The Selves of I

How many selves do I contain?  I’ve no idea. 

A while back, when I finally got out of the depressed state I was in, I had a fair share of lessons about my many selves. The weird part was the fighting I engaged in to crawl out of that state. There’s no winning that way. Maybe that worked only for me. The day I realised the depression was caused by my many selves, actively fighting for dominance, was the beginning of healing. I remember cracking up with laughter when I recognised that—how could the answer be so simple? But also, how was I ever going to know if I was going bonkers?

With a sweeping inward look, I recognised why and how some bits of me formed along the way.

 The little girl, who grew into a pleasing teenager, eager to appease the adults around her, alienating her siblings and cousins, became a yardstick for comparison with the rest of the family.

Why did I want to appease the adults that badly? Perhaps they would get on much better to create the harmonious home my soul craved and cried for?

A negotiator.

The girl turned terrorist cleaner. She screamed, screeched and howled at messes that others left in and around the house.

The compulsive cleaner who sucked the joy out of any messy room condensed into a sublayer. Was the cleanliness I demanded from everyone around me a projection of my inner world? How the chaos needed some semblance of a structure or order? Was it a subconscious need to be next to Godliness? Did my brain sponge on that during one of the church sermons? Or guilt that necessitated constant cleansing? Or anxieties that found an outflow in the act of cleaning.

A fixer.

The teenager who managed to rebel and revolt only on the inside. Finding it easier to navigate her world by keeping up appearances.

The young woman scored the perfect guy for a beginner. She fought for the adults to adopt him into their bench-marking metrics, boasting of his intellect, focus and ambition. She fought with them to accept him as her boyfriend. Refusing to sneak off like she saw her older sister and cousin. The mother, aunts and grandmothers wanted her to be married off as a showpiece for their good rearing lessons - why on earth did she have to go like a thief in the night? They wanted her within their eyesight – in bed at night? With the first mistake he made, she fled from betrayal. She only knew too well how it felt – she wasn’t yet adept at definitions. Could it be that she was too scarred to trust anyone intimately after all?

A runner.

A young woman who would feel some release with her first intoxicating drink – alcohol – like a mother’s hug.

Tensions, anxieties, fear, density and everything heavy slowly changed the youth who loved to run against the wind for rejuvenation and freshness to one who took to alcohol. In a culture that has no time for feelings, it’s left to oneself to figure out ways to just get on with life. There are only expectations and obligations to be fulfilled. Granted, life is hard business, but whose responsibility is it to teach growing minds and lives how to resolve conflicts, especially internal ones?

A lost soul.

Young woman who saw only traps along the grown-up path.

Terrified of the middle-class traps; the man, children, house, cars, dog and wall only looked like mortgages and payments to suck the vitality out of one. Before I finished blinking, I’d be white-haired with painful knees, fit only to collect the crumbs of a lifetime’s work and settle into the backseat. Was that all there was to it? Surely there was more to it than that? She wished she could just write. Dead set on finding her own path, her own way out of the labyrinth, she determined self-employment to be the highway to freedom.

A traveller and explorer.

The woman who couldn’t get out of the labyrinth.

A list of failures, no money, and everything that could go wrong did. Isolation coats the world, and all hell breaks loose. She suddenly felt so tired and just wanted a little rest, a little peace. The demons would come out of the woodwork as fragments of all the ways I splintered myself. And that list is too long to exhaust here. Was I back to the 'What is the point?' question? I simply chose and gone on a long roundabout way right to the beginning. The urge to simply lie down and be still was when the fight began in earnest, for something inside equated that to giving up.

A loser.

Healing begins with silence— Life would exact what it demanded, no matter the cost.

Silence is not silent, it is magic in action if you stick to it. It will teach you about connections, first within the self, and then radiate outwards much like the river finds the sea. Silence will whisper age-old secrets in your ear. And touch you like a gentle breeze cools your skin under the heat of the day. Embrace you like the father you still yearn for and leave you contentment as a parting gift. It will change the lenses which you use to look at the self and the world. Your eyes will open and widen to as much as you want to see. The only limits are self-imposed. In silence, your soul learns to walk God’s earth with a smile.

The point.

And because I’ve heard that you must only speak of your troubles three times and let them go forever, this page is thrice the time I speak of my troubles. The incessant voices of the breakaways will eventually integrate into one in the practice of silence. And that’s a wrap.

The writer.