Girls Gone Tahoe
Depersonalization Disorder. Just read it on the road trip home, in a fashion magazine of all things. In the DSM but with very little known about how to treat it. Looking to the big pharmaceutical companies to cure it. About a sense of disconnected, surrealness, about ones life. A combination of Anxiety and Depression Disorders. A Buddhas teaching of egolessness gone bad.
I was riding back with a scientist and asked her about it. She said, she had read the article too. My other friend commenting on how it sounded like a deep depression if the person was unable to lift themselves out of bed. Then I commented it was much like a character in the book I had picked off her shelf before we headed out of town, Oh the Glory of It All. In the book the best friend had usurped her, taking her husband and sons affection with it, now she laid in bed, days at a time.
Between the champagne, playstation and the snow the second annual girls weekend was a hit. Truly articulate women commenting on how monogamy is a trade. How marriage, does require decisions. How silly it was to be called an opt out wife if you choose to stay home with your child. All thirtysomething with no children. Confident that the choices we made would be our own.
Yet somehow, I realized we spend so much of our life coasting. Comfortably numb, and one psychologist commented in her book that the same comfort we carve out leaves us so guarded and safe from even our own emotions.
It is funny how it all comes together, the books, conversations, articles in glossy magazines to make a commentary on being comfortably numb. As I unpacked my weekend luggage I thought, of words like coasting, getting by, just really words that lack any true feeling. Everything comes so naturally, so easily, that we loose a part of ourselves that challenged or questioned. A zest, the drive, complacent to not, question or challenge, not stand up to what is not right. Staying in the relationship when you know clearly you are settling, or maybe you don't know, and that is even more troubling.
The symptoms of the depersonalization disorder are linked to an adolescent experience that is traumatic in nature, or an illness. It may be a long shot, but it sounds like if we take what is easy, then we will question our own ability to feel in the long run.
The weekend away was perfect. The time spent with new and old friends significant. Reaffirming, reassuring that experiences do not occur in complete isolation, when you share your story. Addiction, tough love, sibling relationships, family, all issues we have had to take unpopular stands on. All decisions, thoughtful and life altering, we can wake up and know that we are not numb, not de-personalized, thankfully quite outspoken.
I was riding back with a scientist and asked her about it. She said, she had read the article too. My other friend commenting on how it sounded like a deep depression if the person was unable to lift themselves out of bed. Then I commented it was much like a character in the book I had picked off her shelf before we headed out of town, Oh the Glory of It All. In the book the best friend had usurped her, taking her husband and sons affection with it, now she laid in bed, days at a time.
Between the champagne, playstation and the snow the second annual girls weekend was a hit. Truly articulate women commenting on how monogamy is a trade. How marriage, does require decisions. How silly it was to be called an opt out wife if you choose to stay home with your child. All thirtysomething with no children. Confident that the choices we made would be our own.
Yet somehow, I realized we spend so much of our life coasting. Comfortably numb, and one psychologist commented in her book that the same comfort we carve out leaves us so guarded and safe from even our own emotions.
It is funny how it all comes together, the books, conversations, articles in glossy magazines to make a commentary on being comfortably numb. As I unpacked my weekend luggage I thought, of words like coasting, getting by, just really words that lack any true feeling. Everything comes so naturally, so easily, that we loose a part of ourselves that challenged or questioned. A zest, the drive, complacent to not, question or challenge, not stand up to what is not right. Staying in the relationship when you know clearly you are settling, or maybe you don't know, and that is even more troubling.
The symptoms of the depersonalization disorder are linked to an adolescent experience that is traumatic in nature, or an illness. It may be a long shot, but it sounds like if we take what is easy, then we will question our own ability to feel in the long run.
The weekend away was perfect. The time spent with new and old friends significant. Reaffirming, reassuring that experiences do not occur in complete isolation, when you share your story. Addiction, tough love, sibling relationships, family, all issues we have had to take unpopular stands on. All decisions, thoughtful and life altering, we can wake up and know that we are not numb, not de-personalized, thankfully quite outspoken.
posted by Lorena | 5:19 PM
1 Comments:
nice one!
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