these words, down on paper

I never stop writing. I write as often as I breathe.

Just not here.

There are pages and pages of words stuck in my head. I organize them into neat sentences and paragraphs, but my fingers never move.

I am somewhere outside myself, watching, writing. I am writing the story of myself. Not always. Sometimes I am the protagonist. Sometimes the antagonist. But there are the times when I can't bear the weight of my own story, so I step aside and write.

Dissociation. My therapist says.

 He likes to define things. I like to later look up his definitions and have a panic attack.

I want to give you an art project. He says. I want you to make three drawings. One that answers the question "What is your problem?" One that answers the question "What needs to happen to resolve your problem?" And one that answers the question, "What would your life look like without this 'problem?'"

That was a month ago. I haven't touched my sketchbook, but I've thought about it.

What is my problem?

I hate that question.

You. Me. Life. Breathing. NOTHING. EVERYTHING. 

Depersonalization disorder (DPD) is a dissociative disorder in which the sufferer is affected by persistent or recurrent feelings of depersonalization and/or derealization. Diagnostic criteria include persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from one's mental processes or body. The symptoms include a sense of automaton, going through the motions of life but not experiencing it, feeling as though one is in a movie, loss of conviction with one's identity, feeling as though one is in a dream, feeling a disconnection from one's body; out-of-body experience, a detachment from one's body, environment and difficulty relating oneself to reality.

Even now, I feel it. It feels like floating.

...

Bill texts me after a long silence. He voluntarily checked himself back in to the hospital. Thought I sensed your aura in the corridors. He says. 

...

My co-worker's niece was born 3 months premature. She sends me pictures of a tiny, fragile, soft creature with fingers and toes and ears. She weighs 1 lb. She is the smallest bundle of tubes and wires, tucked beneath a glass case so no one can touch her. So she won't break.

But she is so little, so unprepared for life in this world. Her body is failing. 

Airlifted to the city. Incision to relieve the pressure. Surgery is a last resort. She probably won't survive.

I wait, terrified, for the text message from my co-worker. The one that says she's gone.

I don't know this baby. I don't know my co-worker's brother and his wife. I have no connection except that this is another life and I wish, sometimes I wish so badly, that I could trade mine. I wish I could give that baby my life. I wish I could give a terminally ill child my life. I wish I could give my life to any number of people who have found out that theirs will be cut short. I wish I could give my life to someone who deserves it.

I don't know this baby, but I want so badly for her to live.