Depersonalisation By Dodie Clark Analysis

Imagine waking up to the world looking flat and fake. Your “peripheral vision seems very dark, or very light, as if your looking through a vignette filter.” (Clark, pg. 51) Now imagine feeling this way for a majority of your life. Think about your friends birthday party, that day you spent at your favorite amusement park, or even an emotional family reunion. Now imagine waking up the next day and not remembering a thing that happened the day before, the only way to piece together certain events is to look at pictures taken the day before and watching videos of laughing strangers but even then, the recounting of it doesn’t seem real. These are just some symptoms of Depersonalisation, and one big elements Dodie Clark writes about in her book
Sometimes its deep rooted trauma caused by someone you loved and thought you knew. You’re seventeen and he’s twenty-two. He writes long, in-depth letters about music, adventures, and love. He’s a surfer with flicky hair, a rock climber, a runner. You have four-hour-long phone conversations and text at least every half hour. When you first meet for the first time, he runs off his train, bounds through the barriers and scoops you up in his arms, lifting you and twirling you around the station. It’s your typical honeymoon phase at the beginning of every relationship but for Dodie Clark it turned sour real quick. It started with little things like asking not to talk about exams in front of his roommates but if she had to, then call it college. He’d ask her to wipe her socks before she got on his bed so she wouldn’t get fluff on his covers, and spit her toothpaste into the running water so it didn’t stick to the sink. He’d criticize the way she’d cut onions haphazardly because no one had taught her how yet and he’d instruct her to watch and learn, making her feel incompetent and stupid. About four months into the relationship when he grabbed a bowl she had placed upturned on the side and slammed it upside down on the counter dramatically. They’d kiss and makeup but she would tiptoe around him, making sure to say and do the right things. He quickly became emotionally manipulative, and even though he would throw things and kick walls during arguments he luckily never became physically abusive. So after two years of walking on eggshells and several failed attempts at breaking up with him she finally packed her things and left. She moved back to London with some friends but her relationship had affected her so much that even now she still slips back into that routine of complying to the other persons every need. Dodie states that “Mistakes and wrongdoing will be present in every