++++++++++++++++++++++

It took me a few moments this morning to realize that the many loud sirens I was hearing from my house were not coming from the American side, but rather from the Mexican one.  It took me a few more moments to realize that, yet again, their sirens were not indicating threat, danger or harm, but were instead part of an ongoing Independence Day (from Spain) celebration.

Having lived on the border now for over ten years I only slightly question how celebration and good times are so often recognized by the ‘playing’ of sirens in Mexico.  They don’t sound them for any short period on these days, either.  They scream often for an hour or more, as they did today, their sound winding its way along the Mexican border town’s streets like big people playing.

It took me even more time to have the thoughts appear in my mind that were connected to last night at the stroke of midnight.  I was sound asleep, and suddenly wakened by a BOOM so powerful it shook the walls of my house, its floor, my bed — and me.  Crawling toward consciousness I sat up in bed, and sure enough high in the black night sky were circles and crescents of sparkling lights from an expensive and beautiful fireworks display.

I sat up in bed for all of about four seconds trying to appreciate how interesting it is that I can watch Mexican fireworks from the end of my bed, but sleep was evidently far more attractive.  I laid down, fell back into my slumber and forgot all about it until after I had placed both the sound of this morning’s sirens and their purpose.

++++

All is a memory now.  The sirens have silenced.  I had the thought that perhaps playing siren music in celebrations might be a delightful aspect of police and fire protection employees who for those brief times can forget their more weighty obligations.

At the same time I also recognized how familiar this feeling is to me of what is called ‘derealization’.  Coming awake from my sleeping dreams last night into the out-of-the-ordinary experience of witnessing a massive fireworks display at midnight simply by opening my eyes and sitting up in bed did NOT feel real when I remembered it today.  In fact, it did not feel real last night when it happened, either.

And then it struck me that perhaps if I wrote this simple post it might help those who have no clear idea what the ‘derealization’ aspect of dissociation feels like might be able to glimpse for an instant through my words what our life in our body often feels like for may severe infant-child abuse survivors.

Most everyone who experiences trauma — and nearly everyone does at some point in their life — will, during the ACTIVE experience of the ongoing trauma itself experience what I mentioned in an earlier post this week — the altered sense of time and experience that happens during the peritraumatic experience of acute trauma.  But most people ‘get over it’ quickly and do not go forward into the rest of their lives with posttraumatic (PTSD) changes in the way their body-brain processes their experience of life.

There was nothing traumatic about what I am describing (although fireworks is a symbolic display of the violent trauma of war), but it was also not quite ordinary, either.  But what matters to me is that I was given a very clear event that helps me name and describe how sometimes life doesn’t feel quite real when things happen, and things don’t feel quite real when they are remembered — which leads me to briefly mention yet another arm of dissociation — depersonalization — which is the experience of the person having both experience and the memory of experience not feeling real, either!

Numb, distanced, remote, operating on the other side of a void, having the void within, out of synch with time and place — there are as many ways to describe what dissociation ‘symptoms’ feel like as there are people who have experienced it.  While some-many severe abuse and trauma survivors (war veterans included) have no choice but to live continually trying to battle their way out of these sensations, all of us would probably rather be able to say, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

++++++++++++++++++++++