Who turned out the lights?
I asked my mom what it was like to be her. She laughed and said she considered saying "I don't know, I've never been someone else!" but that it wasn't true -- she often was someone else. Except that she didn't really see it that way.
She said that when people move around sometimes she gets a feeling like she is moving behind someone else. Like someone is in her way in the doorway. Sometimes that is spooky, she says, because she watches the world outside her eyes but her body and hands are doing things she isn't controlling. Sometimes she hears her mouth talking and she knows she didn't think the words up, they just came right out.
But worst of all, she says, is when the lights go out. She sometimes doesn't know what her body is doing at all because she isn't even looking out of her eyes anymore. That sounds scary. She says it is, but she is grateful because she doesn't think it happens to her very often, and she knows and trusts most of the people in her head. When it happens to her she is usually thinking pretty deeply or having a meeting and everyone is inside and not paying attention to the outside anymore. Sometimes, though, it happens when she is driving, when they don't have anything better to do but talk inside a whole lot. She realizes that no one is watching and goes back to front quickly -- but obviously someone is driving and she isn't sure who.
Mom says this happens to people who dissociate. Dissociation is when her parts don't communicate well -- or when she loses her "grip on reality."
