Becoming Real
I woke up early when the children were still asleep and peered into our guinea pig cage. The mother had given birth overnight. Two of the babies looked fine but one was limp and lifeless. The day hadn’t even begun, and I wanted to crawl back under my covers and blot out my children, my work, my life, and these guinea pigs. Instead, I took that dead baby guinea pig and threw it into the bottom of the trash where no one would ever find it. I never told the children about it when they woke up excited about the two babies in the cage. I quickly got them ready for school and swooshed them out the door.
In Awe of Life and Death
There was a time when I would have celebrated the live births and grieved the loss of one life with my children. We would have left the wet new ones to suckle from their mother while we took the dead one outside to bury it, say poems, and put flowers on its grave. Then, we would have come back inside to giggle and watch in awe as these awake ones began to open their eyes and breathe in their new life.
Who Are We?
That time wasn’t now. I watched myself from the corner of the room and wondered who I was. I felt hollow inside and was certain I didn’t exist. I went through the motions of my morning without inhabiting my body and could feel myself slowly slipping away.
Year after year, this unknowing myself and all-pervasive numbness inhabited my being to the point that I always felt that way. I watched this wretched woman go through the motions of life feeling nothing, unmoored from her surroundings, unable to touch the people she loved. How tragic, I thought, that I can’t feel sadness and I can’t feel joy. It was an oxymoron that I felt nothing. If nothing is there, how can you feel it?
Underground Gymnastics
Some years later, I would learn this is dissociation, what I sometimes call the “underground gymnastics” of my mind. Generalized depersonalization, detachment from my body at the same time I was leveled by body pain, knowing and not-knowing simultaneously, disconnected from people and places, unconscious switches – all contributed to a profound sense of unreality.
We Don’t Feel Real
Those of us with dissociative disorders all experience these sensations in some way or another. Next to communicating with our insiders and listening to their stories, addressing the perception of unreality is the most important task of our therapeutic work. Let’s be clear. We are real but we don’t feel real. Usually, becoming real is a result of our parts work, a result of a trusting relationship with a caring therapist, a result of listening to and believing ourselves, a result of intentional body work, a result of making a life, a result of loving ourselves. Gradually, we begin to inhabit our bodies again. Gradually, we feel our feelings again. Gradually, we know who we are. Becoming real doesn’t come easily. It’s hard work and takes a long time.
It Happens
The first time I read The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, I cried. Old feelings I had lost so long ago crept to the surface. This dear, old, threadbare rabbit is worn thin and ready for the trash bin, much the way I felt at the time. Knowing he will soon be discarded, he wishes he had been made real, so the Skin Horse tells him, “Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Becoming Real
Like the Velveteen Rabbit, we are becoming Real. As we love ourselves, it doesn’t matter if we are shabby and loose in the joints with eyes that drop out. Our healthy self-love transforms our inner selves into the reality that is us. We don’t have to wonder who we are anymore because we know. Whether one or many, we are Real.
Self-Care
What helps you feel real? Body movement can help whether it’s walking, running, yoga, safe touch, or massage.
Talking with someone who validates you can help.
Writing what you’re feeling and thinking, then trying to make connections, can help.
Spending time in nature, by the ocean, in the mountains, in the desert, in Central Park can help.
Find your authentic self(ves) and you’ll begin to feel real.
Breathe out the false selves that separate you from your essence. Breathe in your authentic selves and celebrate who you are.
Invitation
Check out my website at www.lynbarrett.com where you can download my free ebook called DID Unpacked and receive a free weekly newsletter. My memoir, Crazy: Reclaiming Life from the Shadow of Traumatic Memory (formerly titled Crazy? A Memoir and Crazy: In Search of a Narrative) will be released on December 1, 2021. Our new Dissociative Writers website is filled with writing opportunities to explore.
When do you feel most real? Share in the Comments below.
“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.
But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
The Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams