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Quote by J M Northup

“I felt ancient and exhausted. I felt like a prisoner within myself and as if I was just watching a movie that was playing before my eyes. I just wanted all of it to end and disappear; I wanted to disappear.”

Quote by J M Northup

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A Prisoner Within

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J M Northup

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“To these statements, Socrates, no one can offer a reply; but when you talk in this way, a strange feeling passes over the minds of your hearers: They fancy that they are led astray a little at each step in the argument, owing to their own want of skill in asking and answering questions; these littles accumulate, and at the end of the discussion they are found to have sustained a mighty overthrow and all their former notions appear to be turned upside down. And as unskilful players of draughts are at last shut up by their more skilful adversaries and have no piece to move, so they too find themselves shut up at last; for they have nothing to say in this new game of which words are the counters; and yet all the time they are in the right. The observation is suggested to me by what is now occurring. For any one of us might say, that although in words he is not able to meet you at each step of the argument, he sees as a fact that the votaries of philosophy, when they carry on the study, not only in youth as a part of education, but as the pursuit of their maturer years, most of them become strange monsters, not to say utter rogues, and that those who may be considered the best of them are made useless to the world by the very study which you extol.”

“The glow of the steetlamps sat heavy and thick above me. As I walked aimlessly, in the direction of downtown, I returned to my theories. That Mizuko and I shared the pictorial equivalent of DNA. That a sympathetic magic existed between us, no matter how far apart we were pulled. That we defied physical laws of time and space, waves, gravity, the rules laid down by physicists which governed our physical universe (earthquakes, tsunamis) and physical bodies. And yet somehow our connection had led to the opposite of intimacy. My search had led to its opposite. I had never felt so isolated and disconnected, even from myself.”

“DID patients often feel very isolated/lonely, in the sense that they believe they are the only one in the universe who is “different” from others and that they do not understand themselves... DePrince et al found that alienation was the only cognitive appraisal variable to differentiate DID from PTSD. While the groups had similar appraisals of shame, betrayal, self-blame, anger, and fear, the DID participants had higher appraisal of themselves as experiencing alienation. This construct is associated with feeling alone, disconnected, and different.”

“I pull out the blue spool of thread and the sharp needle I always keep in the left pocket of my dress--because old seams have a way of popping, thread unspooling, and you never know when you'll need it--and begin stitching my arm back into place. It takes longer than usual; some of the linen has begun to fray along the seam, and I need to gather a few spare dead leaves from the graveyard to fill my shoulder socket all the way. It's a ghastly thing to lose an arm--or any part of yourself, really--to feel disconnected from your body. Not quite whole. And I've always wished Dr. Finkelstein had stuffed my insides with something other than dried, shriveled leaves, tossed aside by the trees. Cotton perhaps, or rose petals. Something silken and ladylike.”

“Not surprisingly, people with PTSD commonly feel detached or estranged from others. People who have endured combat, rape, disaster work, and other forms of trauma often assume that they are now different and that no one could possibly relate to their experiences. They might feel that they can’t tell others about what happened or what they did for fear of judgment, and the secrets and fear of being shunned lead to their feeling disconnected from others. Because they no longer feel comfortable in social situations, they might avoid gatherings—or they might go but find no pleasure in them. Of course, to connect with others, people need to be emotionally open. This is difficult when one is still struggling to contain memories of the past.”