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 Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 10:06 pm
I had an insomniac night yesterday, didn't fall asleep till about 7:30 a.m. I sometimes get weird at night, don't ask me why. But at those times I tend to be very creative and comtemplative. Well yesterday night resulted in the development of this short story, I've started to write on before. I finished it up and edited it.
Conversation with the girl in the mirror
"Look at me!" says the girl in the mirror, staring at me with those empty, worn-out and tired eyes. Apparently she just got done crying because her eyes were red and swollen.
"I am looking at you..." I mumble with a voice that is quiet and seems to break every second. The girl in the mirror moves her lips at the same time I answer her command. I try to guess what her lips are saying, what words they are forming, but don't I already know the answer?
I have an idea - suddenly like ideas sometimes find it necessary to appear out of the blue.
"Do you know who I am?"
She looks confused and gets insecure.
"Who you are?" She thinks a little while, then gives up and shakes her head. "No, I don't know who you are." She stops and continues: "I'm so very sorry not being able to answer your question correctly. I'm so glad, that this isn't a test at school that will be graded..."
I get a little bit nervous and I feel puzzled, thinking this conversation is leading to nowhere. "Not everything in life is a test where you have to score 100 points, you know." I say, feeling not at all sure. My voice even trembles a little bit.
"I hope you are right. Success isn't everything, is it?" She smiles uneasy. It seems to me as if she wants to encourage me to proceed this conversation.
"If you don't know me, who does know then?"
"I'm not sure. Probably... nobody."
"Nobody?"
"Yes, nobody, no one, no human being in this world." What had started out as a hesitant response became a determined answer.
"Why should anyone and how could anybody possibly know you? I mean even you don't know an answer, how can you expect others to have a clear solution for this question?"
I shake my head, my hair is flying around. The girl in the mirror imitates me, but doesn't quite look as desperate as I do.
"So, if you don't know who I am", I say with a shaky voice, "Who are you then?
"I'm a nobody, nobody is me." She replies with a voice which appears to be almost as self-conscious as my own.
"A nobody?" I wonder. "Isn't a nobody also somebody?" I stop, take a breath and continue. "If you think about it, being a nobody would mean that you don't exist. But you do exist. I can see you, I can hear you and I even talk to you."
She looks confused. "Really? How do you know that anything really exists? We might be just two people in a story that someone has written. Would that mean that we exist or not? What if we're just fiction, an illusion locked in a piece of paper, being nothing more than letters, commas and full stops? If we're lucky we even consist of question marks and exclamation marks. What if we will never be able to escape from this reality?"
"I don't know, I really don't know..." I start to cry, not even realizing that I shouted the words. I started out slowly, speaking faster and faster, repeating the same words over and over. "I don't know..."
Finally I take my hairbrush and throw it at the mirror. I hear the pieces falling apart in slow motion. I hear my brush smashing against her face. My cheeks are wet because of my salty tears that softly trickle down - drop by drop.
"What have I done?" whispering these words I run away.
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 6:02 am
Amusing how humans spend so much time trying to figure out who they are when they can't possibly be anybody other than themselves. Perhaps even more amusing is how people usually complain about being put in boxes and labeled and yet they struggle to do it themseles. It's as if nobody has a right to label them other than the person being labeled. But really, it doesn't matter nearly as much how we define ourselves as how other people see us. And if how you define yourself dosen't match with how people see you, you've got some serious thinkin' to do. whee
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 3:16 pm
its not so much who you are, but what kind of person you are. i see my self difrently than others do, though mainly cause they dont know me.
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 5:24 pm
I'm not worried about who I am, so long as I remember what's important. Though I have had similar internal dialouges to the one you described.
