She was convinced she didn't exist. This is how she tethered herself to reality

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/31/ [login to see] /alice-carriere-memoir-everything-nothing-someone-jennifer-bartlett-mathieu
By almost any standard, Alice Carrière had an extraordinary childhood.

She's the daughter of Jennifer Bartlett, an internationally renowned artist who also happened to be an emotionally distant mother. Her father is a popular German actor, Mathieu Carrière, who exhibited inappropriate behavior during Carrière's childhood.

As Carrière entered her teen years, her brain started to splinter into a dissociative disorder, which she describes as losing connection to her mind, body and history: "I was convinced I didn't exist. I would write to keep myself from getting completely lost. And it was my one tether to myself and to reality."