An ability not asked for

I start remembering more about my childhood or is it that I just never really 'searched' for memories.. Every time somebody asked me anything about my childhood I always answered 'I don't remember'. Most of these times I really didn't remember or didn't even try to. Other times I remembered but it wasn't really a story to tell. Everything I remember fits into that cathegory.

I'm not saying that there were absolutely no nice moments and that I was constantly abused. But I seem to just not remember good moments. My sister once told me that there was a nice moment at a lake when we were both little eating ice cream and there was no fighting, no screaming and so on. I have absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I was thinking a lot about these moments why I can't recall them and when I can recall them, why I don't see them as good moments.

I think there was a moment very early in my life when I learned to 'zoom out'. I wasn't going anywhere. Not to a dream world not into depression, I was just totally gone mentally. I stopped feeling anything. Pain, emotions, nothing. I just left. I stopped thinking, I looked at things but I didn't see anything, I heared but I didn't listen. I was building a wall around me and nothing could get through. My body was functioning but everything else didn't.

No wonder I can't remember so many things, what IS there to remember when you don't see, hear or feel anything. So I was not able to have any good moments. When I wasn't scared or terrified I was not there.

When I started having pain in my joints and was diagnosed, I also started to not be there in moments when the pain got too strong. I still happens to me sometimes. So now it is something that is helping me coping with pain without taking painkillers. But when I feel that I am leaving it always reminds me of the little me doing that and it's triggering. It's so triggering. I'm glad I can now actually control it and come back.

I did appreciate this 'ability' in some situations during the last 6 years. When I was living and traveling in Latin America it helped me to do things I thought I would never be able to do because of my condition. Traveling  long distances can be very exhausting carrying a backpack the size of youself (knowing you wouldn't have to have brought half of what it contains with you anyway). In these situations I left. I would never have made it up a volcano with huge temperature changes and having to walk up a mountain for 4 hours without leaving and letting my body function by itself.

But there are also situations I didn't even know that I was not there until a few years later whan I really thought about it. In situations I just couldn't react physically or emotionally.
An example: It was around midnight when my then current boyfriend (M.) and I were waiting on the side of a road in Guatemala for a bus to come. Suddenly we heard gun shots coming from the corner just a few meters away from us. M threw himself on the pavement having a totally normal reaction. I was not moving I wasn't in shock or too scared to move, I just didn't have any emotions. I just kept looking in the direction where the shots came from. M had to force me to lie down on the pavement. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.
And I knew this wasn't good. M kept on joking about it with his friends him being a Guatemalan and used to this kind of violence 'peeing his pants' -as he said- and me being this cold hearted German. But I never laughed about it because I knew something was wrong with me. I just didn't know what.

Now I always feel when I start to leave and I can stop it. I'm not sure if I will never 'use' it again, but only to do something I wouldn't be able to do without it...
Using it in a good way. For myself not to survive but to live..