I’m having fun with this draft, I must say. I’m liking it a lot. But, like I told the Professor yesterday, I am having a hard time trusting my judgement. After all, I really like Flock and can’t get anyone to pay me for the privilege of agreeing with me that it’s good.
You know when you don’t want to feel like you can’t trust your judgement? When you’re revising.
I was also telling the Professor how I came to be at the top of a bunch of stairs that, under normal circumstances, I would not be able to get down. They don’t have a railing and they slope downhill. And yet, I had my purse with me and my purse, if I hold it by the handle and bend over just a smidge, rests on the ground. Putting my purse on the ground gave me a sense of balance I don’t normally have under these circumstances, and I got down the steps no problem.
I even tried it again to make sure.
And this is like the flip side of how I experience being in my body when I’m having a panic attack. Under those circumstances, I feel like my body just will not do what my brain knows I can do. I really do experience it as if I have an animal self and a conscious self which are, under almost all circumstances, so closely aligned that I mistake them for being the same thing. But, under some circumstances, over which I have little choice, the animal and me become somewhat uncoupled, each acting autonomously and, since the animal is the body, my mind doesn’t really have any control over it.
But here I am at the steps, a known circumstance for decoupling. And yet, setting my purse on the ground prevents that. Even though my brain the whole time is “This is so stupid! The handle is slack! It’s vinyl for gods’ sake. It’s not, somehow, holding you up! Why don’t we just call the Professor right now and have her come get us before we fall down the steps?” and my body is already down the steps.
I know there’s no such thing as multiple personalities. But I have to tell you, I don’t think our personalities are as singular as we like to pretend, either.
Tiny Cat Pants 