Which Me?

Writing is a solitary experience; something you do alone when pieces of your mind fall through your finger tips to create a new world, with sights, sounds, smells and feelings that belong to someone else, someone you made up. Sewing is quite different, you craft your creations with your hands and when I do it, I talk to no one. Now the pieces of my mind fall out and have no- where to go, they just waft about me like a mist of questions.

I should hate to be a stay at home mother, yet a part of me longs to live in a cottage by the sea, take walks on the morning beach, grow my own herbs and make a living from selling water colours of beautiful shoes.  I would go crazy if it wasn't for the noise of everyone else to keep my mind in check.

Who then am I? To know ones-self is necessary to emotional growth. How can anything as multi-layered as a person possibly know oneself? How can a writer create a convincing multi-layered character when we are in essence so many layers of contradiction?   Sometimes a character won’t perform unless given the right name. What happens when you change your name? When I married and took my husband’s name I wrote a poem wondering what happened to the other me, where did she go? Then I resurrected her and used her as my writers name. How has she changed over the years? In fact how many versions of me are there? Sometimes I feel like all the Elizabeth’s at the end of Bioshock Infinite, there is the mother me, the crafting me, the writing me, the housekeeper me, the wife, teacher, and the crazy me.

My many archetypes illustrated by AndyArtisand

When I was little I used to stare at my reflection until I had tunnel vision. I would get a feeling of great unease as I became more detached from my reflection and I would wait for her to make the wrong move. Those contradictions have long been the focus of story- telling, Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Bruce Banner and the Hulk even OZ in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

We are far more complex than the good and bad, we are sometimes the painted face of the crying clown (think Tony Hancock). We develop alter egos, (think Ziggy Stardust). We take on stage names until we no longer exist (Judy Garland where did Frances Gum go? And at what stage did she turn into Dorothy Gale?). After forty two years of playing Deirdre Barlow who’s dreams was Anne Kirkbride having, her own or Deirdre’s?

Am I all of Jung’s archetypes at once? Sometimes I have my mother’s face and my father’s manner, other times my mouth is doing that thing my son’s mouth does when demonstrating yo-yo tricks.

Perhaps I change with the phases of the moon. Maybe I need to leave the sewing for a while and go back to chapter nine where through my finger- tips I can think the thoughts of non-existent characters.