Slipping away

Since my breakdown, I've been trying to keep close tabs on my mental and emotional state. This includes consciously keeping track of what I'm feeling, when I'm feeling it, and, if possible, why I'm feeling whatever it is I'm feeling, plus how much control I have over myself. Now that I've been on medication for about two weeks, things in my head are getting back to normal. Mostly. Last night was the big exception. As I was lying in bed, somewhere between waking and sleep, my memories of the last year of my life changed from memories of things that actually happened to memories of things I've dreamed about. I don't know if that makes sense. In other words, I know the last year happened, but when I think about it, it's like I'm remembering things from a dream. All the feelings associated with the events are somehow less tangible, less meaningful. It's like if you were scared or sad in a dream, you wake up remembering those feelings, but they ultimately don't register as feelings that matter, as feelings that really impact you.

So, if you can follow that, then you understand how it's extremely disconcerting. Especially in regard to M, the girl who dumped me and broke my heart. When I think about her now, it's like remembering someone from a dream, someone who isn't real. I was actually so worried for a moment that she wasn't real that I had to dig up some pictures of us just to prove it to myself. My only explanation for this feeling is that I no longer feel as intensely about her -- good or bad, love or loss -- as I used to, and the contrast between past intensity and this new more neutral feeling is fucking with my head. And I don't like it. Plus it's made me really want to see her again just to try to spark some of those old feelings, even if they're painful, just so I know she really is a person in the world who really was such an important part of my life even for a short time. I want to see her and hear her voice again. I guess, in a sense, this is another layer of loss. One thing that probably adds to it is the fact that she disappeared from my life so suddenly. I went from seeing and talking to her every day, to having no contact with at all almost instantly. And now that I've quit my job and am moving out of my apartment, I could easily never see her again. Not that I could bear to see her again just yet. But this is a new layer to the loss I've been dealing with.

Also: What happens to people who disappear from our lives like that? Do they exist anymore? Their lives go forward and they change and soon they become somebody else, living lives that are no longer so intimately connected to our own.