#/depersonalisation

[sacrificialmaiid]

milena offers her neck to alcina, to be bitten.

Everyone has a breaking point -- and this is Milena's.

It's been days now... or so she thinks. Days of being chained by the ankles just out of reach, days of nothing to wait for but the click of heels walking by her now and again, days of a plate of food tossed down in front of her on the ground with a clatter. She's said nothing all this time, has tried her best to be good, hasn't so much as questioned what she's done wrong for fear that she'll only stoke the Lady's ire further. But she's getting weak - she's getting desperate.

She wishes, more than anything, that the Countess would at the very least glance in her direction, say her name, give her anything even if it's rage. The cold indifference is more agonising than anything else could possibly be. There comes a point where she begins to lose sense of who she is, or if she's ever been anything more than just a vague concept.

The final straw is when Lady Dimitrescu lifts the knife. It's a small dagger used for blood-letting, and Milena knows what it means -- she is nothing, she is dirt, she is not even worthy of the Lady's teeth. She won't even be permitted close enough to be bitten.

Milena crumbles.

"No, no, please!" Her sobs are wretched and, on her knees still, she picks up handfuls of the Countess' skirts. She can think of absolutely nothing worse than the cold bite of the blade against her wrist. Instead, her head cants to the side to expose her tender, thrumming jugular, untouched in as long as she's been in the corner of this room on the floor. Whatever it is, she won't do it again. She will never do it again. Her coltish legs scrape against the thick, dark wood of the floor. Her hands shake against the folds of her Lady's dress.

"Please, mistress, please! P-Please put the knife aside. I'm sorry! I can put it to rights..! I can be better! I can be anything! Please, your mouth..!"

[tumbler-polls]

When you picture yourself in your mind, do you imagine yourself precisely how you look in real life, or do you see something else (an alter ego, a person who looks differently, another being, etc.)? When you're visualizing from the first person's pov, whose hands are you seeing? If you have aphantasia, consider "seeing" as a metaphor for the way you think of the concept of yourself.

The main options (we put them here due to the character limit):

🪞: I only imagine myself the way I look like irl.

🪆: I imagine someone/something that represents me.

✨️: I imagine myself in multiple ways: the way I am, as another being, as an abstract concept, you name it.

Please reblog for a bigger sample size and feel free to expand on your answer in the comments / tags!

Credit to @anon (we added a few options).

[sage-hazeline]

how do you reconnect to life after being disconnected for so long

[rapturepoetry]

wretching and vile unbecoming and disgusting look in the mirror and see your body

and you feel sick to your stomach you have the audacity to tear up as if this isn't you

because it doesnt feel like it is

it feels like you're looking at a monster a pitiful shell who is crawling their way through every day in a body that doesnt feel real

in a body that isn't theirs

[solacium]

presence // aventurine

he'll never outrightly ask you what it is, not at the outset.

he might find you curled on the couch, quiet, trying to breathe out the something in your chest that writhes and constricts, or in tears, but he won't ask, only sit quietly with you, lean against you, the weight of him enough to reassure you of his presence. maybe you reach for him, curl into the hollow of his body, and he'll let you, hold you until the tears stop, or you can feel your hands again, or you fall asleep, to the steady rhythm of his heart.

you'll wake, or look at him, and he'll speak, then, maybe look back at you with those iridescent eyes that you love, as he asks, softly, if you're feeling better, if you want to talk about it.

he'll keep you company, either way, listening. there is a steadiness in the weight of his arms around you, in the even beat of his heart against your back. you'll have to move, eventually, one of your legs falling asleep under you, and you'll both laugh, and shift. he gently disentangles himself from you, to get you something to drink. you settle back down, curled around each other, talk quietly until the sunlight changes.

[skinnyr4t]

[bl0w-m3]

All I can think about is what I don’t wanna think about. All I can do is try and get relief.

Relief never comes.

I’m walking around, not even real.

This all feels like a bad trip.

I can see it. I can hear it. I feels like it already happened.

I’m screaming for help. I’m begging and it feels like I’m in a soundproof box.

[disassociation-culture-is]

depersonalisation culture is hating those ‘five fun facts about yourself’ icebreakers because you’re barely a person

.

[sacrificialmaiid]

As the third hour commences, Milena finally feels her body become numb enough that her mind wanders. The birth of the second hour had been unbearable, the strain of the stance that she was ordered to hold having become agony. Her muscles had twitched and trembled uncontrollably with no comfortable place to settle into and she had felt stark terror on multiple occasions that the silver platter upon which a filled wine glass rests would go sliding off her shoulders and clatter to the ground. In this event, she is sure that either one of two scenarios would be inevitable: that the Countess would make things much worse for her, or that she would be sent away completely and dispassionately. The most terrifying result of this threat is that she is not sure which option would hurt her more.

