If you've read Roald Dahl's story that made him into a writer - his first person account of what happened when he was shot down in the war - it's deeply haunting It may be the best thing he ever wrote (or at least the most honest and unfiltered)
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It's this depiction of him just fully dissociating in order to survive, his mind and his identity turning off so his broken body could pull itself out of the wreckage completely on autopilot, ignoring the agony and terror filling his psyche
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And then he completely breaks afterwards and half the story is this demented haunting fever dream with him having full on hallucinations in the hospital Themed around that total loss of identity, dissolving into the universe, losing all sense of what's real or not
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And the RAF, being very shorthanded at the time, just kept him there alone in a room racked by screaming nightmares until his leg was healed enough to walk, then shook his hand and sent him home with a pension PTSD counseling being several decades in the future
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If you've read Boy, you know that he already had issues with abandonment (possibly full on "attachment disorder"), after his sister died at a young age and his father died shortly after from grief and his mom sent him to boarding school
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Where he was completely alone and constantly terrified of beaten by bullies and by the teachers And which he openly said inspired the themes of his children's books about a few decent people being all alone against a mad, cruel world
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I'm not gonna say all of this *excuses* stuff like writing his publisher telling them he was out of pencils and they should send an attractive young woman to deliver new ones to his house because he was one of their top bestsellers
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And then when they fired him over this, going on a rant about how the whole publishing industry was run by stingy Jews and proved Hitler had a point But it at least kind of explains some of it (people who are terrified of being alone often perversely ensure it)
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He claims he wasn't even trying to write a story with his WWII piece, just sending "notes" to a journalist who wanted to profile him and then letting the whole thing spill out of him by accident But he already showed very strong writerly instincts, like knowing where to end it
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After we spend the whole second half of his account in this nightmare hallucination where his whole life "flashes before his eyes" in a shattered chaotic looping blur etc - we get one paragraph where he wakes up in a dingy field hospital
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And he gingerly "reality tests" his environment, confirming the bed, the nightstand, the IV drip are all real, solid And a nurse comes in and casually checks his vitals and answers his question about where he's been and for how long
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The last line of the story: "I thought of something else. 'Nurse,' I called out, 'nurse!' But she was already gone."
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(I figured that's exactly the kind of beat
@Nymphomachy would end on if telling her own story about having a dissociative episode)0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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