Samara’s Story: Life Under a Veil
The earliest memory I have of depersonalization/derealization disorder was when I was twelve years old. It was a crisp winter evening, and my best friend and I were ice skating in my neighborhood. We decided to lie down on a snow hill, cushioned by our snowsuits. We were illuminated by the bright white lights of the outdoor rink. The atmosphere was welcoming and wholesome, but suddenly I got ripped out of the present, and I felt disconnected and cold. I tried to explain to my friend nothing felt real, and it was like we were in a dream. Instead of comforting me, she explained how I was scaring her and she wished for me to stop talking about it. At that young age, I can understand why she didn’t want to converse about the reality of our bodies and my own sudden detachment from the world.
The best way I explain it to those around me is that it’s like being drunk, without the giddiness. Four months have passed and it feels like it’s been a couple of minutes. For me, it comes in waves. A wave of dissociation can last from anywhere to an hour, to a month, or two years. I continued struggling with DPDR throughout high school, which was a particularly turbulent time of my life. At this point, I still wasn’t diagnosed and was unsure what I was dealing with. For many years I questioned the reality of my experiences. My personal relationships continued to struggle as I would scare most of my friends with my condition. Like my childhood friend, my high school boyfriend admitted that my dissociating was hard to understand. When I was in a state of heavy derealization, I vividly remember asking him:
"Does a blank canvas make you go insane? Or do you think there's beauty in the void?"
In that instance, I was attempting to make my altered state and disconnection from the world relatable, the ‘void’ being my DPDR, which I would often spiral down. Years later, I believe there is a lot of power within my statement. Within my first years of dissociating, it felt like I was living my life under a veil. I believe that had a lot to do with the people I chose to surround myself with. Now, my friends aren’t afraid of my dissociation, but rather embrace it, and even make light of it with humor when needed. The ‘veil’ is still present of course, but it has become a lot easier to live my life with it due to the choices I have made concerning friendships, and environment.
I believe there is comfort and strength to be found within DPDR. In recent years, I have even begun to appreciate some positives to the disorder. Because it feels like I am dreaming, (especially in public settings) it has made my endeavours in public speaking a lot easier. In the city of Montreal, I am recognized as a community poet and have been honored to speak and recite my poems at schools, ceremonies, and various other public occasions. With DPDR, I have consequently lost the feelings of awkwardness, shyness or embarrassment which has aided me when I perform on stage.
A particular field it has helped me in, is acting. Most actors have to get into a headspace to become the character they are playing, but if I am struggling with my DPDR when I arrive to set, the dissociation easily allows a smooth transition from Samara, to the role I am about to embark on. It seems that art is the only sure-fire cure for pulling me out of my disconnected state.
It took around six years until I got properly diagnosed. The diagnosis was an extraordinary step in my journey; it felt like having a title for my struggle made the experience so much lighter. I’m grateful I found a name for my condition and that I now view it as strength, rather than a weakness. We have to remind ourselves that the human mind is by far the most complex and unique physical object known to us, in the entire cosmos. Scientists have known for centuries that the brain is the seat of human thought, but within the context of DPDR, it brings me comfort that we are still in the dark about how the human brain truly works.
The condition is painful and unpleasant beyond belief, which is why people like us will do almost anything - sometimes absolutely anything - just to make it stop. When it gets so heavy that you can't take it anymore, I recommend surrounding yourself with the power of art; healing through creative expression is something so priceless. I think why people like us are such good artists is because when you’re engulfed within writing poetry, playing music, creating a painting, or on stage acting, we feel so alive – and this feeling of utter intense exuberance is what pulls us away from our vignette world.
The world is pretty cloudy for us folk, but that makes the sunny days THAT much sunnier, don’t you think? The bright side: we always do, wake up from our dreaming. And when we do, we appreciate the light so much more than we ever did before.
Check out Samara’s #1 best-selling poetry collection What If The Sun Died. Many of her poems are a product of her struggles with DPDR: A portion of sales from every book sold is donated to Jack.org, a Canadian non-profit focused on youth mental health and suicide prevention.