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Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 7:14 am
Starlock Amusing how humans spend so much time trying to figure out who they are when they can't possibly be anybody other than themselves. Perhaps even more amusing is how people usually complain about being put in boxes and labeled and yet they struggle to do it themseles. It's as if nobody has a right to label them other than the person being labeled. But really, it doesn't matter nearly as much how we define ourselves as how other people see us. And if how you define yourself dosen't match with how people see you, you've got some serious thinkin' to do. whee It is indeed amusing. There is not a definite answer for who we are, yet others often see us differently than we do ourselves. We spent most of our lives to get out of boxes and categories others put us in, more than that we truly try to figure out who we "really" are. Vanity is a bad habit of mine. I always want to know what others think of me and if they don't like me I want them to! It's ironic, that there are many people like me in the world.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 1:16 pm
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 5:29 pm
well, at least youve got that straight.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 6:34 pm
Are you truly who you are? Are you saying that you have experiences of yourself? Can you really have experiences of yourself? I would wager to say, that personality wise, you are your interpretion of what other people interpret you as. This is because, you are not able to face your own personality, unless you are two different persons, who happen to be one person, which will not happen. I would never say "I am who I am." I would say, "I am what I am." When one says, they are who they are, the who implies that a person can have an experience of their own personality. While technically they can, it will never be the same as the experience they will understand based on other peoples understanding of their personality. When one says I am what I am, the what does not imply that the person has an experience of their own personality, nor does it imply they have an experience of other people's understanding of their own personality. "I am what I am," means that whatever it is that I am, I am. On a side note, in the beginning of my Spring Semester Philosophy class, we had a lesson (on how philosophers have failed in defining a "self") in which a question was brought up about people with multiple personality disorders. The question was, say a person has multiple personality disorder, and it is only between two people. In essence, it would be like having two people for one physical body. Does that physical body actually have two people in it? This was brought on by a story about (I forget what book, or which Pscyhologist wrote it) a girl who had two personalities. One personality was a hooker, the other was something else (radically different than a hooker). This lady went to a Psychologist who tried to treat the woman and cure her of her ailment. However, when he went to "get rid of" the other personality (he was going to rid her of the hooker personality), the hooker personality came out, after he explained to the other personality he was trying to suppress the "unwanted" personality. When the hooker came out, the psychologist told her what was going to happen, and that he was going to cure her. The hooker answered "No, you are trying to kill me." So, my tangental question is, split personality: could it actually be, more than one "self" occupying a physical body?
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 7:15 pm
you stole that from the christian God!!! blaugh
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 4:16 pm
chaoticpuppet Are you truly who you are? Are you saying that you have experiences of yourself? Can you really have experiences of yourself? I would wager to say, that personality wise, you are your interpretion of what other people interpret you as. This is because, you are not able to face your own personality, unless you are two different persons, who happen to be one person, which will not happen. I would never say "I am who I am." I would say, "I am what I am." When one says, they are who they are, the who implies that a person can have an experience of their own personality. While technically they can, it will never be the same as the experience they will understand based on other peoples understanding of their personality. When one says I am what I am, the what does not imply that the person has an experience of their own personality, nor does it imply they have an experience of other people's understanding of their own personality. "I am what I am," means that whatever it is that I am, I am. On a side note, in the beginning of my Spring Semester Philosophy class, we had a lesson (on how philosophers have failed in defining a "self") in which a question was brought up about people with multiple personality disorders. The question was, say a person has multiple personality disorder, and it is only between two people. In essence, it would be like having two people for one physical body. Does that physical body actually have two people in it? This was brought on by a story about (I forget what book, or which Pscyhologist wrote it) a girl who had two personalities. One personality was a hooker, the other was something else (radically different than a hooker). This lady went to a Psychologist who tried to treat the woman and cure her of her ailment. However, when he went to "get rid of" the other personality (he was going to rid her of the hooker personality), the hooker personality came out, after he explained to the other personality he was trying to suppress the "unwanted" personality. When the hooker came out, the psychologist told her what was going to happen, and that he was going to cure her. The hooker answered "No, you are trying to kill me." So, my tangental question is, split personality: could it actually be, more than one "self" occupying a physical body? yes, there are instances where there is more than one person in the same body, but it isnt typical.
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 4:24 pm
Schildkrote yes, there are instances where there is more than one person in the same body, but it isnt typical. So, would that make split personality disorder one of those cases?
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Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 4:26 pm
thats what i was referring to for the most part. theres also some cases of schizophrenia, possesion(if you believe in that), whatever.
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Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 7:22 pm
I am Mercution on the internet. I am an artist in real life. I am what I make of myself. And, hopefully, I am what God wants me to be.
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:34 pm
Trying to define oneself is like trying to define love. You can come with many words and definitions that symbolize love, but it will never truely describe it. The best you can do is experience love and form an oppinion based off of that. Same with a person, you can only really experience them in order to form an oppinion. No two people describe someone exactly the same or give the same definition of love. People can only be experienced, not defined.
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 4:06 am
Tigress Dawn Trying to define oneself is like trying to define love. You can come with many words and definitions that symbolize love, but it will never truely describe it. The best you can do is experience love and form an oppinion based off of that. Same with a person, you can only really experience them in order to form an oppinion. No two people describe someone exactly the same or give the same definition of love. People can only be experienced, not defined. I like what you said, trying to define everything the way a dictionary does, isn't always possible. Too many possibilities of interpretation. It is impossible to really define a feeling and therefore not very realistic to be able to define a human being that consists of millions of different undefinable feelings.
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