Just Me, Myself, and I (Part 1 of 3)

In a play I once heard the words “This above all: to thine own self be true” spoken by a fool named Polonius and written by a genius named Shakespeare. But what if you do not know which one of you is true? Shakespeare is dead and Polonius is fictional, so they could not answer. 

I asked a few others, who are neither dead nor fictional, and they said look within yourself, but myself is the one in question to begin with. Nonetheless, I took the suggestion and climbed on in to find my true face.

When I reached my destination there were three doors. I picked the one on the right.

I found her alone and sitting on the ground with her legs crossed as the scratching of pencil on paper buzzed in the air.

“What are you doing?” I asked, leaning over her shoulder.

“Don’t you know?” she quipped. My new acquaintance turned and I found myself looking at a familiar face, rounded with the soft, gentle curve of her cheeks and framed by cascading curls of dark gold. It was too familiar to be anyone's face but my own. Her eyes stared at me with neither annoyance nor curiosity, but as is the function of eyes, hers simply observed and nothing else. They were not vibrant, nor were they dull, but a muted, subdued blue of a lake on a cloudy day. “Do you not know what you do?”

“Wait, if you’re me,” I said, “then am I you?”

“That would make sense,” she replied, “but if I am you and you are me, then why are you asking yourself what you are doing?”

“Apparently I don’t know myself after all,” I said sounding miffed. “I didn’t know I had an attitude.”

Her eyes were truthful when they looked to me. “You don’t have an attitude.” Her words were honest and plain with no inflection at all. “I do not mean to offend.” Her voice was quieter.

“Not at all, it was a joke,” I assured her. The blue ovals continued to bore into me. Not able to stand the silence, I continued, “But if you are me, and I am you, then why am I hiding things from myself?”

“Good question,” she agreed pensively, “though if you are dishonest with yourself, then asking yourself is not a good person to ask.”

“Good point,” I admitted as I sat down beside her. “So what I am doing again?”

“You’re writing,” she answered. She withdrew as her serene gaze shifted from me to the notebook that lay on her knee. The scratching started again as her hand guided the pencil across the page. Her waves of ashy blonde hair fell like a curtain as she leaned closer to the page. What laid behind curtain no one knew.

“Are you alone?” I asked, as my eyes wandered the empty vastness.

“No, you’re here,” she replied, untroubled for she was too preoccupied with her notebook to look at me.

“But I am you.”

“Good point.”

“Do you ever want to leave?” I asked. “Haven’t you ever wondered what’s out there?”

“No, not really.”

I stared at her head of blond hair as I tried to emulate her unwavering, unnerving gaze, but she did not raise her head. How could she just sit there? Just sit—nothing else. No desire to do anything really. Not even to speak a few words to another human being, even if it was herself. The stillness in the broad emptiness crept along my arms and up my spine. The never ending itch to speak forced my lips open to ask the question never spoken before.

“Are you lonely?”

The sound of scratching ceased. Pausing in her paramount task, she returned to a stiff posture to look at me with vast lakes of undisturbed blue without the slightest ripple, but she did not see me. She was looking far beyond me. Far beyond the curtain to a place only she could see. The rest of us stumbled around in the blank darkness on the outside, but only she could see, even if it was only what was on the secluded walls around her. But what did we know? Those walls could be an art gallery and no one would know.

“I have you, my writing, and my music.”

“Music?” I questioned incredulously. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Then you aren’t listening,” she intoned, before returning to her writing and the scratching of her scribbling pencil recommenced

I could only sigh in defeat as I leaned back and let myself fall gently onto the ground. I stared up into the dark as the scratching of pencil on paper continued to buzz in my ear, but then it wasn’t scratching at all. I could hear its marching pulse; I felt the rhythm of the pencil being picked up and put down again and I could hear the accent of a strong flick of the wrist or the legato drawl of a long, measured stroke. I closed my eyes. I was content with lying by myself and listening to the music of a pencil on paper. Let everyone else stumble in the dark.