"derealization" poems
related to childhood emotional abuse or neglect...
not to be confused with derealization or 'fantasy prone personality'
maladaptive daydreaming is seeing your face when I fall asleep at night
or hearing your voice in a children's store
"Come look! Look at these shoes!", and seeing you scramble at a pair of sandals
Big brown eyes begging me to buy them as "an early birthday present, just this once."
Maladaptive daydreaming
is blinking and not even having time to register the fact that you'd disappeared
and I was standing alone in the children's shoe aisle,
on my knees holding a pair of sandals
and feeling that same twist in my gut that I did on the day
the papers were signed and my passport was stamped,
to get on a plane to another country
without so much as waving goodbye
Maladaptive daydreaming is crying through anti-abortion rhetoric
and sympathising with teenage mothers
it's seeing you smile behind a nikon camera, calling
"Look at this pretty picture I took! See, see?"
and then realising that I was only smiling at a fallen camera in the sand
Maladaptive daydreaming
is regretting a choice I didn't make
it's steeling my jaw at immature jokes
and relating to all those children raising children
Maladaptive daydreaming
is regretting giving up a daughter
I never had
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 1:17 AM UTC
I've been so numb,
and nothing ever seems real.
My sister said it's the alcohol,
but I drink to feel.
I've been so numb,
and I'm ******* sick of it.
My sister said it's the drugs,
but I don't want to quit.
Oct 8, 2014
Oct 8, 2014 at 4:09 PM UTC
sometimes i feel like
sometimes
sometimes i feel like i'm in a dream
but only sometimes
and it's foggy
it's hard to tell
maybe i'm awake and it's more clear than my usual dreams
but then
what if i'm dreaming
what if i'm not real
what if
what
is going on
and my brain goes in a million different directions
my handwriting is messy
so is my head, i guess
that's all
i guess
i don't know
my hands are just making words
this room is filled with a cloud
hey guys
my name is ally and i think
i may be dreaming
how about you
how are you
Dec 5, 2013
Dec 5, 2013 at 3:29 PM UTC
Hyperventilation
Depleting frustration
Suffocation
A painful sensation
Desperation
Without moderation
Devastation
Eternal damnation
Deprivation
Emotional mutilation
Derealization
Fear escalation
Depersonalization
Self extermination
Jul 12, 2015
Jul 12, 2015 at 1:16 PM UTC
Depersonalization
Derealization
Dissociation
Delusional
Hallucinations
Confabulation
Perseveration
persevered.
Clanging
Rhyming
Echolalia
echolalia.
Paranoia
Ideas of reference
Thought blocking
Internal stimuli
Thought broadcasting
heard
every way
every day.
Mental disorders
or
poets extraordinary
The Paiute anthropologist
locked up on the
inpatient unit
with visions of the ancestors
dancing in his eyes
said
"See these folks
you have locked up,
In ancient days
from the desert hills
they came our way
delivered truths
in their special way.
"Once they had their say
On desert winds
they blew back
up to their hills
away
straight away. "
"Can you please
give me the keys.
I've said what
I had to say. "
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 10:04 AM UTC
I live in many places:
Sometimes, in the weight between the top of my neck and the bottom edge of my skull,
or about 3 feet trailing behind my left ear;
a few times I've found myself in your right eye;
But, most of the time, I am hanging, suspended a breathe away from the skin that clothes the body that lives for me.
Aug 7, 2014
Aug 7, 2014 at 5:18 AM UTC
Gravity is not my friend.
It forgets from time to time
To do its job and keep my two feet
Planted firmly on the ground.
I can’t seem to get around
Invisible stumbling blocks,
Tripping over my own two feet,
Knocking into things just by
Walking in a straight line.
Gravity is lazy,
Wanting only to do the bare minimum.
It makes my chest feel heavy when
I lay down but if I close my eyes
I feel my own untethered soul
Float up into the ceiling
And hide amongst the water pipes.
Sometimes, I think gravity gets scared
When I wish myself into something
Scattered brain and disconnected
Disassociation, depersonalization,
Derealization—these side effects on the bottle
They’re all taunting gravity
And gravity runs to hide,
Knocking me off balance and
Up the stairs and skinning my knees
And sometimes I don’t even know I’m bleeding
But sometimes gravity fights back
And my feet are stuck to the ground
My limbs can’t seem to move, my
Head feels like a hundred pounds
My body aches until I lay down
And sink into the carpet.
Sometimes I wonder if you feel it too
If gravity and you are on the odds as well
With all your liquid confidence
And substances to keep you happy
And your tales of falling down stairs—
You fall down, I fall up.
