Is It Midnight Already?

They say that time starts to go by faster as you get older. The general explanation for this phenomenon seems to be how you start to get accustomed to life and the way it works: you form your personal routines that consist of getting up in the morning, eating, taking care of your hygiene, going to work or school and the like. Every passing day is kind of the same, unlike when you were a child, everything was so new and exciting, the world was waiting for you to explore it. Every time you went to school, you learned something new, and each day was its own special experience. You were eagerly waiting for the holiday season to roll around, just to see what kind of presents you get this year and how the nature around you might change her clothes from the summer green to autumn yellow and eventually winter snow white. In a lot of ways, children are the only group of people who seem to consistently appreciate the small things in life, the beauty of nature, the way fire crackles in the fireplace, the excitement of summer break after a long school semester.

Obviously, you cannot remain excited over the same things that have been happening for several decades already. You have to lose at least a part of that childhood eagerness, it's only natural. And so time gets warped: the hours become minutes, sometimes even seconds, and in the blink of an eye, you're already celebrating New Years.

This experience of time becoming warped is rooted in something called dissociation. We all experience dissociation in our daily lives, it is a mechanism built for the human brain to kind of "check out" at certain points. Humans are sentient beings, meaning we are aware of our existence and have a perception of the reality we are living in. But because life and this world are so full of stimuli and happenings, our brains are not able to be aware of all of it constantly. It would be too much for your brain to handle, so sometimes it decides to go on a small coffee break. That is when you dissociate: you are not aware of your actions or the environment you're in. And because of you not being aware, your perception of time also gets distorted, time seems to just disappear in front of your eyes. And so every weekday is the same, every weekend is the same.

A common example used in describing dissociation is as follows: if you have a driver's license, have you ever noticed yourself driving mindlessly the familiar road you always take back home, and suddenly just find yourself parked in front of your house? When you are so used to doing something that it becomes something akin to a reflex, your brain goes "peace out" and lets your body do the task by itself.

So, in short, dissociation is your brain's way of resting while you are performing the boring every day task that we as humans have been forced to perform. Handy, isn't it?

time.

Well, sometimes it is, and some other times not so much.

Dissociation is not a normal state of being for your brain. It is not supposed to be checking out all the time having those coffee breaks, no matter how much it might want to. Trust me, there might be a legally mandated coffee break for every laborer in Finland, but there is only ONE of them for a reason.

All jokes aside, dissociation is supposed to be temporary. But what happens if it becomes the norm, the default setting so to speak?

Dissociation has another function besides getting you through everyday shit you don't have to pay attention to. It also serves as a shield for your brain when you encounter traumatic events. If a situation is too much for your brain to handle, it forces you to disconnect from the moment as a survivor mechanism. Especially children are really prone to dissociation if they are subjected to abuse, because their brains are so underdeveloped that it is literally impossible for them to comprehend the events that are taking place. And when the abuse is constant and prolonged, the child's brain spends most of its time dissociated. This is what leads to the development of dissociative disorders.

Once trauma has made it easy for your brain to switch off and dissociate, you might start to suffer from chronic dissociation in situations that don't need it. Because your brain bas become so accustomed to dissociation, it switches to that gear over and dover again, which causes distortions in your perception of time and reality.

I might be getting older with every passing day, nearing my mid-twenties. But when I lose track of time, it's because I literally just woke up, why am I supposed to go to bed already?