Its not a nice feeling when you can hardly recognise yourself....I sometimes find myself sitting somewhere and i catch sight of myself from a sort of projected me - you know like an outer body experience sort of thing but i do it deliberately - and i just don't know who it is i am looking at! It is me of course but its not!
I mean do you ever hear a recording of your voice and think......OMG i don't sound like that do i? Or even worse a video of yourself that you can't help but cringe because every 5 seconds you are doing the helicopter dance with your arms? and then you wonder why on earth no one tells you how silly you look? Its a bit like that.....but its a more subtle kind of difference, the sort of thing you notice about someone that you know well - their eyes are a little bit duller than usual, their smile is not so wide - you know there is something not quite right but its hard to put your finger on what it is.
Its funny, most people i have spoken to about it say they wish they had something more obviously wrong with them when they are depressed because that way others would actually know they were sick. Ironically though the fact that you become more and more conscious of yourself means that you feel like its not possible that people don't notice that there is something very 'odd' about you. I remember the first time i started to take medication i used to constantly look at my eyes in the mirror - I thought my pupils looked like saucers but yet no-one around me seemed to notice.....either that or they just thought i was constantly stoned or something and they just didn't want to ask.......
Anyway, i was talking about the feeling of not really knowing who you are anymore, i suppose thats down to the fact that pretty much everything that defines you as a person just seems to disappear into the void. On top of that there is also the pretence that goes on - the mask that comes out when you are forced into a situation when its just easier in some ways to smile and carry on as if there is nothing wrong. Its not easier to pretend to be ok though, its exhausting - sometimes its just less exhausting than trying to explain what is wrong. Pretending though adds a complication, not just for other people who can find it hard to understand how you can be ok sometimes but not ok a lot of the time too - It also complicates things in your own head - I mean how do you pretend to be yourself??? Honestly??? Its like a weird role playing form of torture - which you is the real you? and if i'm feeling a little bit better is that actually real or is it just something i've concocted, if its not real then when will the real feelings hit me once again? You confused yet?
So many things come into my head when i start to think about this you know - the idea of "faking it till you can make it", the idea of having a "positive mental attitude" and of course the "well you just have to try"........OMG it just makes me want to shout and scream;......or at least it would if i had any energy left from fighting all the mental torture, pretending to be ok, and putting myself into constantly scary situations.......
Yet throughout it all the real me does make an appearance now and then, my own thoughts put in an appearance in the midst of the chaos like the sudden and unmistakable smell that has the power to catapult you back to a certain place in time. It quickens the heart and excites the mind.......I'm still there, i haven't really been stolen away by the thief that crept into my mind while i wasn't watching.......
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