I’ve been thinking a lot today about multiplicity of self, which sounds academic as shit, but to my brain was just, “there are so many of me living inside of me.”
Like in Mario Kart when you can race against the ghost of your best time, I feel like at any given moment there are ten ghost mes living parallel lives in slight orbit of the actual one. They all splintered off at different times, made one different choice that lead to other different choices. One me would have a garden and be raising goats — have no idea what any pop culture news was, one might be getting married young right now in a place that’s quiet and familiar, one is very into marathons or coffee or reading about art. She dyes her hair. She does not fall on the stairs at the movie theater (or ever).
I think about them a lot when I’m in new places, because seeing sights and experiencing neighborhoods and trying foods immediately makes me ask, “Do I like this? Is there a me that does?” Part of it’s probably narcissistic, but I think more than that it’s deeply human to try to edit and reroute yourself like that. Try selves on. Adopt the affectation of “taffy lover” or “person who cares about Johnny Cash” for an afternoon and see where you land by dinner. Drive by a row of Christmas-lit houses and wonder, “Could I?”
And sometimes the selves can haunt you. I don’t think I’m old enough for anything terrifying and Grim Reaper-y to leap out at me when I think about regrets — the road just hasn’t gotten long enough yet — but there are pieces of my 26-year-old self that wonder what it’d feel like now if I’d gone to art school. Or if I had moved to LA when I was thinking about it. If I’d bitten the bullet a million different times in a million different ways and just exerted myself differently upon my life. Would I recognize her? Would she hurt this much?
Tonight as our plane was landing in New York, the sun was casting that pre-sunset, urban-pollution-pink light that makes everything look cinematic and warm and correct. Here is The Prettiest Plane Wing. Here is The Prettiest Skyline. And I was stricken by all my selves in a weird way. I was proud. Proud that this self is the one that I am. Not the gardener, not the runner. Not because they couldn’t be great too — I’m sure they could be — but just because I know this me, and I know that I love her. I love that I said, “Happy New Year!” to the Hertz guy when I returned my keys this afternoon, and I love that I wrote exclamation-point-y things in the Airbnb guest book with my teen handwriting. I haven’t met my whole self yet, but I trust her and am proud to be where I am and to have carried myself the way that I have while getting there.
The other foot that falls with that kind of love is the realization that you are here today because so, so many people have shown up for you in this life. So many people have given you their time and their attention and pulled themselves out of their own swampy brains with their own multiplicities for a couple minutes to bear witness. To be kind. To extend. And there have been times when I’ve caught myself feeling sad or scared or completely unanchored these past few months where I’ve been able to remember how deeply fucking good this little life I’ve built for myself is. How things that seemed so daunting or impossible a few years ago happen like blinking now. How far and hard I sprint all the time with a big dumb smile on my face because, for the most part, it is such a joy to just be doing anything at all in the ecosystem I’ve built. And I have some very magical people to look at the world with and help me see it better, which makes me a freak, and I am so, so happy that I have learned how to do that right.
All of my selves would be demonic, beautiful, multitudinous garbage monsters just like this one is, I’m sure. They’d all be allergic to amoxicillin and think that choosing a favorite between dogs and cats is a stupid and narrowminded faux-opinion. But for like ten minutes on January 2, 2015, I was deeply and sincerely thrilled to be this specific self. And that’s tight as hell.
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