The first time I experienced a huge moment of absence was in 2019, I was 19 years old. I was in my first year of undergraduate studies at Sciences Po Bordeaux. It was like I was in the moonlight, but much more intense, and for hours. I was physically in class but mentally I felt like I was flying, like I wasn’t in any place. I was completely disconnected from my bodily reality. Since that day it kept happening again and it was out of control, I didn’t even realize I was in this state. Once I came back to reality and looked at my watch, I realized that three hours had passed. At first I thought I was being lazy and sleeping all day, but in reality I didn’t really close my eyes, it wasn’t sleep. I hid my face, I tried to live my life despite everything, but I had a lot of trouble going on that year.
Eventually, even if I felt like an episode was coming, I could contain it when I was in class. I couldn’t concentrate 100% but I could answer when someone asked me a question. Over time, I learned to recognize the moments when I was tempted to slip into this state and to postpone them. It’s a bit like when you really want to smoke a cigarette but you know you can’t. The desire will increase more and more, until the moment we find ourselves at home, and there we smoke ten. I often went to work in university libraries, because that’s where I felt less tempted to be in bed and “phasing” all day.
At the end of my third year of bachelor’s degree, which I followed in Martinique, I decided to stop my studies and withdraw from all forms of social life, partly because of my mental state. For two years, I lived alone here and there, in a family house in the mountains, on the way to Compostela, I worked in market gardening… I also began to have episodes of psychosis. These were delusions of persecution: I was convinced that certain people meant me harm, or had harmed me in the past. It was hell, because I imagined terrible things, then I constantly doubted their reality.
I was extremely angry with myself for even thinking that these things could have happened. At the same time, I also had moments of absence, so either I was off or I was “on”, but it wasn’t flashing across the board. A vicious circle that made me lose control, this time is very blurry in my head. I had suicidal thoughts. It was when I almost took action that I decided to ask for help.
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