She is bent double on the floor, the skin of her knees pinched between sharp bone and ancient mahogany, her hands linked together behind her back -- it is one of those rare occasions where she wishes that she had the assistance of manacles to help her hold them together, but alas, she is on her own here. Her nose is centimetres away from the floor, and she has watched droplets of sweat gather at its pointed tip before plip-plopping their way to the wood below. Her hair hangs in a honey-coloured veil either side of her face, trapping in the heat of the fire, split in two across the nape of her neck and growing damp beneath the quickly warming silver plate resting between her shoulder blades and the base of her skull.

After the pain had peaked to the point at which Milena had thought she would never be able to endure it, miraculously, it had seemed to dull some with each following moment. She knows that when she is finally released, it will all come flooding immediately back the moment that she shifts her limbs, but for now the relief is a Godsend.

From her position here on the floor, she can see very little of the Countess - primarily the hem of her dress and the point of one shoe creeping out from beneath it. The Lady Dimitrescu has said nothing, the room horrifically silent save for the crackle of the fire and the turning pages of her book, interspersed now and again with a low swallow when she sees fit to lift the wine glass from Milena's back and take a long pull from it. Each time it is set back on its platter, Milena holds her breath and prays that her balance will not give out -- thus far, it hasn't.

With her body numb, her delirious mind sees fit to stray. She thinks the most peculiar thoughts, any sense of focus and concentration having waned somewhere between the second and third hour. Getting through the earlier strains of pain had been the most difficult, when she had been alert enough to really feel them. She had latched onto thoughts of anything else, her family and her home more than anything, to get her through. She thought of her mother's arthritic fingers peeling open the document of payment that would be delivered on the first day of each month and the food and the clothes that it would buy them all. Dimitrescu wealth, a vague shred of it, going back into the Hofer account. It's a poor consolation prize, but it is enough to keep her resolute.

Her hands are slippery with sweat and she digs her fingernails into them to sustain her grip.

Hands. She thinks of the Countess' hands, clad always in leather gloves. She wonders what they must look like underneath, how those claws unsheathe, how they came to be there at all. She cannot see them from here, but she can smell the rich leather and hear it creak. She wonders if they are as horrific and beautiful as the rest of the Lady. Milena's hands are calloused by work, but otherwise small and soft. She wonders how they might look side by side. She wonders why she cares. She blinks blearily and realises that she can no longer feel them. They do not even thrum with her pulse anymore.

The Countess has called her a pretty thing, in a tone full of sharp, cooing mockery, and a thing is truly what she has become. She considers the line between girl and thing and where it can be drawn now that she has been constrained to one position, to one purpose, for so many hours now. She wants to cry and to beg for mercy, but she knows that this would not make her a good and obedient girl. Not only is that what the Lady wishes to see, but it is what will keep the blood pumping through Milena's veins.

Admittedly, she is tired. She is so tired that she squeezes her eyes shut tightly, to trap the tears that swell up behind them.

Surely, she thinks, the wine glass must be almost empty.

@dimitresca

[7nvk]

the world stopped being real to me two years ago

[thetempestechoes]

Actually, Es is their own person.

I see a lot of people treat Es like an audience self-insert, a complete blank slate for the audience to project their thoughts onto. But I think there's more to Es and their character than that, and I think that if you treat them as characterless, you're doing their character a massive disservice. Here's a (relatively) short post about why.

From the very beginning, Jackalope encourages Es to accept Milgram as their identity, wholly, and encourages the audience to look at Es like a blank slate. Jackalope even says in one of the Milgram timelines that the only way the audience can affect events in Milgram is through Es (how this interacts with the voices heard by the prisoners is for a different post). From the very beginning, Es is presented to the audience as a vessel for them to look at Milgram through.

But Es isn't a blank slate. Es did accept Milgram as their whole identity very early on, but it's important to remember that they are a teenager who remembers almost no personal information except for their age, who wakes up in a completely unfamiliar environment with no frame of reference for the sort of situation they've ended up in. That makes it much easier for Milgram to become Es's identity, because they have almost nothing else to latch onto. Any questioning of this causes them to be mentally barred from thinking about it further, even progressing to breakdowns when pushed (such as in Muu's first VD).

Es and Amane are remarkably similar in their perspectives in that sense. Amane justifies her actions by using the rules of the cult she's grown up in; Es is doing their utmost best to follow the rules laid out to them by Milgram. Even when Fuuta points out just how similar Es's situation is to the rest of the prisoners, Es rejects this - simply because they are the warden, and by Milgram's rules, that means they're in charge. Es and Amane's agencies are both downplayed or even outright denied by people within Milgram or the audience, mostly because of their ages, and they both resent this.

