Have you ever waked past a window or a mirror and been surpised by your reflection? Shocked by your own face? Like somehow in the time between when you brushed your teeth at the bathroom mirror and now, you entirely forgot you had a face at all, let alone what it is supposed to look like? I always thought it was normal to be confused by your reflection. I thought it was normal to look in the mirror and think, “That’s not my face.”
According to the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, dissociation is “the disconnection or lack of connection between things usually associated with each other. Dissociated experiences are not integrated into the usual sense of self, resulting in discontinuities in conscious awareness.” The two types of dissociation I experience are depersonalization (“some people report rather profound alienation from their bodies, a sense that they do not recognize themselves in the mirror, recognize their face, or simply feel not “connected” to their bodies in ways which are challenging to articulate”), and derealization (“the sense of the world not being real”).
I didn’t know any of that wasn’t normal. I described my standard way of operating as “I exist inside my head and I watch my life happen through windows where my eyes are” to a friend recently and she told me I was dissociating. I had always thought dissociation was just watching your body from an outside point like floating above yourself, so I did what anyone would do and googled it. As I was reading ISSTD’s Dissociation FAQ page, everything started making sense. It explained why reading puts me into a nearly unbreakable trance, why I can’t feel sad for things that make me sad but sometimes feel like I’ve been hit by a sadness tsunami that disappears as quickly and as unprovoked as it comes, why looking in the mirror is such a confusing and disturbing experience.
My question is, what’s wrong with dissociation? I mean, I don’t have other identities that I dissociate into. Except for the complete emotional numbness I feel, I’m fine. Right? But then again, I don’t remember what it’s like to be my body. I’ve been this way for a long time. I don’t really phase in and out of it, this is sort of my default state. It helps me cope with physical pain and gender dysphoria. My new mantra has become “Not my body, not my problem.” Because it’s not my body. I don’t know whose it is but it doesn’t belong to me. Yesterday, I tried being my body. I stood at the bathroom mirror and tried to recognize the person reflected before me. The face that obviously belongs to the body I’m using opened its mouth when I opened mine, but it was not my face and I couldn’t force it to be. I leaned in close and looked it in the eyes. Heart pounding, I slammed off the lights and left the room.
When I was looking at the face in the mirror there was a moment when I realized it was looking right back at me.
Unruly Bodies 
I’ve been wondering about this same thing. I did some research on dissociation recently because I’ve been made more aware of the fact that I have been experiencing dissociation for a while now. I also didn’t realize that it was abnormal until I looked it up. Through reading about it, I found that connections could be drawn between dissociation and depression and other disorders–which made me wonder about connections I could draw between those things in myself. I wonder how many people experience dissociation and how much the experiences of it can vary between people.
I often spend minutes at a time just staring at my face in the mirror, in true disbelief that my face is…well, MY face. I very often wonder why this life, this body, this experience is mine and no one else’s; I wonder what it would be like to be someone else. Something else I’ve realized is that I constantly disassociate from my body. Walking around campus, and just in general–I am very rarely fully aware of my body and I very rarely *feel* my body. The few times I do really feel my body are times when my asthma acts up. I become acutely aware that the passageways in my lungs are naturally swollen and narrow and take in less air. Wheezing is a big part of that. When I wheeze I am both slightly embarrassed and made aware that my body has a natural difficulty taking in enough air.