My parents have informed me that, even at an age too young for me to remember, I was very "spacey."  They used to say that I always had my head in the clouds, and that they considered it a sign of intelligence.  Perhaps they were right about that, but everything is different now.

Growing up, I always felt "different" from the other kids in school, though I couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was that made me different.  I had a very difficult time socializing with other kids, and I often didn't want to.  You could call it a form of extreme social anxiety, but for me, I much preferred to daydream.  At recess, while the other kids were playing games on the playground, I would merely wander around, lost in my own thoughts.  I always felt as if I were "stuck in my own head"--trapped, if you will--and I couldn't figure out a way out of it.

I had always wondered what was different about me, and I had been concerned about it for a long time.  My one consolation was that I was good at school, and everyone told me that working hard in school is all that mattered.  I was skeptical of this, of course, but since education was the one thing that made me comfortable, I excelled at it, and I graduated high school with highest honors...a bright future was awaiting me.

Given my interest in learning French and Music, it seemed only natural that I obtain my undergraduate degree in New Orleans.  I was fascinated with the city; its magnificent architecture, culture and music enthralled me.  However, when my parents moved me into my first dorm, I felt this strange sensation that I had never felt before.  I didn't know anyone there, and I felt disillusioned by what I had come to expect.  The world seemed like quite a frightening place.  Everything became dark and dull, and I spent most of my first year doing what I did best: excelling in my academic pursuits.  I made few friends, but I was still confident that my grades would get me somewhere, even if I didn't know where I was going.

I decided to travel abroad my Junior Year.  I went to Paris, to study at the Sorbonne and enrich myself in la vie francaise.  Little did I know that this would be the experience that would completely change my life.  I was anxious and afraid nearly every moment there, and I would lock myself in my room listening to music, as it was the only time I ever felt really comfortable.  But my avoidance would only take me so far.  Eventually, I had to produce something.

In an art history course entitled "Egypt and Islam," our final project was to go to the Louvre and recreate an Egyptian temple using the artifacts that were there.  Simple enough, right?  Yet I struggled with this project, but it wasn't the nature of the project itself that troubled me so much.  We had to take pictures of the artifacts we were using for our project, yet I did not own a camera.  So I went out to the streets of Paris looking for a simple disposable camera for this project.  The problem was, every time I was out on the street, I would dissociate, and get "lost in my head" again.  I would lose my direction, but then I stopped, thought about where I was, and continued.  This lasted for four days.  To this day, I believe I was in a fugue state, wandering around, but lost in my own thoughts, unable to come back to the present moment.  The anxiety that resulted from my being unable to perform the simplest of tasks was intense.  My head felt heavy, yet empty.  My shoulders curled up and I couldn't seem to stop my mind from racing.  Six sleepless nights and days I spent in this horrific state until my good friend finally called an SOS doctor for me.  I was immediately placed in St. Anne's mental institution and diagnosed with Major Depression, where I would stay for 9 days until my parents bailed me out.

This wasn't the first time such a bizarre experience happened to me.  The first such experience happened less than a year prior to my stay in Paris, when I unfortunately smoked some weed with a friend of mine.  I was never a pot-head, but I had smoked on rare occasions in the past, but nothing would prepare me for what was about to happen that evening.  I felt as if I had lost control of all of my bodily functions, and my mind started racing incessantly.  I kept seeing these flashing images that I can only describe as loose associations at light speed.  For example, I would think of a Michael Chrighton book that I had read, which reminded me of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911," which would lead me into my High School English class when I was informed that 911 had occurred, which would in turn result in a song Mrs. Johansson would sing to us in second grade, where a basketball was in the corner of the room, which reminded me of my one year playing basketball, etc., etc. etc.  All this happened over a matter of milliseconds, and I couldn't seem to shut it off.  It was as bad high, to say the least, and I had to spend the night in the hospital because of it.

I've read stories of people who claim that their depersonalization was triggered by pot or another drug, or by an extremely stressful situation.  Both of the above situations match those criteria, yet in my case, I don't think my depersonalization was triggered by smoking weed or my troubles in Paris.  I believe I was always this way, though in a milder form, and that those situations exacerbated the problem I was already experiencing.  To this day, I have been having difficulty coping with the (sometimes simple) demands of everyday life, yet I know that there have been situations where this "fogginess" has left me, and I have seen clearly.

My next post will attempt to elucidate some of these scenarios that have provided temporary relief from my near-chronically spaced-out state of being.