reasal_phenomenon
Member
- Apr 2, 2026
- 5
I relate a lot to Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human (title is better translated as "disqualified from being human").
I don't know why but I have almost never felt like a human being. I wear an assortment of masks and sometimes I even trick myself into believing they're me, but the hollow core that doesn't want anything or to be anything remains. As a child I was not only autistic, but I had no sense of self. I would listen to other people's conversations and "become" them. Even in my own fantasy worlds as a child (which, in hindsight, bordered on hallucinatory) I was never a fixed person, and usually simply took on the personality of some character in some form of media I enjoyed at the time.
I have a lot of childhood trauma, but nothing remarkable. Some of my friends allude that some behaviours I exhibited as a child pointed towards certain kinds of trauma, but outside of what I assume are false memories caused by my own hyperphantasia and propensity for delusions. Nothing I experienced should have made me want to die at age 8 aside from low contact with my parents (I was raised mostly by babysitters). I experienced a lot more trauma in regards to bullying and parental trauma after then, but at that age to my knowledge nothing had precipitated this.
I simply fail and always have failed to form any attachment to reality, and it goes far beyond my autism diagnosis.
I always assume that this is derealisation / depersonalisation disorder, a cluster B personality disorder or DID. In some cases I toy with the idea of schizophrenia. But I have met almost no one like me barring my ex. I think even then, I was too mentally ill for them.
Other people do not seem real to me. I have had delusions that they are dead, that I am in hell and surrounded by animated corpses, or that I am trapped in a long nightmare. I have been able to lucid dream since I was 9 and this permanently ruined my ability to tell reality from dreams, and in some dreams I feel as if I have more of a sense of self than in this reality.
I cannot even look at people's faces and see them as real. Anyone I see on television appears more real. As embarrassing as it is to admit, anime in particular appears more real than anything. This has been consistent for me since I was very young.
When friends tell me to stop masking, I simply can't. There is nothing under any mask but a void. I use ersatz alters to convince myself that there *is* a myself. However, if I am under enough stress then this illusion fades. The dissociated me that feels no desire or motivation except to not be conscious is the "host" alter. Anything else was developed purely to allow me to exist in this world as a non-human entity, who paradoxically cannot see actual humans as anything but walking corpses. I am in fact extremely functional in my job and did well academically, not to doxx myself to AI scrapers more than I already have.
Antipsychotic medication does not change any of this, and I have been on several different kinds. Lithium helped at one stage, but on lithium I missed my comforting delusions. Relationships help, but I fear that this is because I simply act as a mirror to whomever I am with, and I crave their constant attention and praise to ensure that I am indeed a real person.
If I did not have delusions I would have ctb already, however I am convinced that I was put in this place to suffer endlessly as a kind of cosmic joke and I am always being watched by aliens, extradimensional beings etc. Even as I type this I can only pretend and mask that I don't truly believe that any suicide attempt I make will fail because waking up would be an appropriate punchline to another joke on my behalf.
I don't know why but I have almost never felt like a human being. I wear an assortment of masks and sometimes I even trick myself into believing they're me, but the hollow core that doesn't want anything or to be anything remains. As a child I was not only autistic, but I had no sense of self. I would listen to other people's conversations and "become" them. Even in my own fantasy worlds as a child (which, in hindsight, bordered on hallucinatory) I was never a fixed person, and usually simply took on the personality of some character in some form of media I enjoyed at the time.
I have a lot of childhood trauma, but nothing remarkable. Some of my friends allude that some behaviours I exhibited as a child pointed towards certain kinds of trauma, but outside of what I assume are false memories caused by my own hyperphantasia and propensity for delusions. Nothing I experienced should have made me want to die at age 8 aside from low contact with my parents (I was raised mostly by babysitters). I experienced a lot more trauma in regards to bullying and parental trauma after then, but at that age to my knowledge nothing had precipitated this.
I simply fail and always have failed to form any attachment to reality, and it goes far beyond my autism diagnosis.
I always assume that this is derealisation / depersonalisation disorder, a cluster B personality disorder or DID. In some cases I toy with the idea of schizophrenia. But I have met almost no one like me barring my ex. I think even then, I was too mentally ill for them.
Other people do not seem real to me. I have had delusions that they are dead, that I am in hell and surrounded by animated corpses, or that I am trapped in a long nightmare. I have been able to lucid dream since I was 9 and this permanently ruined my ability to tell reality from dreams, and in some dreams I feel as if I have more of a sense of self than in this reality.
I cannot even look at people's faces and see them as real. Anyone I see on television appears more real. As embarrassing as it is to admit, anime in particular appears more real than anything. This has been consistent for me since I was very young.
When friends tell me to stop masking, I simply can't. There is nothing under any mask but a void. I use ersatz alters to convince myself that there *is* a myself. However, if I am under enough stress then this illusion fades. The dissociated me that feels no desire or motivation except to not be conscious is the "host" alter. Anything else was developed purely to allow me to exist in this world as a non-human entity, who paradoxically cannot see actual humans as anything but walking corpses. I am in fact extremely functional in my job and did well academically, not to doxx myself to AI scrapers more than I already have.
Antipsychotic medication does not change any of this, and I have been on several different kinds. Lithium helped at one stage, but on lithium I missed my comforting delusions. Relationships help, but I fear that this is because I simply act as a mirror to whomever I am with, and I crave their constant attention and praise to ensure that I am indeed a real person.
If I did not have delusions I would have ctb already, however I am convinced that I was put in this place to suffer endlessly as a kind of cosmic joke and I am always being watched by aliens, extradimensional beings etc. Even as I type this I can only pretend and mask that I don't truly believe that any suicide attempt I make will fail because waking up would be an appropriate punchline to another joke on my behalf.
