Talking to My Clones

A counselor that I went to see when I lived in Canada taught me an exercise that I was supposed to do when I thought of an experience from when I was younger. I would imagine myself at that age and how that experience felt. Then she told me to imagine that as the age I am now, I met that girl (myself) at that age, as if there were two of me. I was supposed to converse with the old me and comfort her, giving her the empathy that I had needed at the time that I didn’t receive, because only I could give it to her, because only I was truly capable of completely understanding.

This is an exercise I have done since, when I have remembered, but often, I apply it to current scenarios in my life so that it’s like a modern me talking to a modern me as if I have a wiser clone of myself when myself breaks down. It sounds a little nuts, but believe me, sometimes it prevents me from going nuts. It reminds me to have self-compassion and puts it in a way that I can understand it. It reminds me that I am a human and keeps me in touch with the world.

Tonight, I was having a moment. In this moment, I felt like I was falling behind and broken and worthless. That nobody wanted me or needed me. That nobody understood me. That I just didn’t meet the necessary requirements. These thoughts were triggered by something that broke my heart. At these thoughts, Myself cried. My Wise Self didn’t know what to say, because I think she didn’t know if what Myself said was true or not. But then My Wise Self remembered what had happened right before these thoughts came (not the thing that broke my heart, just what I had done just prior to my thoughts).

I have this weird thing where my mind just longs to empty itself, and it just gets immersed in current action. Usually it’s something small, and something others would perceive as strange. One that I’m pretty sure has happened before, and that happened tonight, is drinking water strangely. It’s like I freeze my body and my face. I look into the distance as if in an unmoving trance, lift my arm which I have made rigid as if I were a robot, and dump the water from my water bottle into my mouth. Usually what happens is that most of the water doesn’t really make it into my mouth, unsurprisingly. It makes it onto my pants and wherever I am sitting. For whatever reason unbeknownst to me, I like the spill. I don’t like my pants being wet, but I like the spill. But as soon as it spills, there is something in me that freaks out as if I just did something wrong to be ashamed of, and then I turn around and tell myself, “Does it really matter? It’s just water. No harm done.”

After spilling the water in that weird fashion this time, I actually stopped to think about the fact that I had actually done what I did. I sometimes don’t even know that I do these things. I tried to come up with a good reason why I liked the spill. I felt like anyone watching me would say I shouldn’t. I mean, I just spilled water that was intended to go into my mouth, and I was acting like a weirdo for seemingly no good reason. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t be happy about it. Honestly, I can’t come up with a reason why I liked it.

Anyway, as My Wise Self was comforting My Crying Self, she struggled for something to say and just rubbed Myself’s back. Then she said the words, “You’re just like that water spill. You make no sense to people. By all accounts you could very well be pointless, but there’s just something about you, and I like you. People think that water spill was flawed because it didn’t make it into somebody’s mouth, but it was likeable, they just didn’t see it. There is no reason you are not likeable just because you didn’t make it into someone’s mouth for consumption. Thank God you didn’t!"

My Wise Self made Myself feel rather peaceful with that. She’s really nice.