We bob together in a sea of regret
And change and past and
Present and future and lust
And hate but most of all love
Nursing our wounds through
Self medication until a very fed up gravity
Pushes us down, down down down.
Sometimes I think if gravity
Were a little more benevolent
We’d never have hit
These bumps in the road.
I could stay grounded,
Feet planted firmly.
You could stay buoyant
Far above the surface.
But no,
Gravity is a very fickle beast.
And as you’re leading me
Back to my room
For one last goodnight kiss
I trip
And float away.
Nov 19, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 at 11:51 PM UTC
Waiting for your night stories,
instead, empty glasses dancing.
Kahlo paints for me, surreal dreams.
Jun 24, 2016
Jun 24, 2016 at 2:39 AM UTC
The world warps
And goes fuzzy around the edges
Like I am not real,
A place holder or chest piece.
My limbs do not move like they are mine,
As if they are foreign bodies attached to my trunk.
The floor is the only solace.
I melt into the stiff boards and rough carpet
Until the world tilts back and becomes
Whole again.
Nov 25, 2020
Nov 25, 2020 at 8:36 PM UTC
She saw people praying and using the violence in
the name of religion at the same time, while no
religion is preaching violence. She understood that
this kind of violence was too conflictual for peace, and
yet too diplomatic for war. And that violence no
solution had; nor never none. She thought those
people lived in black light having blind eyes not seeing
the reality of life. She had to accept that this wicked
goodness and this pretty badness belong to our reality
so vixen-like, vexing and hiding so many victimless crimes.
Suddenly, she realized that she could be a new victim.
She started to run while wondering where her safe place was.
She was better than to expect to be caught. She understood
her fear, that fear leading to frightening thoughts, those thoughts
leading to panic, that panic leading to derealization. She looked
around trying to recognize the place. She felt worry because she
couldn't see very well. She searched to make a sword of everything
around, but quickly after that, she thought that the swords are the
weapons of warriors, but she's not a warrior, she's a victim. She
started to give praise with idle tears, to give praise with wisdom,
to give praise with deep despair. She asked herself if God is there to
hear her, over those ravages of war overwhelmed by the natural
catastrophes and over the ludicrous effect of their transformation
into nothing. She, firstly, believed her religious man was a fighter
against enemies of God to conclude that he was an enemy of the real
fighters for God. This man was her husband learning in time to beat her
body and to hurt her soul. She saw herself as a little bleeding part of this
world wondering to know if her man is still the man she fell in love with
once, or he's an illusion. She stopped her run to sit on the ground. She
began to pray hoping that God is there to hear her and to bring a new light
to her crying reality. She stayed there to think how much a rose can
describe a flower, how much a flower can describe a woman, and how
much the feminine can describe many things around .She concluded
that no feminine thing can break this life down. She asked herself,
''What can happen to this world in the absolute absence of feminine?''
She found herself an innocent person dreaming at a new world without violence.
Jan 17, 2013
Jan 17, 2013 at 2:56 PM UTC
i remember it like it was yesterday, which i have to say is strange, because i have trouble remembering everything else. i remember you were sitting in front of me and i was terrified, palms sweating, eyes watering. i was truly scared if you, or rather of myself. a little part of me hated you too. you looked so, self-righteous sitting in your rolling chair, with you perfect posture and your clicky pen. when you started to ask me question i ignored you. id been shacked up in my head for so long i forgot how to talk to people. anyways, my head was comfortable, familiar. i had a bed full of memories and a closet full of monsters. i had drawers full of hopes (i never opened them of course), but they were there, it was nice to know they were there.
my favourite possession in my mind however, was a little glass jar on my nightstand. it looks empty at first glance, but the harder you look the more you see. there are colours, like rays of light, they swirl around and hit each other, a vibrant crimson color. theres a green in there to, if you saw it you'd swear mother nature put it there herself. theres also a blue, its the largest of all the swirls. it looks royal and dark, beautiful.
theres also a yellow. but its different, not in its beauty or vibrance, but in its location . it isn't in the jar. the yellow swirls around the edge of the glass. occasionally bumping into it almost as if it wants in, but theres no way for it.
i remember holding back, never telling you that because i thought you'd think i was crazy. so i didn't say a thing. but man do i remember that jar. that room. i remember the colours, their saturation, how they moved. i remember the monsters beating on the closet door looking for a way out. i remember the bed of sweet memories. but im sorry, i don't remember more important thing, like how to feel. i truly am.
Jan 29, 2018
Jan 29, 2018 at 11:22 AM UTC
sitting in a bar unawares
sobriety is relinquished
incoherence
voicing hallucinated delirium
sweating profusely in distress
disconnected
without identity, without form
a long and terrible descent
into the effects of derealization
staring at nothing
listening to imaginary sounds
that cling to the dark draperies
that hang upon the walls of the mind
charting the outer geography of life
with invested inner humanity
Feb 2, 2013
Feb 2, 2013 at 11:46 AM UTC
The world is my movie screen,
I’m constantly being reminded,
That I am only a spectator,
In this ****** up life.
