the sense of self, now, and back then - part one.

When I was quite young, maybe 12 or 13, is I think about when I began to note, occasionally, an unusual feeling, or state of mind. Being a state of mind, I find it almost impossible to describe, but I'll try.

The usual flow of thoughts and feelings seemed to have stopped, quite suddenly but for no particular reason. In its place was the feeling that my prior experience had been de-coupled from where I was at that moment. I felt newly-arrived in the present. If I thought back into the immediate past, the feeling disappeared as quietly and quickly as it had arrived, and that's what I used to do at first, because the feeling was disturbing. I felt slightly remote, a little alien to my usual self.

As I grew older and I guess busier with the world, family, people, work, it happened less often. If anyone spoke to me, it vanished, as I turned to engage with them.  But in the last few years, I've felt it more often, and it's a welcome guest; it helps me to exist for a while in the present moment.

I can't hang on to it - it disappears, if I try to keep it, or assess it, or "do" anything else to it. All I can do is be in it for a while.

Does this make any sense to anyone else, at all, I wonder?

(I expect Nurse Ratched and the ambulance will be here any moment...)