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When I first created my WordPress blog, I mostly just transferred my writing posts from my tumblr blog. This is one which I left behind… until now.
I was thinking earlier about something which happens to me fairly regularly with other people. I can come across as easy going, which I am to a degree, but it’s not all of me. People sometimes think it is, or at least they give the impression that they do when they try to… tell me who to be and what to do. Doing that usually introduces them to the not easy going side of me.
If we’re in a queue and you’re in a hurry but I’m not, I might suggest that you go ahead of me. However if you cut the line… good luck with that, hope it was worth it (do you want your head in a paper or plastic bag?).
Anyway, I was reminded of this post. I wonder sometimes… how would I perceive myself if I didn’t know myself and met me?
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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to meet yourself.
Sometimes in life we meet people who are so similar to us that it is uncanny. It can be very exciting, like finding a long lost soul sibling. But as similar as you and this other person may be, you are still two separate individuals, and at some point the delight of all that is alike will fade, the ‘Me too’ orgy will abate, and you will become aware of all that is not alike, all that is ‘Not me’. Which is not a bad thing at all, if someone is almost identical to us it can be unsettling to our sense of self, our sense of being unique and one of a kind. We love to find things which bond us to others, but we love our differences too.
I occasionally meet myself in dreams. One time I met myself as a child, my child self was crying because she was lost, alone, and there was a monster trying to eat her. I killed the monster, took the child by the hand, and led her away to a safe and loving place. There was another time when I came face to face with a male version of myself. I don’t recall any details of that dream, but I remember waking up with a sense of great satisfaction. Sometimes the me that meets myself isn’t me. My dreaming self is someone else who meets me. That is weird, but not unusual, I vary who I am in dreams all the time, there are times when I am me, times when I am a very altered version of me, and times when I am someone else entirely. I do enjoy meeting myself, it gives me a glimpse of what I am like from the outside in, even if that glimpse comes from the inner recesses of my sleeping self.
It is nigh on impossible to see oneself from the outside in because we are so firmly rooted inside ourselves. The world is coloured by our perceptions, which includes how we perceive others perceiving us. If you have a decidedly pessimistic view of yourself, you will always assume that others do too, even if the other person tells you how wonderful you are, you will eventually convince yourself that they are mistaken, that they have projected themselves onto you and are just not seeing you for who you are. In some cases you may even go out of your way to change their opinion about you, and deliberately do something to ensure they see you as negatively as you see yourself.
I have a very beautiful friend who is convinced that she is ugly. I have no idea what she sees when she looks in the mirror, but from what she has said, it is not what everyone else sees when they look at her. It doesn’t matter how often she is told that she is beautiful, she doesn’t register those words as anything other than people being kind and polite. She occasionally gets very annoyed at others for lying to her about her looks, and she is not averse to behaving in hurtful ways to force people to see the ugliness she feels. She is not a mean or nasty person, it pains her to behave the way she does, but she feels frustrated that people don’t see the real her, that they see what they want to see, and she wants people to know who she really is before they decide if they like her or not. If she met herself, I wonder if she would see how beautiful she is, and how that would affect her perception of herself. How would she behave with herself, would she feel compelled to behave with herself the way she does with others.
As for me, I often wonder what my interaction with myself would be like. Would I like myself, or would I be repelled, and reject myself. Would we talk for hours, or ignore each other. Would I be pleased to meet me, or wish it had never happened.
What about you, how would you feel if you had the opportunity to meet yourself?
An Upturned Soul 
Great post. 🙂 I sometimes wish I could meet myself, or see myself as others see me, but then again, maybe not. 🙂
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Thank you 🙂
Sometimes I get a glimpse of how I come across on the outside when watching films with friends and they point out a character who they think is like me – it often surprises me especially if I didn’t relate to the character at all. That’s an intriguing way to ‘meet’ yourself. Sometimes it works the other way around, I’ll point out that a character is just like me and someone else will argue that it’s not like me at all – which is a way to see the divide between how you perceive yourself from the inside and how others perceive you from the outside. Doing this ‘exercise’ with friends is a great way to get to know them better because when they point out a character which they think is just like them (and you don’t see them in that character at all), you get an insight into how they see themselves from inside. You get to meet their inner self behind the outer self.
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I’ve thought somewhat about this, except for me in my thinking about it, it’s just me being with me already knowing me only from the outside. So when I think about it, it’s not about just meeting…like for the first time as a new person. It’s more about me being company for myself. lol. If that makes any sense.
I like the dreams you wrote about. I had a dream once where I saw myself as a little kid. My kid self was standing next to my grandmother, who was sitting in a chair. I walked into the room as my adult self (it was the living room of a house my family lived in when I was little for a few years). When my adult self saw my kid self, my adult self crouched down and I put my arms out. My kid self ran over and we hugged.
I loved that dream. Reading your dream about seeing yourself and rescuing your kid self made me smile.
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Thank you 🙂
That was a powerful dream experience for me, it marked a shift, a turning point. The dream you had sounds like it marked a similar kind of shift, what a wonderful dream, such strong imagery!
If I understood correctly, what you’re saying is that you’re your own best friend, and so if you met yourself it would be like the meeting between your adult and child selves in the dream?
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That’s an angle I hadn’t quite thought about. But I like it.
I was more thinking about meeting me as I am now. Adult to adult…two people who really ‘get’ each other.
I feel as though I don’t like myself all that much though tbh, but I do feel like I’m the only one that understands myself anymore. At least for the most part.
The last person I felt understood me so well was a trauma bonding situation I think and the break up was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. I’m pretty sure he’s a narcissist.
I do like the idea of my adult and child selves meeting. That child self sure could use the understanding that only I have as a result of the experiences ‘she’ had.
Wow, that’s quite a mind twist isn’t it? lol
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I love that 🙂
I don’t think we’re meant to like ourselves completely or all the time, it’s a relationship like any other, with ups and downs and merry-go-rounds, however our relationship with ourselves is the longest one we will ever have and goes deeper than most of the other ones because we know ourselves so intimately and it’s 24/7, maybe even 25/8. The understanding is the most important part perhaps because it nurtures the nooks and crannies of self.
It’s hard to tell sometimes whether someone is or isn’t a narcissist, it’s really more about whether we experience them as one – if we do, then perhaps for us they are, and that’s sometimes all we need to know. This relationship isn’t for us. Maybe it was briefly, but then it wasn’t.
All relationships have a rhythm and flow, the ones in our dreams are at times the most intriguing.
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