The “I don’t knows” of dissociation

I don’t know. Probably the most common words out of my mouth. I don’t know what I think, I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know whether I’m hungry or full, whether I’m angry or sad, whether I’m scared or excited, whether I like something or I don’t, whether I’m in pain or not, and if I am in pain, how much pain that might be.

I remember a couple of years back, when I was in the throes of my disordered eating, I was coming home from school one day. It was killer hot, we were stuck in traffic, I’d eaten barely anything that day. My head was pounding, swimming, and I was pretty certain I was going to pass out. And I leaned back against the seat and thought how strange it was that with all of that, I still felt perfectly fine.

But I didn’t. My amazement at the time was really disassociation, was really the way that I separate myself from my own feelings and body, the way I can bear just about anything by breaking my mind off from it, the way that I have developed an incredibly high pain tolerance by simply no longer being able to judge pain. Depersonalization, derealism, and other forms of disassociation have completely cut me off from everything, including myself.

People think my indecisiveness comes from shyness, that if they can just poke and prod, or allow me the space to speak, that I will feel comfortable enough to tell them what I really think. Except the “I don’t knows” are what I really think.

That, I think, is really the core of what abuse does. I’m not sure if it’s the intention , but it is definitely the main result. My mother perfected the art of instilling doubt. She’s nearly perfect at gaslighting. If I made a decision she would tell me all the ways that that decision was wrong, and how I should have made the other choice. If I then changed my mind, she would tell me all the ways that was wrong, and how I should have stuck with my first choice. When I switched back, she’d tell me that it was my choice and I should do what I want. When I responded to that, “I don’t know,” she’d say, “You are so indecisive, why can’t you make up your mind?”

But that’s only part of it. An abusive family says, ignore ignore ignore. Pretend that didn’t hurt. Don’t cry, you’ll upset the abuser. I already apologized, so you should stop being in pain. Have a smile on your face so you don’t make the abuser mad. Be happy for the rest of the world, or else you’re being rude. Your emotions aren’t valid. Your emotions aren’t real. Your emotions are up for debate, up for scrutiny, up to be made fun of. You like what? You’re such a girl, hahaha. You’re stupid for feeling that way. You’re crazy. You’re wrong. You don’t understand what you think.  Your abuser knows better than you ever will on what reality is, and who you are, and how you should respond to it.

And so thinking was dangerous. Feeling was dangerous. Even expressing joy, excitement, delight over something. Those emotions make you vulnerable. It gives your abusers an advantage, somewhere for them to strike with massive damage. So you shut down, you hesitantly express all your feelings, you show disinterest until you are otherwise told what you are supposed to feel. What you are allowed to feel.

Being a child was dangerous. When I help out with storytime at work, I look at these children in amazement. They run, they laugh, they scream and cry, they touch everything, get in everything. Was I ever like that? If I was, it was dangerous. We have a home video of a Christmas gathering when I was three, and while all my cousins and my brothers are tearing into their presents under the tree, I am standing apart from everyone, my thumb in my mouth, my eyes wide, fidgeting with my other hand because even at three I had my nervous habits. My aunt takes notice of me and hands me a present, it’s a doll. I love dolls at that age. I loved that doll a lot. I show no emotion. My aunt gets the doll out of the box and hands her to me. I hold her and stare unfocused at everyone, still sucking my thumb. Still standing still, apart, terrified. Too terrified to let my iron control of myself slip. And this is the story of myself, and my life, all the while that I have been raised on stories of my mother informing me that I was not abused at all, that nothing ever happened to me, that my brothers had it far worse than I, are far more messed up than I, if I had any concern for them, I would excuse every last terrible thing they do, while acknowledging that I have absolutely no right to be hurt or upset or broken over everything.

And it’s that narrative that causes the biggest split inside of me. To be so messed up, from the earliest ages that I can remember, and then to be told that I have somehow lived a charmed life, free from all the abuse that the rest of the family got. And I believed it. I believed that my brokenness was this big black lie that I shoved back as far as I could, and when I couldn’t, I reinvented it. I told it and myself it wasn’t real. To the point that I can be on the verge of passing out and think, “huh, I feel fine.” Because “fine” has become an all-encompassing word, marking everything from the most extreme of euphoria to the most unlivable pain. Your abusers tell you what you feel, when you feel it, and how to interpret your entire life. And you agree with them because what do you know? You’re stupid. You’re crazy. Your feelings aren’t allowed. You obviously can’t be trusted to understand reality.

So to actually have to figure out my thoughts and emotions is hard. To actually have to construct these things out of a hollowed out body sometimes feels damn near impossible. But on many levels, I have been absolutely destroyed. I have to make decisions on what hurts and what doesn’t. I have to make decisions down to the littlest things like, “Do I like this book? Do I like this flower? Do I like this food?” and decide based on some part of myself that feels entirely separate from emotions, that yes, I like this or hate that, or that hurts or this other thing makes me angry or happy, and hope that my emotions will catch up, that maybe at some point they can match what I want them to be, and I can start feeling something other than this terrible hollowness, or this clawing fear and dread and panic that lives inside of me. Sometimes there’s a lot of back and forth. Ugh, how can I be excited over that, no wait, maybe I’m scared; oh wait I loved that, no really I hated it; that was okay, wait, oh my goodness, I actually loved it; I feel fine, no ow ow ow, that really hurt.

What is me is what I’ve created. What I have done with whatever pieces were left of me and the ones I still try to hold onto as I continue to fend off blows in this family. But I still don’t know, most of the time. Especially not right now, when things are this bad, and I am simply in baseline survival mode.  My body isn’t mine. My feelings aren’t mine. Wherever I am inside of myself, it is blocked by thick metal walls of disassociation and distrust of self. I don’t know anything. Constructing and understanding the bigger, more complex parts of myself don’t even register when I can’t figure out even the smallest stuff. Like right now. Am I thirsty? Maybe. My mouth is dry. I guess that would be thirst. But I don’t know.