so i was on the 402 tonight coming back from the library and i think i stayed too late again because my brain felt like it was literally leaking out of my ears... i have this huge seminar paper due and everyone else in my cohort is like 23 and has their life together while im 31 and still taking the bus at midnight just to save on gas money... i was just sitting there sort of staring at nothing feeling that weird kind of depersonalization you get when you havent slept in like 36 hours and you realize you have zero actual career prospects despite being ten years older than everyone else in the room. then this guy gets on at the next stop and its super crowded and he just starts LITERALLY slamming into me... like every time the bus moves he just falls against my shoulder and then starts shouting about how the transit system is a joke and why is it so slow and why are there so many people... he was kind of screaming in my ear and i could smell the coffee on his breath but i just didnt move. i just sat there like a statue. i think he might have been looking for a fight or maybe he just wanted someone to agree with him but i just couldn't make my mouth work... it was like a total shutdown of my motor functions. the weird part is that he kept doing it... like he was trying to get a reaction out of me or maybe he just didnt see me as a person but i just felt this total absence of any kind of somatic response... like my body just decided to go into a state of elective mutism or something... i just stared at the back of the seat in front of me while he kept jarring my shoulder over and over and i didnt even flinch... i was just sort of observing the sensation from a distance like it was happening to someone else in a movie... i kept thinking about the term 'affective flattening' and wondering if that's what was happening to me. am i the only one who does this... like just completely checks out when things get stressful... i think it might be some kind of maladaptive defense mechanism or maybe i just dont have the capacity to care about my own physical space anymore... my advisor says i need to be more assertive but i feel like im just fading into the background of my own life while everyone else is out there getting married and buying houses and i cant even tell a stranger to stop hitting me on the bus... is this like a known thing... this total lack of an instinctual response to a perceived threat. im just sitting in bed now at 2am and my shoulder actually hurts from where he was hitting me and i feel kind of pathetic... like why didnt i just say something or even just look at him... i think i was just waiting for something to happen that would make me feel real again but it never did... i just sat there in silence until my stop and then i walked home in the dark like nothing happened... does anyone else just feel like a ghost in their own skin lately... like you’re just a vessel for academic data and failed expectations and you’ve lost the ability to react to external stimuli at all.