In this poem I examine some more the feelings or experience of losing one’s memory… being traumatized. I was thinking of the story “Sybil” about a woman with some 17 or so personalities. With this condition she experienced a variety of dissociative experiences. This is what is written in Wikipedia: “A fugue state, formally Dissociative Fugue (previously called Psychogenic Fugue) (DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders 300.13[1]), is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state is usually short-lived (hours to days), but can last months or longer. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. After recovery from fugue, previous memories usually return intact, however there is complete amnesia for the fugue episode.” In Sybil the fugue state experience were part of a greater condition, that of Multiple Personality Disorder.

I think about this in an existential and metaphorical way. In my poem, I examine the metaphorical experience of not knowing who one is at times, how one got to where one is in life… Things not always making sense…

Fugue State Revisited

I wake up,
disoriented,
confused.

I’m in a hospital;
I think.

I don’t seem to be sick
or injured.
No bandages,
I feel no pain.
No monitors
or hospital things.

Nothing is familiar,
when I look outside.

It’s dark, quiet.

I’m not sure who I am…

But I’m afraid to ask;
Afraid they’ll think I’m crazy.

Tears stream down
my face –
I feel such a sense
of loss,
of what I don’t know.
Maybe I don’t want to remember.

No. I don’t care anymore…
“Someone help me!”

The dream ends
just as suddenly…

I’m home in bed…
just a dream,
the trauma’s over.

It was long ago.
I’ll always have the scar,
to remind me,
of what happened.

You’d think I’d want to forget
but memory is an important thing now.

Bruce Whealton
August 28, 2009