Es physically isn't allowed to doubt Milgram, and not only that, but doubting Milgram means doubting themself, because it's become their entire identity. They are the warden, that is what they do, that is their job, this is irrefutable and doubting this means doubting their very being. Even if doubting Milgram didn't push them into breakdown territory, I think it's understandable that doubting the thing that has become the core of their identity would give them an existential crisis. Whoever Es used to be is suppressed as much as possible. Milgram wants Es to be that blank slate, that audience vessel, but Es is also a person. And no-one is a complete blank slate.

[neurodivergenttales]

Don't ask me how I'm feeling, I'm not even sure that I'm a real person

[notabled-noodle]

normal vs disordered: depersonalisation edition

normal: feeling disconnected/detached from early childhood memories

not normal: feeling disconnected/detached from many of your memories, including recent ones

normal: having an out-of-body experience during a time of crisis

not normal: having an out-of-body experience regularly, even when you’re not experiencing excessive stress

normal: feeling outside of yourself when experiencing “collective joy” (e.g. at a sports match or a concert)

not normal: feeling outside of yourself when there’s not much going on, or feeling that way regularly

normal: feeling detached from your thoughts or actions when doing repetitive/thoughtless tasks

not normal: feeling detached from your thoughts and actions to the point that it interferes with the completion of daily tasks

normal: feeling slightly unreal when you’re tired or just about to drift off to sleep

not normal: feeling unreal even when you’re otherwise awake and going about your day

depersonalisation (as a form of dissociation) is a common coping mechanism for brains going through stress or other intense situations. it becomes a problem when it is regular, distressing, and/or preventing you from completing daily tasks. if you experience this, please consider seeking help!

[actuallymagsdump]

[whumpshaped]

Nonhuman whumpee that presents, was raised as a human, and fully believes themselves to be one, finding out that they aren’t human in whumper’s care.

Whumper knows already and inflicts enough pain for the nonhuman features to pop out. In this case a demigod with an extra set of glowy arms and markings? Whumper makes sure to massage any new part of whumpee due to the humiliating sensitivity they have, and Whumpee gets depersonalization from the whole ordeal.

tw nonhuman whumpee, nonhuman whumper, depersonalisation, past murder (of parents), captivity, intimate whumper

Whumpee stared at the thing in the mirror, taking in the furrowed brows and the glowing golden eyes full of confusion; it was strangely similar to how they felt. The creature in the mirror was very good at imitating them.

They shuddered when Whumper gently took one of the thing’s extra arms, they shuddered like it was theirs, because they were also very good at imitating the creature. They couldn’t stop. They couldn’t stop feeling it, their awfully non-human body betraying their every memory and concept of self.

What were they?

That was them, wasn’t it? The thing in the mirror? But what was that?

“Slowly coming to terms with it?” Whumper asked lovingly, as though they hadn’t just shattered Whumpee’s entire world. They dragged their fingers down the length of their arm, tracing the markings, and Whumpee’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment against their will. “My sweet angel. My divine little pet. Aren’t you glad I showed you your true self?”

“What am I?” they whispered, still fixated on the mirror. So long as it was just in the mirror, it wasn’t as real as looking down and seeing it in person.

“The child of a long gone god; one that saw it fit to mingle with humans.”

Whumpee let out a whimper as their captor dug their finger into the stiff tissue, thoroughly massaging out the tension. “My parents aren’t gods,” they said softly. “I… I can’t go back to them like this.”

“You can’t.”

“Please… d-do something. Reverse it.”

Whumper smiled. “This is who you are, sweetheart. And that,” they pointed at their own reflection, “is who you belong to.”

Whumpee wanted to argue. They wanted to say well, if they were the child of a god, then surely, they too were an all-powerful being. Powerful enough to reverse this, and powerful enough to fight off a cocky mortal feeding them lies. But as soon as they opened their mouth, they saw it.

It was but a flash. A flash of a halo. A flash of too many eyes to count. A creature too terrifying to behold.

They swallowed, tearing their gaze away from the mirror and turning to face Whumper, relieved to find them in the form they had gotten used to. “What are you?” they asked, and their voice came out shakier than they intended.

“Many cultures, many names… Who keeps track?” They continued working life into Whumpee’s numb limbs like nothing had happened, still smiling.

“You’re a god,” they breathed. “Are you–”

“I am the one who killed them.” They glanced up, eerie smile widening just a fraction. “So I could have you all to myself.”

[moxxrat]

NOT REAL, THIS IS JUST MAKE UP