Stable shell, empty core

"I wonder who I am
 reflections offer nothing
 I wonder where I stand
 I'm afraid of myself" (1)

A question today, coming from a trusted acquaintance: who are you, behind all of your masks? That shell which you keep wearing to deter others from seeing the real you? Who are you behind your smiles and jokes?

Honestly, how would I know? How can I answer this question?

A few years back, I got stuck in a bog. Physically, it was no big threat - but it showed me the vast and fetid swamp of my soul. Finally, I couldn't look away from the dark waters and half-rotten carcasses of my past, and the weight of it felt like it would break me. But it didn't, for it was always there. I just didn't want to see it, didn't want to feel the guilt and shame of not being the person I desperately wanted and still need to be.

The years have passed, and many more painful realizations have come and gone. At times, the guilt felt like it would rip me apart, and I prayed for deliverance through punishment. Bound to the prison of my mind, it would come by self-denial or, if everything failed, self-hurt. The people around me would catch me, if things got too bad. And yet, a great force inside me kept the pain locked in me, like a treasured piece of my soul. Only extreme circumstances would force me to open up, and my inner self would break forth like a volcano. Something I would often regret, for my inner pain would turn into outer pain. And yet, the shame and guilt would give me something real, something to define myself by. The longer I turned my gaze inwards, the more I desired to shackle and forcefully control myself, beating my soul into a new form. 

It didn't work, of course. It just placed walls into my swamp, trying to hem it in and making it even worse in the process. Something had to give, eventually. And that happened at the beginning of this year, when a completely new realization dawned in me: that core parts of me feel dangerous and wrong. No walls and no control could stop that feeling. It deepened it, and I gave a name to my always looming urges: the beast, which needed to be shackled. And shackle I did. 

But now? With all the treatment, the medication, the writing?

The medication ripped off the upper layer by partially removing my urges. Treatment helped me feel for the soft spots and ask the hard questions. Writing allowed me to let my brain let loose, to redefine myself in a different context - true, hiding behind a username and inside the pages of a notebook, but more uniquely me than I have been in a long time.

And yet, the question remains: who am I, behind all my shame, my guilt, my self-loathing? I can appreciate things I do for others, but barely any things I do for myself. Even acts of self-care are very often motivated either by anger, necessity or hunger. 

Right now, I feel hollowed out. As I try to let those feelings go and give myself some grace, I fear that I will lose that which defines me as a person. And the old me, the me from before with all of its swagger and self-importance, is long since gone. Where I once looked into the mirror and saw myself, I now see someone new. Someone very familiar and yet very strange. So little of which I could trust in myself feels secure now. To the world, I'm still mostly the same - habitus is strong, and even I find my reactions to outside events oddly comforting. Ah, I say to myself, at least I still act like me. A stable shell with an empty core.

But, for the first time in a long time, there is also optimism. A careful joy that after all the toil and strife, there will be something eventually. That out of all the pieces of myself I might be able to form someone I can finally accept and love. 

I feel reminded of one of my favourite video games, Disco Elysium. In it, the protagonist was so brutally broken by the world, that he shed his entire being like a snake skin. He is left with nothing, not even his own name. During the game, he pieces himself together, finding the real him again. And in a moment of sobering depression, his volition speaks to him:

"No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive." (2)

It is true. I am still alive. I do not know if I still would be if I kept my eyes closed to that swamp.

Seek heaven through violence.

(1) Mastodon: Steambreather (2016)

(2) ZA/UM: Disco Elysium (2019)