Dear Hey Its Jess:

I will share with you a memory of my childhood that came to my mind as I read your sentences: “I wouldn’t count that experience as painful. I don’t remember crying. I don’t remember getting sad about it. All I remember is that I… went on to creating a whole realm of imaginary worlds”

I was maybe five, maybe six. It was night time, dark. My mother and father were fighting in the living room, adjacent to where I was sleeping. I was awake. The screaming were loud. I remember her screaming. Maybe breaking things. She screamed loud that she was going to go outside (the apartment) and kill herself. She left the apartment… I went after her in the dark. I was expecting to find her dead body (believing she will do what she said she will do). As I walked down the stairs I imagined I was in a movie and a feeling of pleasantness came over me, I was in an exciting movie. I saw me walking down the stairs and then walking down the path to the street, as if I was watching a character in a movie. I looked to the right of me: no body, to the left: no body, not yet. I finally found her, there she was on the street. I felt happy. I came out of the movie experience and felt joy. I cried out to her: “You are alive!”

She looked at me angrily, rejecting, cold and said to me: “Why wouldn’t I be (alive)?”

End of memory. My input on my own memory: children when experiencing overwhelming feelings disassociate. It is an automatic reaction, it is the body protecting itself from perceived great pain. Disassociating, as happened to me, is removing my awareness from the here-and-now. I made believe I was somewhere else, not here.

Regarding your mention of your parents’ divorce, when you wrote that you don’t remember crying or feeling sad or feeling pain, it doesn’t mean you didn’t. To me it means that most likely you disassociated. And you immersed yourself in imaginary worlds where it felt pleasant, just like I did imagining I was in a movie.

anita