the doppelgänger effect
Self-identity is a strange beast.
One would think that keeping a firm grasp on what constitutes who you are would be a simple enough task. In actual fact, it’s a rather fleeting phenomenon, and if you pause for just a second to blink, it can slip out on you without leaving even the slightest trace as to where it went.
For me, my gravest error was allowing myself to be defined by those around me – particularly, by the men in my life. I believe that the last time that I truly felt as though I knew with any degree of certainty ‘who I was’, is back when I was all innocent and virginal like Christina Aguilera just before the video for ‘Dirrty’. Once I opened up and let the boys in, all hell broke loose and decorum still hasn’t fully been within my reach.
I feel as though I am not the only victim of this. It’s easy to have a sense of identity when you have no one but yourself to think about, but once you start loving somebody, and begin trying to piece together a future with said person, the equation grows exponentially complicated. No longer do you only have your own hopes, dreams, and plans to contend with, but also their compatibility with someone else’s to take into consideration. Perhaps I’ve just been unfortunate in the sense that I always find myself attracted to men who are unwilling to compromise to the same extent as I am – which has led me to tumultuous territory that usually ends with me out in the cold, with nothing to show for my intentions but a handful of unanswered questions. Such has been love, as I know it.
Yet, despite my countless instances of this exact same mistake, I still am unable to rectify my predisposition to it happening again. By no means am I an idiot, in fact I consider myself an intelligent being. But for whatever reason, time after time, my heart overrules my head regardless of the warning signs, and the whole gamut runs full circle.
It’s amazing, how unadulterated attempts at making another happy, can actually make you quite sad. If you’re not careful, little pieces of you can get chipped away, like a sculpture of ice, until eventually, one wrong chink can cause an entire section to break away, and the carving is rendered unrecognisable. How is one supposed to keep control over who they are, when the entire design of a relationship is to intertwine oneself with that of another?
It’s been a while since I’ve truly known who I am, and the blame lies entirely on myself. In blind trust and misplaced faith, I’ve allowed the men in my life to alter the very face of my inner being, and for that, I am borderline shameful. I defend them and their actions more than I have ever taken up arms to defend myself, and that is, without doubt, the greatest wrong I have ever committed. I am working daily to try and coax the old me to return – I remember him being very strong-willed, devoted, passionate, and inspired, and somewhere along the way, I lost him. He returns once in a while, but only for an ephemeral moment, when all I want to do is convince him to stay.
Don’t make the same blunders as I have. Learn from my mistakes, in a way that, clearly, I cannot. Maybe over time I will understand the root causes of this problem enough to deflect them in future. But until then, I’ll try to recreate my former self in eager anticipation of that glorious day.
Protect yourselves. Trust me, you’ll miss you when you’re gone.
