A closed, dark space. Dirty, scratched walls. Two people kept moving me along a narrow passageway, one behind me, the other just ahead. Mould dripping through streaks of condensed steam. We began descending a spiral staircase, at the end of which was a closed-off room. That was where we were hurrying to: each step suffocating,  the light dimming, the air thinning. Until everything was gone. The first time I experienced this state was when I had to confront something I couldn’t bear to accept. Which destabilised me precisely because I had so badly wanted to believe otherwise. I heard a voice from afar. It asked me if I was dissociating because I was trying not to block a childhood trauma. I tried to respond, but couldn’t. It was exactly as in the dream – there were two people there, one in front of me and one behind me.

A blank, dark space. When I dissociate, I feel nothing and think nothing. It’s like entering a field stripped of all meaning. Constant anxiety and panic attacks led me to explore the concept of the field as a non-place (Augé 1995: 77). I can hardly explain why, but this image of the field became oddly comforting. This void allowed me to fill it up with anything I wanted. A small country road in northern Italy, a stone house, its coolness wrapped around me, and a garden, shaded by orange trees. Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve the privilege of travelling. Maybe that’s why I project them inward, into my imagination: “…the feeling of curiosity for distant countries […] these are systems of thoughts that it is not always easy to express in words, that are not ideas, properly so called, that may on the contrary enclose very many different ideas, but that nevertheless possess a mental unity” (Janet 1907: 6).

A Real that cannot be represented (Lacan 1977: 70). I perceive this Real as a suspension of the Imaginary, where the Symbolic fails. The Symbolic encompasses the totality of elements that structure reality: language, society, relationships, all the perceptible aspects of existence that serve as anchors I hold on to. The Imaginary, on the other hand, is the space of daydreaming, the internal landscape through which I can interpret what the Real might signify. Issues, ignored for years, built up into layers of defence – mental brackets enclosing what I didn’t want to confront – now come cruising down. Once those brackets begin to dissolve, it becomes so overwhelming and painful that this escape emerges as a response: “because a specific event occurs when the individual is in a particular state, the hypnoid state, and for this reason is separated from consciousness. The hypnoid state may depend on a neurophysiological cause (e.g., fatigue, which causes the refractory state of the cortex) or on an emotional, psychological event” (Etchegoyen 2011: 23). Dissociation is self-encapsulation, sinking into the darkness of the self, where clarity is all but lost, like diving into murky waters. The empty field is a liminal space, a mirror capable of revealing the subconscious. This image allowed me to imagine a place where dissociation might unfold, merging two spaces: a vast external geographical stillness and an internal void produced by depersonalization.

Sometimes, the same thing happens when you stare at a fixed point. This happened to me quite frequently growing up. I remember I was in my grandparents’ room, sitting quietly in the semi-darkness, staring at a particular spot on the wall. Suddenly, the corner began to resemble a pyramid of sorts, trying desperately to break free, to expand outward. Now I know that it was only my brain distorting perception. But at the time, it felt so real that I froze. I forgot who I was. Where I was, how old, who were my parents, what was my native language – everything that I could rely on to anchor myself in the world was suddenly gone. I know now that I was ten years old at the time, but in that brief moment, I was no one.

For me, “depersonalization becomes a safe void where nothing affects” (Simeon 2006: 10). But it comes at a cost: a lingering helplessness, a dulled intensity, a quiet inability to feel things as fully as before. 

Being overly sensitive and feeling things too intensely can estrange you from the world. I’ve been accused of being a chronophobiac, but this is a partial explanation. It’s the fear of no longer experiencing the present the way I once did. “I try to recapture the feeling I had when I was young, that life was rich with promise. I looked forward to building memories to cherish in my old age. But now it all seems so short and empty, as if all the experiences I did enjoy to this point have been erased and I’m just existing in this very second… there is no past, no future. Instead of being rooted in this world, enjoying my children and my life, all I can think of is how transient it all is” (ibid.). Simeon captures something I’ve felt, but couldn’t name: the strange dissonance between memory and presence, between what was once vivid and what now feels like it never happened. It’s not simply the fear of time passing, but of disappearing within it.

Sometimes, I still feel that room’s chiaroscuro. I feel like I’m still there; around me, everything blurred. Only small fragments of light fall through unseen cracks in the corners, partially obscured by pyramids forming in the darkness. And then, suddenly, I’m myself again.