“The Days I Didn’t Feel Real”

There were days I moved through the world like a ghost.

I’d get dressed. Eat toast. Answer emails. Smile in meetings. But none of it felt real. It was like watching someone else live my life — and I was just hovering behind their eyes, detached and weightless.

That’s how I learned about dissociation.

I didn’t have the vocabulary for it back then. I just kept saying, “I don’t feel like I’m here.” I thought I was going crazy. But what I was actually doing was trying to survive.

The Quiet Disappearing

It started slowly. At first, it was just zoning out during conversations. Then I began forgetting entire chunks of my day — not because I was distracted, but because I didn’t feel present for them.

I’d walk through the grocery store and forget why I came. I’d hear people talk to me and only register their words seconds after they stopped speaking. My own reflection started to feel foreign — like I was watching someone wear a version of me.

I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t feel scared. I didn’t feel much of anything.

And that’s what terrified me most.

No One Noticed

The thing about mental health struggles — especially the quiet ones — is that they rarely look how people expect them to.

I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t yelling. I wasn’t locked in my room refusing to eat.

I was working. Socializing. Keeping up appearances. And every night, I went home and tried to remember what it felt like to be a person.

I couldn’t tell if I was exhausted, depressed, overwhelmed — or just broken.

I kept asking myself: What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I feel anything?

But there was no scream inside me — only a silence I didn’t know how to name.

The Smallest Lifeline

I was scrolling on my phone one night when I came across a post that said:

“Dissociation is not the absence of emotion. It’s the brain protecting you from what you’re not ready to feel yet.”

I read it twice. Then three times. I didn’t know what dissociation was. But suddenly, I had a name for the fog.

It made sense in the strangest way — like my brain had hit a dimmer switch, softening the brightness of the pain so I wouldn’t burn.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t crazy.

I was coping.

The Slow Return

Getting better didn’t happen in a movie montage. There were no instant breakthroughs, no magical solutions.

It started with acknowledging what was happening. I told a friend. Then I looked up a therapist. I began naming my emotions, even when they felt far away.

I practiced grounding techniques — like holding ice cubes, describing the room out loud, or planting my feet on the floor and reminding myself I was still here.

It felt silly at first. But eventually, the fog began to thin.

One day, I laughed and felt it in my chest.

Another day, I looked in the mirror and thought, I know that face.

I still dissociate sometimes. Especially when life gets loud or heavy. But now, I recognize the signs. I know I’m not vanishing — I’m just buffering.

And I can come back.

What I Want You to Know

Mental health doesn’t always look like pain. Sometimes, it looks like distance. Like being there but not there. Like smiling while disappearing inside.

If you feel disconnected from yourself, from your body, from your world — you are not alone.

You are not broken.

You are not beyond repair.

Sometimes, the most human thing we can do is survive in the only way we know how — even if it means going numb for a while.

But I promise: you can come back.

And when you do, I hope you greet yourself with softness.