1981

I can remember almost every minute of it, the day my reality changed forever. I was sitting in my dorm room my sophomore year in college.  I was thinking about my boyfriend joining the Army.  I look back now and still wonder what really caused it.  Was it flawed genetics?  Childhood trauma? PTSD?

 I still wonder why this was to be my thorn in my flesh:  The one thing that drew me to God; the one thing that still to this day keeps me dependent upon Him?

I was laying on my bed. Out of nowhere I felt myself leaving my body. I thought I was dying.  My heart was racing, and the closest word to describe - dizzy.  For some reason I grabbed my throat and my roomate panicked.  She thought I was choking.  She asked if she should call 911.  Eventually the dizziness went away but what was left was a surreal feeling of being in a dream.  The experts call it detachment.  I happened to be in an abnormal psychology class and stumbled across symptoms that somewhat described the sensations that took place that day.  Panic.  What it didn't describe was the intense feeling of living in a dream, not in reality. 

It wasn't until much later that I learned what was really wrong with me.  Depersonalization disorder or Derealization disorder. 

Depersonalization disorder symptoms include:

• Continuous or recurring feelings that you're an outside observer of your thoughts, your body or parts of your body
• Numbing of your senses or responses to the world around you
• Feeling like a robot or feeling like you're living in a dream or in a movie
• The sensation that you aren't in control of your actions, including speaking
• Awareness that your sense of detachment is only a feeling, and not reality

Other symptoms can include:

• The sense that your body, legs or arms appear distorted, enlarged or shrunken
• Feeling like you are observing yourself from above, as if you were floating in the air
• Feeling emotionally disconnected from people you care about

If I think too hard about what I feel and experience on a day to day basis it becomes too overwhelming.  I look in the mirror and see a stranger.  That is probably the most difficult area I have had to manage.  I don't see me, rather a different person.

I have had to find ways to FEEL REAL and grounded in reality.

So why am I talking about this? Because it's time I start talking about it.  And, probably because it helps me justify some of this crazy things I get myself into.  For example; a figure competition, at age 50.

• I have learned that physical exersice has been one of the most soothing ways to cope with living in a dream.  For some reason pushing my physical body to extreme allows me to feel real - to feel, for a brief amount of time, connected to reality.

• I could probably start an entire blog on how I have learned to stand strong.  But I will stop and give thanks to God for giving me a tenacious fighting resilient spirit.  I could have checked out long ago but I made a decision to fight this.

• I kept this under wraps up until today.  Maybe it was pride, not wanting people to look at me differently.  Maybe embarrassement.  Or, maybe I wanted to be perceived as normal.  Whatever it maybe be, welcome to my world.

Stay tuned, my next blog will have updated pictures of my progress, workouts, and nutrition changes.