"What is real?" asked the Rabbit?
recovery ~ 2018-11-08"What is real?" Asked the Rabbit one day, when they were sitting side by side near the nursery, before Nana came to today the room. "Does it mean having thoughts that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made" said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long long time, not just to play with you, but really loves you, then you become real".
"Does it hurt?" Asked the Rabbit
"Sometimes" said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" Said the rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the skin horse only smiled.
"The boy's uncle made me real" he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always".
The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called real would happen to him. He longed to become real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.
thoughts
I read this in Amanda Palmer's book "The Art of Asking". She uses these quotes from the Velveteen Rabbit near the end of her book to drive home one of the central ideas of the book.
Becoming real, breaking away from fear, learning to be a whole-hearted human takes effort, time, and most of all love.
Most of us are not so lucky to be born real. We all must truly learn this. You do not need to suffer from depersonalization/derealization to not be real. I've been so lucky to have even a cisgender friend talk about her becoming a real person at almost 30 years old.
It almost seems like we all experience a form of unreality until we figure it out. For some it is like DPDR, others, its a shallow existence essentially riding the rails of life, others a subtle fear keeps you in line, and so many other ways to not feel real.
The one thing I want to make sure is clear, is that