Thursday, August 6, 2009

Overhear

It has been a long time since I updated here. Many things have been going on, in this matter and my life in general.

My roommate is studying to become a nurse. She hopes to be accepted to school and start in the beginning of 2010. In the meantime, she is taking many self-paced, credit courses to get some of the prerequisites under her belt. One of her classes is Abnormal Psychology. I overheard her yesterday telling her boyfriend about a chapter she just finished about dissociative disorders.

"There's one called Dissociative Fugue," she said. "It's really cool," and went on to describe what it is (the phenomenon of someone relocating and starting a new life, having no memory of their previous life for a time. I imagine eventually remembering that is a frightening experience).

That comment gave me pause. "Really cool." I find my roommate to be mostly a compassionate person. She's not one of those who I feel supports my support of Monty, but for the most part, she is a healer and will make a great nurse.

"Really cool." I was struck with an instance of anger at her. Just an instance, but it was there. I wanted to interrupt and proclaim that I don't think anyone suffering from any dissociative disorder thinks it's "really cool." I was hurt that she would think this about anyone's condition, particularly because one affects someone I know.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is what put Monty in the situation he is in. While this brings up many questions in itself, the truth is that he is taking medications for it. At this point, whether anyone can truly suffer from such a thing is immaterial. His doctors say a friend of mine suffers from a dissociative disorder. He is paying the consequences for it. It is not "really cool."