The Self is fluid. Throughout the day, we put on mask after mask. Some masks resemble others, but no two are quite the same.
The other day, I yelled something along the lines of ""Fuck this wind!"" My friend Kate laughed and said, ""I like it when you yell, because you don't do it very much."" She added, ""And your yelling voice is different than your talking voice.""
How strange that Kate hasn't heard my yelling voice. I, of course, having been present for most of my life, am very familiar with my yelling voice.
This relates to the fluidity of Self, because there are so many Angelicas I have been that Kate has not seen. Surely there are also many Kates that I have not seen.
We wear so many different masks throughout a day.
As I composed the first part of this column, the song ""Break Your Heart"" by Taio Cruz played on my M.I.A. Pandora station. This is ironic because ""heartbreaker"" is a mask some people wear. Example: In October, the second-to-last time I was stoned, a boy and I had a conversation about our habitual heart breaking. He said, ""My roommate told me he's glad I'm a heartbreaker, because so many girls break his heart. He's glad someone is getting revenge on them."" Then, he said, ""You're a heartbreaker, aren't you?"" Then, about the two of us, he said, ""Do you think we'd just break each others' hearts?""
This guy has ""heartbreaker"" enmeshed in his own self-concept. However, ""heartbreaker"" is a mask we apply when it benefits us. It's a role we play, a choice we make. Being a heartbreaker is not something this boy must become resigned to. It's not a condition he must accept. One can choose not to be an asshole—I mean… a heartbreaker.
During the last face-to-face conversation I had with this dude, I told him that calling myself a ""heartbreaker"" was a façade. I'm a lot more ambivalent about my identity than he is. Sure, I've ""broken hearts"" before, but my essence (what I would be if everything extra were stripped away) does not involve heartbreaking. At least I hope it doesn't, because that would mean I will grow old alone, which is quite obviously really sad.
At the moment I write these words, it is six o'clock Friday evening. By the time this piece is published, we will all be different people.
In about two hours, Angelica will have the accidental property of drunkness. While wearing my drunk mask, I will act very differently than I do most of the time. Hopefully, my activities will be limited to skipping down the snowy street and yelling. If I have sex with somebody tonight, I will be so angry.
Hi. Now it is 2:30 Saturday afternoon. In case you were wondering, last night, my friends and I successfully avoided writing a bad romance. Nonetheless, we were going har-har-ha-ha-ha-hard.
But R we who we R?
Fuck no! That's what I've been saying this whole time.
Last night at a certain bar, this douchey-looking dude complimented the color and solidity of our table, and then asked if he could set his drink on it. Shortly afterward, we witnessed him do this same thing to the girls at the table next to us. Later, we ran into him at another establishment. My drunk self yelled, ""NO! Not YOU again!"" and then ran away, up the stairs.
Of course, neither of us were actually the same people who had interacted before. We just happened to inhabit the same bodies and possess what appear to be the same memories.
What's a memory?
The problem with thinking about the fluidity of Self all the time is that it becomes extremely difficult to say anything.
What mask would you put on if the professor yelled at you for reading this column in class? E-mail aengel2@wisc.edu with your answers.
