Through a glass, darkly
(Maybe this time I’ll promise to keep posting about the topic to ensure I’ll move on.)
I was listening to the CBC in the morning, as I have taken to doing, and they were discussing depersonalisation, which I thought was interesting, since there is, in fact, a link with self-injury (though this wasn’t mentioned). There will also be a link with the whole academia thing coming, which is reason to continue on or to ignore this, depending on your interests. (Look! I can bring in craziness in academia to my just plain insane posts!)
The point, basically, is that you feel not part of your body, or part of the world, something which I’d always taken to be part of depression for me, but was perhaps not quite the same. The world is a dream; you are a dream in it. It apparently hits educated people more highly, and they suggest links with existentialism (including the famous French author “Sot” — could you just pretend you can pronounce things marginally correctly?).
And — yes, yes, I’m totally nuts, I know this, but wasn’t it already clear from this blog? — this was also an issue, once, and, yes, hurting myself made things a bit better that way: I was really there, even if I couldn’t feel it. But, you know, it wasn’t all bad; things didn’t hurt as much, cause I was at a remove, and I could set myself a task (a difficult one, even) and do it while I was sort of checked out.
It’s like I’m *nostalgic* for my craziest periods. But, you know, in ways I felt I was more interesting then. (You’re not; not really. I mean, what’s fun about someone who’s not really there? The rest can be imagined. And yet, I can’t get rid of that stupid thought: now I am boring. Maybe that’s why I keep posting about this.)
Depersonalisation, though. I could observe things in a way I can’t know I’m involved. I could get boring stuff done without really being bored. I could be brilliant and hard, a diamond (not *that* brilliant, but not a good thing: cold and cutting edges). And I think: this made me a better academic. I know I say that you’re better when you have a life outside of research, and I believe that, but I also apparently fall into the idea that to be a good academic, you must be a sort of monk, where the rest of the world falls away/doesn’t matter. And how much more could it go away than being part of another reality altogether?
When I was crazy[1], I was good at this sort of thing. I didn’t entirely mind a lot of the crazy things, because I had other things that were in ways results of being crazy, a creativity I think I no longer have, an ability to devote myself to doing something (by checking out), a way of looking at the world that I can’t get back, not even briefly. Of course I was sad and not really part of anything, I was causing myself all sorts of physical pain to remind myself I existed and to feel *something* other than an oddly distant misery or self-hatred, I couldn’t remember things half the time — what the hell am I nostalgic for?
And yet, and yet. I knew what was wrong, in a way, then. I knew this was weird, but in a way I didn’t mind, because it wasn’t real; I wasn’t real; I wasn’t there. And I could be all sorts of productive, far better than I was when I got better and had other things on my mind. Had I been not myself, I would have managed grad school much better, because it wouldn’t have mattered, because I could have said “okay, work!” and out would have come work, and everything else would have been trapped and hiding and — I am angry that I had to choose between sanity and academia, that to be good at what I did I had to be crazy and not entirely human — it wasn’t enough that I gave up any kind of security and liking where I live and my family and everything for it (though obviously I didn’t; I made a choice to give it up instead), I would have had to give up this hard-earned sanity, I would have had to give *myself* up. You cannot be yourself and be that kind of monk. (You can, of course, be an academic and not a monk. I can’t, apparently, but other people can.)
So sometimes I wish I could go back and get these choices back.
And sometimes I just miss the distance I had from the anxiety and unhappiness.
[1] -er.