This thing of disassociating really interests me. When my mother was first diagnosed, her emails to me were so bright and nonchalant. I kept thinking, it hasn\'t hit her. Finally it did hit. She told me about it over Christmas, that she said to her husband, \"Honey, I\'ve got CANCER!\" and then she went through a period of not knowing who she was anymore, she stepped outside herself completely. Her mind couldn\'t grasp it. I was disassociating like a madman, too, really struggling to assimilate and for a long time couldn\'t, just couldn\'t get my mind around it.

The only other time I remember feeling anything like the DIHL and the disassociation re my mother was a car wreck I was in with my cousin when I was 13. Someone ran a stop sign and we hit them broadside. My cousin\'s mouth hit the steering wheel and it knocked all her teeth out or pushed them up into her head; there was blood everywhere. I had bad bruises and a concussion. I can\'t remember everything about that day, just bits and flashes, and I didn\'t feel like I was in my body throughout the cops coming and being in the hospital.

Where IS that place you go to?

I guess it\'s fairly typical and well-documented for people to disassociate under shock. But it\'s weird to me that the sight of a person can make you disassociate just like that. The only things I have to compare to the DIHL of meeting SDR are a fatal illness and a car crash. Dig. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Oh, P.S. Remember in The Godfather, when Mike is on the lam in Siciliy and sees Apolonia in her purple dress and stands there staring, slack-jawed, and his companions nudge each other and laugh and say he was hit by \"the thunderbolt\"? And he decides that very second he\'s going to marry her, goes straight to her dad\'s house to ask for her hand.
That\'s DIHL, I think.