lanternfly

I try to explain the feeling of dissociation over the phone, to my mother. It is not an easy task. I can hear the scratch of the lycra in the pants she’s trying on in the Nordstrom dressing room come to me through my Airpods as I walk a street hundreds of miles away from her. I try to explain that, when I feel like this, it’s like I can’t touch anything. Even before I knew that there were microscopic layers of atoms between two things that appeared to be touching, I felt intimately that things could never quite collide. I try to explain that things don’t feel real, but that I’m working on believing that I am not in danger even when I feel this way. My mother is working on not sounding concerned over the phone while remotely screening me for signs that I’ve inherited her psychotic illness.