Ask Lemmy

It’s called Primary Sources by Corrine Manning. Cant find it online so here you go, separated into a few comments. CW: mentions of assault

“Susan! Look at Susan!!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re –Gasp- Fading Away!”

“Oh, No!! No!!”

“Somehow the cosmic rays have altered your atomic structure…making you grow invisible!”

“How… how long will it last?”

“There’s no way of knowing!!”

“Wha—what if she never gets visible again??”

“Look! I see her.”

“I’m myself again! It happened so suddenly…all by itself!”

Fantastic Four Issue #1

​ Dissociation is a super power marked by an exceptional gift of grace and control: to exit a situation and to still be physically present; to seem present to those around you and on top of you, but to not actually be there. To be able to observe with a cool distance—the physical attack is not you, in fact you may be able watch it, slow and distort time; remember only what seems useful to remember. You may leave all together. You may commune with the gods. And when it’s practiced correctly, the proprietor of the skill doesn’t need to even initialize it. It moves like a response, a highly tuned reflex. The situation might be the cause, but disassociation is the solution. With what is lost comes something gained.

​It was the blizzard of ’96. It was 3 am. ​Say that you’re on your way to pick him up, my mom said. ​Pat, my father said, tell him I’m going to pick him up. I didn’t recognize then that he was talking to my brother’s roommate. Pat, at that moment, could have been anyone. My dad turned and looked at my mom. He says he doesn’t want me to, says he’s fine. My dad has a very clear, open face that never gives away what he’s actually feeling. He keeps the same expression on his face most of the time whether he’s angry or sad. His eyes were pink then and his jaw bone pulsed under the skin of his cheek. He is a master of control and caution. On the morning my brother was jumped he could get by with grinding his teeth.

​In a case study with a Mexican nun named Celeste, Rebecca Lester, an anthropologist, learned the following: Celeste turned to me and said, ‘Rebe, do you ever feel like you’re not where you are?’ I asked her what she meant. ‘I mean, do you ever kind of go away from yourself? […] She then went on to describe experiences she had been having for over a year where she felt as if she were leaving her body, ‘as if time and space were broken’ and she ‘went off somewhere else’: It’s like all of a sudden it gets difficult to hear what’s going on around me, kind of like when you’re under water, and I know I’m about to have one of these experiences…It’s so peaceful. It’s really beautiful. Lots of times I don’t want to come back.

​ ​At some point all humans long for at least one of these abilities: to transform, to flee, and to alter. Most of the time these qualities seem completely unobtainable, the stuff of superpowers. A superpower can be any ability that is somehow above and beyond normal human ability. Celeste survived two attempted rapes, both when she was a young child. When Celeste would dissociate she felt certain she was communing with God. Comic Theorist Bradford W. Wright notes that the main draw to superheroes is the hope that a life altering ability lies within the every day American. We feel rage against injustice, and we want to believe that we’ll act when offered the chance, that we will use whatever skills we have to do what the hero should do. We might not even know what this skill is but we want to believe it’s waiting in us—waiting in everyone, waiting for the trigger. ​ “Well Maybe they’re right. Maybe I am a monster!” The Thing

My brother is a large guy but his face has gnome-like features. It was early morning when he walked through the door with my father. There was a bandage on the back of his head. He looked at me and my mother and seemed annoyed. When my mom explained to me that he had been jumped, beaten and robbed she speculated on why he was the one. What was it about him? My brother wasn’t out yet. He looked at us as if he knew this was what our conversation had been about. ​My mom got up and hugged him but he didn’t hug back. She started to pull at the bandage on his head and he shoved her away. ​He shouted: told her to leave it alone. ​I’m your mother! My brother stiffened and looked off into the room while my mom pulled back the bandage. I moved around the side of the room to see it. I didn’t need to move as quietly as I did, my brother wasn’t really there. The gash stretched across the back of his head, was bloody, swollen. I could see the staples squeezing the flesh together. I didn’t mean to say it, but it came out too quickly. Are you okay? My brother didn’t look at anyone. He laughed.

This is how I remember my brother telling me the story of that night: All the public transportation was shut down, and it was a full moon, and not so cold out. It was 1 or 2 am, but I’ve done that walk before at that time. It was so beautiful out, the snow was so high on either side of me and the moon was just glowing down. That’s where I screwed up. I relaxed. I heard some voices, and then I heard swishy pants running behind me. I didn’t turn around in time. (The sudden switch to present tense.) That’s when they started hitting me with the pipes. There are two of them. They just keep hitting me and you can look at them and realize they are probably 13. I’m down on the ground, curled up. They don’t know what they are doing. I manage to get my hand in my pocket and pull out my wallet and then I say ‘Okay, you’ve made your point. Take my wallet now.’ Then they ran away, like, skipping away and they shouted, we did it, we did it! I was probably their first one. I was totally wet and at first I thought it was from the snow, or from sweat but it was my blood. (It had soaked through two sweaters and three t shirts.) I walked home and I was counting the steps. Just trying to get home. I couldn’t stop thinking about how they had my address. That they were going to burn down my house.

​We sat for a while after that, watching TV.
​It’s like, I don’t even care about that. The thing that drives me crazy is how everyone keeps asking me if I’m okay. What am I supposed to say to them?

You don’t say anything to anyone. You don’t even need to tell them about it. No one needs to know, it won’t serve them. Every superpower has its downside. In the case of dissociation, the panic that should come in the moment, waits, comes other times, comes when it’s not necessary—can take over even if you’re not threatened. So just be still. You will feel something, sometimes, but often you won’t be able to tell what happened and what didn’t. What happened and in what order.

My brother was home for two weeks. On one of the last days I walked by the bathroom. My brother was looking at himself in the mirror and told me to join him. ​I stood next to him and faced the mirror. In the reflection I couldn’t tell if we looked alike. I made my face calm to look like his. We both stood there, looking like our father. ​He told me that I had to learn how to look and walk. He pushed his dark eyebrows closer to his eyes and his cheeks rose in response. He managed to spread his eyelids open wide. He clenched his jaw. I laughed. He released the face. ​Do it. So I did. He is nine years older and back then I still followed his direction. ​He told me to make it angrier, to look like someone’s just messed with me and I killed them, like I might kill the next person who bumped into me. We laughed at my face. This is what you have to do. Then people will look at you and think, Oh boy, she’s crazy, I’m not messing with her. No one will mess with you.

(Cont.)