Forgetting.

When I was driving home today, I was thinking about some music I'd like to hear. After a few minutes, I realized that I have an iPod, and it's in my car. I had completely forgotten this. I think I'd forgotten it for almost four weeks. What else have I forgotten?

On Monday, a coworker came into my office a few hours after seeing me in the hall. She said, "Are you okay? I got scared when I saw you. You looked more than tired. You looked fragile." 

Fragile does describe how I feel. I also feel insubstantial, uncertain, and a little bit threatened. On the way home, I saw a series of huge fir trees that seemed to be missing their back halves--branches, green, roots. I felt a connection with them. I seem to have lost half my essential energy, half my securities, half my ideas about what's important, half my brain power, half my normalcy.

The electricity went out briefly today, so my alarm clock has been blinking blue, and I haven't known the time. This has made me unusually uncomfortable. Work has a strong and unfamiliar smell now...something like pickles and pepper. I smell different too.

Josh and I were trying to nap, and I whispered, "I don't feel real." He asked what I meant, and I didn't know.

How much of this is postpartum changes, and how much is what happened? To what degree have I become a different person, and how long will I take to either go back or to become comfortable with the new self?