Third-Person View

This is going to be hard to explain, but I found a comment on Reddit that succinctly captures the feeling:

Depersonalization, for me, is a disconnect between my brain and my body. I'm watching through my eyes, but I'm not really controlling what I am doing. I have no feeling, no real thoughts, and no emotions, but I'm "seeing" what's going on.

It's kind of like some video games that have POV cut scenes where you are watching something happen to your character on screen, but it's not happening to you personally. You're detached from it, but you're watching it through the eyes of your character.

You can also apply this to other media like books or movies, wherein you can read/see that a character is going through a hard time, or something horrible happens to them, but obviously you're detached from it all and it doesn't affect you physically.

For months, I've been trying to capture how I've been feeling and this phrase sums it up best. It's still so strange because I feel like I'm not here. Like I'm not typing this out and I'm somewhere else in my head. So, rather than me trying to bring my thoughts to you, I'd like to bring you to my thoughts instead.

I'm not the one driving, I'm somewhere else

Most of the day, I'm on autopilot. I'm actually at a pretty sweet place: at home. Well, not the home I'm currently living in. But in a home I'd like to be in the future. In there, I'm happy, I have a wife whom I hug and express my feelings to. It's pretty nice there. Yeah, weird thing to confess that I'm a grown man and yet I daydream most of the time lol.

I'm physically here, most of the time, but mentally, I'm helping out with the laundry, cooking, and cracking jokes with a fictional wife in my head. Funny enough, she's not someone I personally know. This is another embarrassing confession but I've been doing this since, I don't know, maybe grade school? And definitely high school, where I'd just zone out and imagine myself spending the day with some K-Pop star. And until today, it's the same case, with some K-Pop star, too, funny enough.

But can you blame me?

I probably developed this mechanism to shield myself from whatever horrible shit is going on in my life. Plus, it’s not like I have a person like that in my life. I‘m still single, I don’t have a person who’s my safe space. The question is, when did I start living more in my head than in the real world?

To tell you the truth, I don't fully know either. I have a hunch, and maybe it's when I suffered through my last heartbreak years ago. But I feel totally fine and I've actually made up with the person! Still, I think reality got too disappointing from thereon and I just didn't want to deal with the complexity of real life.

What happens to the character doesn't happen to me

Some horrible stuff has gone on in my life recently, and yet I didn't shed a tear, nor was I emotional about it. A family member of mine had something bad happen to them, so bad that they were brought to the hospital and I had to accompany them. Under normal circumstances, I would've at least shed a tear. But I was emotionally sound through it all. Physically tired, sure, because I stayed up all day until they were okay. But weirdly of sound mind.

Don't you think that's strange? Something that horrible can happen and yet, to me, it was nothing damaging. Maybe you can chalk it up to me "being a pillar of strength so that they feel better" and while that could be true, it's still strange that I didn't cry through a single part of it.

Actually, so much horrible stuff happens in my life that I just abstract myself from it. It's like I'm numb to them.

"Abstraction" is a funny word to use, because that's what all this is. It's like I'm viewing things through a monitor or screen. Some truly evil shit could be going down and I'm emotionally numb to it. I don't cry, I don't shed a tear. It concerns me so much.

The last time I felt something real was when I took damage

I remember sharing to a friend about some dumb, nerdy shit that I made. I told them that I had set this thing on my iPhone so that my wallpaper changes to a different one depending on the time of day: morning, afternoon, and evening. They simply said, "I don't care," and I felt so shut down, I felt like I was going to cry.

Then I remember what LK said to me, she said that her boyfriend is her safe space. The person she tells everything to and feels safe with. I've never had that. Upon realizing that, that's when I cried and I cried so hard while I was still in a call with my friend. And even while crying, my friend didn't notice and ask me about it. I just hid my sound of crying under the guise of me having a clogged nose.

It actually took me a while to piece together why I cried there, but not when my beloved family member was literally sent to the hospital.

I felt something real because I was being real.

If you actually know me, I'm quite polite to people. I say "thank you" to everyone, I ask friends how they're doing, I follow up with people and check in on my friends, and I act enthusiastic over the small things people say. And, most of the time, I'm just people's emotional receptacle. I've had strangers and friends just dump and rant endlessly to me about how they're feeling. I just saw a person get verbally abused by their parents, and for another person, their ex just mistreated them so badly. You name a platform, and I can assure you, some person has ranted to me there.

I've mentioned this a lot in Thank You for Listening but listening to people rant and say their horrible experiences to me takes a toll on me. It's always about someone else's feelings while I have to minimize mine to them. Sure, abstracting myself away from what they're feeling does help, and I think it's the right response. But it just sucks when I get trauma dumped on by so many people. Especially since most people who rant to me disappear in less than a month anyway. Fuck, even now, that's happening because I know at least 5 people I'm talking to that don't give a shit about how I feel or how I'm doing.

That one time, that one fucking small time I share something about myself, I get shut down. It was such a useless thing, too. Some dumb iPhone wallpaper shit, and yet they didn't care.

To be free means to leave through the door

If I were to fix this, I'd actually have to stop living less in my head and more in reality. But I don't actually think it's that easy to do.

I'm like this way because realizing all of the horrible things in my life might actually drive me mad. Like, it would make me have a full-on mental breakdown. I hide and deal with so much pain that I'm luckily abstracted away from. But to feel the full weight of all that? Nah, bruh, that's not going to end well.

It also doesn't solve the issue of me being an emotional receptacle to my friends. I can't just "find new, better friends" that easily. And I can't just "oh sweetie, you don't need anyone else's approval" my way out of this.

So, currently, I'm at a loss.

Being alone while having to deal with others' emotional bullshit is the overarching plot of this part of my life—and I hate it. I have so many people treat me like shit, take advantage of me, be so fake to me, put me through so much pain and misery, make fun of me, and all that just to leave me to pick up whatever's left at the end of the day. I'm just glad disassociation is my coping mechanism now. God knows how hard it'll be if it were some actual vice like drinking, smoking, or gambling. I'll take this over those.

That said, I don't want to live trapped in my mind forever. Part of me feels like my future trip to Korea is my way of solving this. Going to Korea HAS. ALWAYS. been a dream of mine. I even dreamed of having Korean parents while I was going through a depressive time in high school.

Korea has always been a dream, something I only experienced inside my head. But now, I can turn that dream into reality. It's kind of like a sabbatical (a vacation, actually) for me. A time for me to stop being inside my head and actually live my dream of going to Korea. It won't just be some place I see on a screen or in my head. For once, I'll actually engage with whatever's happening in the real world.

I think that's the best way to go about this.

Reality is so shit these days that I run to my head to see my dreams. My dream of being loved (romantically) by a person. My dream of being appreciated and actively involved in a friend group. My dream of being able to live somewhere comfortable and peaceful.

The good news is that I can make my dreams a reality. Senior developer job? What was once a dream, now a reality. My promise to myself of getting my own MacBook Pro? Done. And soon, my trip to Korea. It's about realizing that I can be an active participant in my life who can shape what happens next.

I'd get out of my dream world for that. I can change the real world if I try hard enough.