I think if I were going to pinpoint the trait that freaks me out most about myself at this point, it would be the fact that I have no unique personality whatsoever. I mean it. I’m the Terminator version 2.0 guy, who can touch someone and look just like them. Sure, I’m all silvery and cool, and I can run really fast, but in terms of my character, well, it’s not such a good thing.
I just always have this sense that I’m just a walking amalgam of all the people I come into contact with. It feels like I morph into whoever I happen to be with at the time. Look, there I am, talking about scrapbooking with the people at my work. “Oh, I just love eyelets! In coordinating colors! Let me see your wedding pictures again!” There’s me at church, feeling all holy and pious just because I happen to be in a roomful of folks clapping their hands and praising the Lord. Hmm, whose journal did I just read? You can always tell by reading my latest entry, as I will shameless corrupt anyone’s original style into my own. (Although, to be fair, I have never knowingly incorporated the phrase “blah blah blah fishcakes into an entry. I have some standards).
Lately, at clinic, I’ve been thinking a lot about this therapeutic model called Internal Family Systems. For the non-psych majors in the audience, I will spare you the theory lecture on Bowen Family Systems, offshoots thereof, and just tell you that the basic idea is that we all have various parts to ourselves…or, more accurately, our Selves…and that all these parts have voices and functions. It takes that thing where you say, “Oh, I don’t know, one part of me feels this way, but this other part of me feels this total other way” to a logical conclusion. Well, no, actually, because the logical conclusion would be that everyone actually has dissociative identity disorder, what they used to call multiple personality. IFS stops short of that, and asserts that all these different parts play various roles in our lives. So you have the person you are at work, which is probably a completely different person than the person you are when you’re with your kissy-boy, which is probably a completely different person than who you are when you’re on hold with your internet service provider. Makes sense, right?
The other bit is that, under this therapeutic model, anyway, there isn’t really a real you. Like you’re in high school and you write all these overwrought things in your journal like “No one knows who I really am. They think they do but no one knows the real me. NO ONE. No one knows. They think they do, but NO ONE KNOWS.” As if you have a core you that has to be covered by various facades in order to get through the day. Though frankly, I have to say, it does feel that way sometimes. Anyway, according to IFS, there are parts of you that get more air time, so to speak, and there are parts that are quieter or more repressed or whatever, but they’re all equally you. Like, your spleen isn’t any less you than your heart or your liver or your brain.
Can I tell you that this makes perfect, perfect sense to me? This is the answer to the question all the mental health agencies ask when you’re trying to get a job: “So, what’s your therapeutic orientation?” When next I job hunt, my proud answer will be: “Well, basically I just think that we’re all a bunch of different parts! Yeah! Hire me!”
I like this. It fits in, somehow, with the sense that I don’t have a real persona, like I’m not really Funny Girl or Smart Girl or Dead-End Job Girl, or Hiker Girl, or Liberal Girl, or Geek Girl, or Girlfriend Girl. I’m all of them! Yet none of them! At the same time! Yes!
The only thing, though, with not having a definite…defining descriptor, let’s say, is that it’s pretty exhausting sometimes. When I’m at the Alpine Butterfly Lodge, for example, I all of a sudden become this very bouncy loud talky person. I am Chiara! See me bounce! And I think about how great it would be to always have something in the works like those folks who live there, and to constantly be planning some scheme or another, and to be all alternative and cool and live in a crazy commune that they actually keep clean. I create this whole little life for myself, based on what I see of the people around me. I really plan out the details, like what my Netflix list would be like if I lived there, and where I would shop for clothes, and the kitschily cool way I would decorate my room, and the hip job I would have…although I hear those are hard to come by in the Bay Area lately, but whatever.
Or I’ll be at My Friend Ashley’s house, she with the husband and the dog and the cat, the rose garden and the actual career and the dinner parties and the matching bed linens and all her pictures put neatly in albums…and I’ll have this immense yearning for that. I fantasize about trips to Home Depot, and having people over for Thanksgiving, and of family traditions that me and my imaginary husband create (“Oh, sweetie! A 56-month anniversary present! You shouldn’t have!). Last time I was there, at her house, I spent a lot of my time just pawing her Caphalon while she wasn’t looking. It was so restful and peaceful to be there, I could really just see myself, with no irony whatsoever having a life like that.
It’s the worst reading online journals though, because I think I have serious envy issues with every single person on my links page. I want to be everyone I read, all at the same time. I can’t choose, so I don’t choose, I just switch back and forth.
I guess maybe it’s okay to be like this, to have all these different parts that all want and like radically different things, but I sort of wish I was one of those people who are simply what they are. They’re real easy to buy presents for since they (and you) know what they like, and it’s pretty safe to get into a political conversation with them if you know which way they lean because you know they won’t deviate too much. They have strong opinions about everything..or maybe they just have a master plan, a lens through which they see everything, so if they’re not sure how they feel about something, all they have to do is apply the lens, so to speak, and then they know. They know. WWID? What Would I Do?