If you’ve read Truest, you know it deals with a (fairly rare) dissociative disorder that sometimes readers accuse me of making up. (I guess they don’t have Google.) Even though I myself have struggled with a form of it, it is still VERY rare for me to find anyone else who talks about it. I do have people who come to my blog and discuss their experience with it in the comments, but other than that, I don’t hear too much.

I have loved the band Counting Crows for some time, and they are mentioned in my WIP, and I’m dreadfully in love with Adam Duritz, the front man, who is a genius and whom I admire for his blatant discussion of mental illness. I had known that he has battled through things, but I never knew precisely what his struggle was. I guess I’d just never dug in deep enough because it wasn’t hard to find: he struggles with the same disorder that Laurel does and that I have. In fact, in this article, he and I/Laurel use the same type of descriptions!

Adam: “I have a form of dissociative disorder that makes the world seem like it’s not real, as if things aren’t taking place. It’s hard to explain, but you feel untethered.”

Laurel: “Gravity wasn’t working right. I felt like I was going to fly off into space.”

Adam: “And because nothing seems real, it’s hard to connect with the world or the people in it because they’re not there. You’re not there. That’s why I rarely saw my family back then: It’s hard to care when everything feels as if it’s taking place in your imagination. And if you’re distant with people … they eventually leave.

West/Laurel: “Laurel,” I said quietly but with force, “Silas is your real sibling. The only one you’ve got. And you’re pushing him away.”
“Yeah, sometimes I seem to know that,” she said, “but I can’t … can’t hold onto it.”

To read other things I have posted about solipsism syndrome, follow the tag.