Nice, I'm actually not old -- I'm 24. But I got my HPPD freshman year of college, when I was 18, which makes me a six-year veteran (can't believe how much times has passed with this son of a bitch). Glad some of you are in the area. It's just struck me as more and more bizarre that I've been facing this private, unique issue in silence -- at least in "real" life -- without being able to really share it with anyone. I've told a few friends and stray people, but the reaction is predictable: "Huh?" None can really grasp it. Reminds of the famous line of Alduous Huxley from Doors of Perception:
"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies--all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."
I've carried on nonetheless, like all of us have to. But the whole idea of it is somewhat depressing.