When I was thirteen, I would have random moments of disassociation. I would look into the mirror in my locked bathroom, often before nine but after seven pm, when the fluorescent lights would illuminate the black window, compelled me to close the Venetian blinds, hide away from the two way mirror between me and the outside world, away, inside of the closet with running water; or I could be in the midst of a conversation with someone, after hours of talking, sitting in a room, or outside with the sun reflecting off my glasses, and I’d have this sudden moment of clarity, a sharp awareness of my physical self. Look down at my hands and for some reason, not feel as if they are my own. The eyes that I look out of don’t feel like they coordinate with the ones staring back in the mirror. Everything about me, around me, is alien.
I wasn’t aware of myself until I realized that other people were aware of this physical thing that happened to be associated with me. Those moments stopped being just moments and became everything.
I couldn’t connect to this…object to myself, because I didn’t know who I was, how I was a fundamental part of this thing. I still don’t. I’m aware enough to not like whatever it is I am, but that is the extent of it.
Who I am. An assemblage of likes and dislikes, ideas, repeated phrases, idiosyncrasies. But something else, maybe. Something underneath all of this bric-a-brac.
Something…essential, fractured in the midst of all this me.
I suppose to be alive is to have all of these traits, these labels to describe, to categorize who we are, what we mean, what we seem, and to feel that after all of the labeling, there is something beyond that. There is an essential piece that has gone unnoticed and uncategorized. We are sad because we believe we are missing, somehow. We are angry, we crave, we desire because we believe that we are not whole.
No matter how much we pour ourselves into someone or something, no matter how much we throw into the void, it’s still going to be there. And it’s still going to wail for more.