[noxlumina]

I'm 41.

For most of my teens and 20s and 30s, I sought answers, I felt lost and unmoored. I'd just become whatever/whoever I was around, and had no idea who I was. Sometimes I just did not feel connected to myself. This led to all kinds of instability (failure in careers, lots of questioning over my gender identity and sexual orientation, et cetera). There was a period between my teens and late 30s when I perpetually felt disconnected from myself or like I wasn't really there. I was constantly torn between which "identity" of mine was real, which of my social masks were really me. I also was dealing with autoimmune issues and various illnesses throughout my 30s.

One day - it all changed. I woke up feeling like someone else. My blood values returned to normal (using medical marijuana for a year, also had my teeth finally worked on after years and years of infections). But I feel like my brain chemistry has changed, too.

Certain traits I used to have - such as an autistic-like obsession on interests since my early childhood - are gone. I'm now able to see from others' perspective and have much more self awareness than I used to have.

But - I no longer feel a connection to who I was. I feel like my memories happened to someone else. I have very little emotional connection to them. I still feel an emotional connection to my mother, but I feel like, on some level, I don't know many of my friends - I feel like I'm forced to fake it, forced to go back into my memory for our common experiences, because the feeling isn't there.

I also feel shocked at some of the decisions I made during that one period of my life (15-41) because I made so many decisions that feel/seem out of character... but out of character for whom?

I'm not sure what music I even like. I'm feeling that one out.

I am not sure what I'm doing in the career I chose. I don't know what decisions made me choose it. How does one forget this??

I also feel completely female for the first time in a very, very long time. I used to identify as non binary and have a lot of interior conflict over my gender identity (I thought I was trans for a long time). I don't feel an emotional connection to my current group of friends. I feel like I could never communicate these sort of feelings to them and have them understand.

I feel like the same me and yet someone else. Very hard to explain. it doesn't all feel bad. I feel much more calm than I was. I'm much less anxious. But it is WEIRD.

When I read my posts on various message forums - there is no wild change in outward personality. But I just *feel* different.

I even want different things. I realized recently that I want a child, and I never wanted one before. But it's like I can't remember not wanting one. Even though I know that I never did, and I told people I didn't want children.

I do not feel like things are worse. I feel like they are different. I am different, somehow. I even feel drawn to different colors, different experiences. I feel like I inhabit my body differently. I feel like my energy is different.