My hands are not my hands,
Yet they’re right in front of me.
The thing is, I can never press pause.
I am always on the go.
It’s as if my mind is a separate deity,
Than my body.
I look in the mirror,
And see someone who I know
Is supposed to be me.
However, this fog that constantly
Fills my brain makes me feel as if I am
Walking on clouds, unaware of my steps.
I wish I could see the world in 1st person.
Instead of this bright, oversized world,
That pounds with every step I take.
I feel nothing which means I feel everything.
It’s just all in the inside, constantly building up,
Without notice.
It’s as if I am driving a rental car.
I know how to drive but the car is foreign to me.
The gears work, but they aren’t mine.
Mar 10, 2019
Mar 10, 2019 at 8:31 PM UTC
There's a lot more to the world
Than what meets the eye
Physical intimacy laced with
Eradicating emotion
There's no time in the universe
In which peace can be acquired
The day the earth stands still
Is the day we know what comes next
In a memory flashing by your mind
Just sputtering through the motions
But suddenly you're caught in derealization
And you can hear her voice again
Clear as wedding bells
A young girl reading sermons
To a man passed out drunk, and the woman who made him that way
I was just 4 when I first tasted beer
And I vomited all over myself
I was just 8 when I first tasted liquor
And I don't remember much else
Chicken wings with candles
And the songs my mother used to sing to me
The way she'd crawl in bed with me
In times of drunken solitude
Ungrateful **** of a daughter
Who should've been aborted,
Well I tried, mama, I tried
Now that you're gone and you are nothing more than ashen memories
I look at you in your black box prison
With your name pasted to the front
And I tell you all the ways I have already died
I tell you all the ways I don't feel alive.
The way you screamed for help at the top of the stairs
And he's shoving he's pushing and you can't run
And I'm still here
And I'm still here fighting him away
He says he can't sleep in beds without you anymore
And coming home from 2nd grade
Police badges light up the front porch
And they're shoving you they're pushing and you can't run
And you're in handcuffs
And his arm is bleeding
the young man told me I was not alone
And falling apart on your floor
At a ripe 5 years old
And I'm crying I'm sobbing and you don't care
And I scream
And you don't love me anymore
The piano goes quiet
And after grandpa died
she took all his medicine
Muscle relaxers and pain killers and the daily *****
And anger
And she screamed at the walls she called god
For taking her children away
It was her all along
I do not hold grudges
But it took you dying for me to hold that promise
It took you dying for forgiveness
The family shuns me like how they did you
Black sheep we are
Your ashes lay on the table beside my bed
With fake vanilla candles that light up all kinds of colors
And I tell you all the ways I have already died
I tell you all the ways that I do not feel alive.
Mar 22, 2017
Mar 22, 2017 at 6:04 PM UTC
Hyperventilation
Depleting Frustration
Suffocation
A Painful Sensation
Desperation
Without Moderation
Devastation
Eternal Damnation
Deprivation
Emotional Mutilation
Derealization
Fear Escalation
Depersonalization
Self Extermination
Feb 24, 2020
Feb 24, 2020 at 7:34 PM UTC
A true relationship is fluid and energy generating
Being dynamic, it should activate your highest potentials
You have forced me to realize what we had for those years was never a true relationship, or a true love
I do not solely blame myself or solely blame you for our many fails
But as far as myself goes, I know what my faults were
I often lost my sense of self the longer we were "on"
Wondering when it would end that time, I became anxious and derealization would occur randomly
I clung to you in anticipation of my heart sinking and shattering and taking my soul with it
Those feelings do not emanate from love though, do they?
No
They emanate from fear
I did love you
But then I feared you
Feared your absence, neglect, reactions, and that, is not love in any way
The trust I gave you time and time again was never held with care
Maybe you never knew just how low and broken I'd be
Maybe you did
My wisdom never let me forget that loving someone and being loved meant allowing vulnerability
I knew and know love will never be love unless you're vulnerable in some way
But my oblivious heart somehow believed giving you complete control was a part of that
Starting anew after a year or so sounded incredible
But it didn't take long before reality emerged and I found myself in the same degrading and depraving phase I have been oh so familiar with, with you
The entire meaning of this is to say I know what I had for so long was not love, but fear
And now that I don't fear you...
