Everywhere I go, I look for the words to describe being two people.
I feel it in my core, in my marrow, up through my sinuses. My existence is a flow state, but I cannot describe it better than that.
I try. I read lots and lots of words. I pour through books with clever turns of phrases, all types of elegant prose, I get intimidated by provocative poetry, and I read fancy research. All of them amount to something but not to the words I’m seeking.
In bewilderment, I’ve shared stray words with laureates, selfless well-wishers, licensed professionals, with gorgeous people with charmed lives and average anybodies. I’ve made myself some degree of open to virtually anyone who has taken an interest in my life. Their words often give me strength, but never diction. I’ve gained energy, but no inspiration. Why do I feel like the essence of my mind, whatever that means, is literally duplicated?
I don’t know. I think my problem is insurmountable, so long as other people are the audience for the words needed to describe whatever the hell this is.
People and things, in principle, stand apart from you. Their world views are unique to them, and maintain certain boundaries. I am simply describing matter, and consciousness, of course. By definition, a person is singular, and cannot understand shared sense.
Yet, I have once lived a state of no certain boundaries with another person, and it has spoiled the movie of the universe for me. I discovered I share the same well of electricity responsible for thoughts and senses, non-consensually. My energetic resonance was once in such perfect harmony to another such that it practically hummed, stereo in mono, contact lenses over contact lenses, one tongue for every language. As a consequence, I now not only see others as truly others, in every sense of the word, but I disparagingly think of myself as a shaky math equation: either half of a self, or a surplus of one.
Okay, yes, there are in fact words that describe this state of duplication, covering it from multiple vantage points: trauma bonding, insecure attachment, phantom limb, statistical likelihood, dissociative identity disorder, twin flames, confirmation bias, mirroring, runners and chasers, emotional abuse, narcissism, ascension, obsession…
All of those words are a diagnosis. They lay some degree of judgment at the feet of the person, and for fair reason; averting depression or pain or maladaptive behaviors or offending others is a top priority in a civil and healthy society. But I am none of those things even if I were all of those things.
I am not some symptom, and I am not a bad person, and I am not unwell. I don’t want to be a victim nor a troublemaker. I am not delusional, even when my fixations appear at very best, unwise. The only thing I am, or was, is two people. Not literally. Spiritually.
You might understand this if I could find the words. I want to describe to you the journey of diaspora from yourself, or what it feels like to inhabit the intersection of jamais vu and deja vu, or to successfully explain to someone split souls without having to necessarily sell them on the concept of souls in the first place (beginning with me). I don’t want to write love letters. Love is not necessary to feel as though you are inexorably linked to another existence in some cosmic fashion, it is only a byproduct. When the thrill is over, you end up feeling more like you got caught on a doorknob versus riding a tidal wave.
Throughout writing this, I’ve been using singular pronouns, almost in pun. But when discussing separate sentience with matching frequencies, it’s really more of a “we” situation.
Everywhere we go, we look for the words. Not for change, or always consciously, or usually actively, or necessarily kindly, and certainly not for any earthly goal or real-world consequence of any sort. What’s the point?
Rather, it’s just a thing we live with. We search for the words to make meaning of whatever this uncanniness is. They so far have always failed us, yet sometimes seem necessary, so long as others are our audience.
