heads and refusing to smile for the camera – trotting out her best emo impression instead (which is a pretty crap one, seeing as how I always start laughing before it’s taken). It’s me. Right?
Well… the pictures are definitely of a girl who looks a bit like the one I see when I happen to look in mirrors. I mean, she’s got the Robinson mouth. The girl in the pictures would appear to be friends with everyone I’m friends with, or at least to know them well enough to have been everywhere with them that I’ve been with them. By all accounts she ought to be me. But I don’t recognise her.
It’s very hard for me to realise that the thoughts I have are on the inside of a body. I’m not just thinking this, I’m sitting at a computer typing this. Or Suzy is, at least. I happen to be living inside of her. That’s how it feels. I don’t mean I’m not her – I am her – it’s just that I don’t understand how so many people see so many Suzies but they all have to be living in the same body – this one – which is mine – but it’s my friends who (unconsciously) control what comes out of it so it’s theirs.
So to speak.
I was thinking about my last post and I think I get it. Everyone I know seems to me to be like a lighthouse, a safe, functioning lighthouse. They have a lamp on the inside, and they give out a constant light. The light is always the same no matter who’s looking at it; it doesn’t change; look at it from any angle and yup, it’s still giving out the same old yellow fluorescence. And me, I’m a lighthouse without a lamp. Anyone anything gets from me is smoke and mirrors. The only light the inside of the lighthouse can give out is what it reflects from everything else. Everyone I know seems to have a core. I seem to be empty. Their core radiates who they are to the world. I don’t have anything to radiate this from, so I’m not anyone. I’m not very real at all. I’m just what they want to see.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | blonde hair, computer, dancing, depersonalisation, facebook, lamp, lighthouse, photos, reality, robinson, smoke and mirrors, so many suzies, study leave
Hi Su
Just wanting to send you some love after reading this post…. lots and lots of love!!! Hope that’s ok with you, considering you don’t know me at all? It’s just that you describe the indescribable so well, and it resonates so strongly. Take care xxx
That’s great with me! Thank you.
Su x
There’s a book I read recently, called “Feeling Unreal” by Simeon and Abugel. Have you seen it? If not, I’d really recommend it! I wish I’d found it about 2 decades ago.Very validating if nothing else.
I just reserved it from the library over the internet, and I’m third in the queue now. So hopefully I’ll get it before the summer holidays.
Su x
[...] the poor old left forearm (which is stinging like hell right now), finally explained what I said in this post to her about feeling unreal and living in a world of ghosts and pretend, started crying, [...]
I’ve just got the book from the library (after reserving it so long ago as well!) and it’s bizarre. I can’t understand anything it says; there’s the conscious equivalent of muscle memory when I read it – I know it ought to resonate and validate with me – but it doesn’t. And this post is like a stranger wrote it. I remember the thought of feeling this way, but I don’t remember actually feeling this way. Though it’s a sign I’m better, I never actually accepted I was worse. So it’s horrible proof that there was something wrong. And I don’t think I like that.
But ybear, if you ever read this, I just want to say thank you – you were a wonderful surce of support for me, with those super-long comments of yours, when I was going through this tricky period in my life. So: thank you!
Suzy x