A Tale of Two Selves

One of the reasons I chose “Living the Liminal” as the title of my site and the nom de plume of my blogging self is because I have, for as long as I can remember, felt as if I was poised between two selves, struggling to reconcile equal and opposite impulses. Stuck on the threshold between two selves. I am a homebody who has never found a place to call home. I desire order and structure to my life and to my days and yet feel stifled and resentful of anything less than the freedom to come and go and do what I wish. I yearn for a loving and intense and supportive relationship and yet I also crave solitude and fear the responsibility that comes from relationships.

These things are not just jumbled up in my head, making my goals and desires something less than a straight line. I really do feel like there are two of myself competing for what I want out of life. Of course we all have competing desires, and maybe what I feel is more normal than I like to believe. But I think that one of the reasons I continue to feel liminal and displaced from my life and isolated from people is this division of myself, this continual pulling in opposite directions. (I think my tendency to look at people around me with a sense of alienation is not necessarily bound up specifically with this particular issue, but I don’t think feeling constantly between selves helps the matter. And by alienation, I’m talking less about individual interactions and referring more to those times when I look around at people going about their lives, falling in love, having families, staying in one place for longer than 4 years, managing to have careers, building communities, etc. and feel an emotional vertigo that makes all of that seem, well, alien.)

What’s even more frustrating about my two selves is that one is not necessarily “bad” or self-destructive or purely desire driven. If it were simply a matter of the id fighting the ego that would be one thing. It might lead to problems, sure, but it least identifying what was necessary for balance would be easier.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say here. I am trying to write more about myself as a means to enunciate some of my emotions and map out my mental landscape for myself. However, one of the reasons I generally don’t offer up this kind of writing is precisely because I don’t have a narrative or any real sense of what my point is. I mean, just because I feel something doesn’t make it worthwhile as writing.

Oh well. It’s written. And with a simply key combination it’s about to be posted.