I have spent a good portion of the last few weeks as a passenger in my own life. I’m not in control. I’m not in the driver’s seat. I can see everything that’s going on, but I have no control over it. I’m just an observer. I’m just a passenger.

This happens a lot more than I care to admit. Yesterday, I realized I was (literally and figuratively) out of my own control. I found myself involved in a situation in which the ways I was acting and speaking were not my own. I knew it was me, and I could see and hear everything that was going on, but my responses were not me. As everything was going on, I felt like I was sitting next to myself. I would say something, and then I would ask myself where the hell that just came from. I would never say this. I would never do this. I don’t want this. Yet there I was, saying it, doing it, and apparently wanting it.

It concerned me, because this situation is something I very much don’t want to be involved in. I told myself, maybe I’m just crazy.  I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t even know how to explain it to someone else because I don’t even understand it.

I wanted to bring it up to my therapist, but it felt so awkward and uncomfortable. Oddly enough, I had a therapy assignment from our session earlier in the week – the stages of therapy. I looked over the sheets and crossed out the things I didn’t have issues with, and circled the things that I felt I needed help with. Next to relationships, I wrote “making questionable decisions”. I was hoping my therapist would read it and ask about it so I didn’t have to bring it up myself.

And she did. So I explained what happened yesterday. I told her how I felt disconnected, but not entirely disconnected because I still had full awareness of what was going on, but I just didn’t have control. And I thought she was going to think I was crazy and not making any sense, but she didn’t. She understood what was going on, and suspected what I had suspected as well – another part coming through, a part with completely opposite wants. Great.

I sort of have been hiding some things from my therapist, not just about relationships, but with other things as well. Not purposely, I just didn’t feel like they were important. But most of the things I had been pushing away seemed to come up with that assignment today. One of the things I crossed out was ‘drugs’. She asked about it. I said I haven’t used in a while, and that I even threw away all of my pills last month. Then she asked why. I don’t really know why, I just know it happened during one of my regular crises.

Then she asked if I remembered doing it. No. I hadn’t remembered doing it. I only knew because I went to throw away my trash weeks ago and noticed a bunch of pills fall out from my bin and into the trash bag. I don’t remember doing it, or why I did it. But clearly I did it.

And as we went on, I realized there was a lot of occasions that I don’t remember. I’ve just been telling myself it’s because I’ve been so tired lately, that’s why I can’t remember shit. But it’s more than that. And that worries me. I know I’ve been under a lot of stress, especially in the last month. But it’s concerning because I am in the midst of making some pretty considerable life decisions, and I don’t know if it’s 100% me making those decisions.

I have been in a dissociative denial.