You're just a stranger that knows my weaknesses and none of my strengths
One that's only ever seen my lows, never my highs
And I'm ok with that
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 11:12 AM UTC
o love, tell me, where did you go? you adandoned my bones here ages ago. centuries past, a ticking time bomb. broken clock, two blinks, blood, it drips in awaiting. no home, sharpened teeth, empty gaps lie underneath. take me anywhere, get me crazy. i am suffocating underneath this dirt. derealization is a coffin made to fit my exact measurements. swallow the worms, choke on the maggots, taste the filth in your heart. pain rots the membrane. decomposing, a corpse girl within. but still breathing, still abandoned, all alone again.
Jul 13, 2018
Jul 13, 2018 at 1:29 AM UTC
I
Bright blues and youthful yellows induce a daze of derealization,
Heavy haptic perfumes fill the nose,
All that is heard is soft music and softer chatter,
Standing among the spring dresses,
Feeling like an odd hallow mannequin,
As pretty girls and ugly women pass by,
The dumb blonde fakely smiles to my aunt;
Who holds up a spring dress.
II
It it Ireland's biggest lingerie section I understand,
I read that....somewhere...
-Jamie F. Nugent
Mar 11, 2016
Mar 11, 2016 at 1:48 PM UTC
I have days where I feel zoned out and want to sleep off the day. I feel no motivation to do anything and just want to go in the mind escape of my brain.
Then there’s part of my brain that wakes up and realizes I shouldn’t be doing this to myself. I should do something motivating. Like interacting with family and living it up, so I don’t focus on my derealization.
Suddenly, there are days were I feel motivated and ambitious about hobbies, fashion and school. I start to feel the burst of happiness for life.
Aug 12, 2018
Aug 12, 2018 at 3:09 PM UTC
Am I real?
I don't... feel real.
Am I alive?
Or am I dead?
Everything is so...
L O U D-
"Hey!!"
Huh...?
"Dude! Are you okay?"
Oh, it's him...
"Hey, it's okay, I'm here..."
'I'm here...'
Liar.
Jul 10, 2021
Jul 10, 2021 at 7:59 PM UTC
The world is fake.
An empty play dough
world where all our
heads are in clouds
of derealization.
We’ve lost our touch
with reality
running razors across
our bellies.
Our mind a shaking
bath tub full of
water and bubbles.
Tap it.
Ripple. Splash it.
Wave.
Shake in it.
You’re gone
in the tsunami
Of bubbles over the
side.
You disrupted the peace.
Now you’re cold among
all the popping bubbles.
You made the world a
trembling earthquake of
pain. And it will not
have your ********
You are books left
alone on the library
tables. Scattered.
Disorganized. You are
a mess. You are frowned
upon. Nobody’s going to
pick you up. Well not
until someone who under
stands the code on your
spinal cord and
can handle you like a
problem, when you want
to be opened. And your
pages caressed and your
tears and rips cried over like
they should be. Have someone
finger your creased pages
as they read the heart breaking
parts.
But they put you back
in your a slot. Where
you “belong.”
And you sit there
silently screaming “learn me"
Feb 22, 2015
Feb 22, 2015 at 5:07 PM UTC
I latch on memories.
This is probably the reason I have derealization.
I admire the past and it’s events; although, they have to be events that are different and not usual for my daily routine.
It could be from Yesterday or 3 years ago.
I start thinking about that event for along time.
If I am alone I will start sobbing.
I have no reason why I do this, but I do this.
Although, when I am in that event in the present I don’t consume the event all. Though when it’s the next day in the shower (can be anywhere )I start consuming the event and my emotions.
Jun 1, 2018
Jun 1, 2018 at 8:15 PM UTC
I feel like I'm going insane.
I can't remember anything.
My short term memory is, poor at best.
My long term memory continues to fade.
Dissociation
Depersonalization
Derealization
I have an MS but you would never know.
I'm too dumb to get a PhD.
I'm too dumb to communicate with most people.
I'm checking out.
Missing gaps.
Making up stories.
Feb 3, 2021
Feb 3, 2021 at 10:51 AM UTC
Intoxicated by my thoughts.
Wishing I knew what is making it all swerve around like snake or worm. I don’t know what caused it? It might had been the tragic event that happened on Wednesday? Even maybe this might be my next mental state prospective; that is strange like all of them.
I wish that everything was normal and that I could think straight. Too many things my brain can process, a tragic event or my brain trying to confused me with answers on a test cause I start thinking about my future. Wishing I could go back to the past and be in those comfort memories, that I day dream about and play in a movie in my brain on constant.
Only if I could dissect brain. Though I’m in this real world; I’m supposedly in. I could dissect it; however, it would be hard cause I have Derealization and Dyslexia.
Oct 26, 2018
Oct 26, 2018 at 9:31 PM UTC