Time is a strange concept. It moves fast, slow, somewhere in-between. For those with certain mental health conditions, the grasp of time is glitchy. I cannot speak for anyone else other than myself. Time has been no friend of mine.

Time often eludes me. When I’m stuck in an episode of depersonalization, my brain is not even aware of the passage of time. Everything becomes dreamlike and surreal. Like Squidward in the Episode Nowhere.

It feels as if my focus shifts into a void, one I call home, but for the brain it signals to treat the present moment as of it were a dream. Unfortunately that means no memory is recorded. It was an unknown side effect of detachment. Time is an intangible construct, and honestly terrifies me. 

-Ashe

A Side Ancedote

During the first year of therapy, we  struggled more with denial and acceptance of our dissociative nature, and by extension our Systemhood. I went in thinking about a statement the therapist had said two weeks prior.

“That was two months ago,” they reminded us gently.

“Really? But I was so sure that was just last session!”

I still haven’t forgotten about that. It was a clear indication then we were still losing time. Winter always seemed that way: the flow of time skewed. Even now some things will feel as if it happened so long ago even if it was only yesterday, and other matters as if it were yesterday but in reality it was over 5, 10, 15 years ago.

Trauma messes with the perception of time. Dissociation warps time. Time is, to me, nothing more than a construct of which to measure against.

-Axel