Specters

Sometimes I feel like I don’t really exist.

You know how sometimes you have a thought and it just seems like a normal random thought until you say it out loud and then it’s like wow! That’s deep!

Sometimes I feel like I don’t really exist.

I spend the majority of my time alone. Just me, alone in my apartment, watching television, working, eating, taking photos, writing blog posts, thinking … lots and lots of thinking … and there are phone calls, mostly initiated by me … and texts, mostly initiated by others … and the occasional video meetings in which I do not turn on my camera … but actual in-person contact is quite rare.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t really exist.

Because things used to be really different. I had a husband. I travelled. I went to things. I had friends and associations and ambitions and hopes and dreams and physical contact with other human beings on a regular basis. And I don’t even really know where all of that went … or if it existed … or if I existed, at all.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t really exist.

In my dreams, and there have never been so many dreams, I don’t look like this. I don’t look like any version of myself that I’ve ever seen in photos. I can see myself in my dreams. I see myself in the scenes as if I was watching them play out on television. I see others through my eyes in the scene, and also through the television lens. I create what happens in the dreams from just off-stage, a sideways look onto the scene which is happening right in front of me. The larger me who sees everything, sees that writer/ director/ producer version of me too sometimes on the television screen when the camera pulls back just far enough.

Is this normal? I mean, this isn’t how I dream once in a while, this hasn’t just happened a few times … this is how I dream consistently. And I dream a lot, every night. Dreams I remember, dreams that fade, dreams that I forget immediately. So many dreams. None of the versions of me in any part of the dreams actually looks like me. I know it’s me. I am inside of each of them seeing their version of the dream from the windows of their eyes. They all look alike. They just don’t look like me, like I do right now or at any time that I’ve been photographed throughout my life.

They are younger than I am currently, maybe mid-30’s. But they don’t look like I did then. Their eyes are not as big and blue as mine. Their hair is a different shade of brown and a bit longer and layered, no bangs. Their faces have less peaks and valleys, not rounded from fat, but not pointy and hard either like when I’ve seen my face thin. The cheekbones are not quite so high, the lips are a bit fuller, the chin a bit wider and soft. They are maybe two inches taller than I’ve ever been, like me in high heels but standing barefoot. And their bodies are thin but not at all flabby, there is a muscle definition that I’ve never had in my life. The me in my dreams isn’t really me at all, but some version of me that I will never know in this life.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t really exist.

Like maybe the me in my dreams is really me, because there are three of them and they are all the same and they do things and go places and interact with people for several hours every day. Maybe they exist and I am their dream. This middle aged woman struggling to find her way through a pandemic, through relationships, through work, through life, alone. a lone wolf. How would I know? I do know they don’t question their existence. Not ever. They each know who they are and exactly what their roles are to play.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t really exist.

Mood: that moment when … aha!
Drinking: herbal tea
Listening To: silence
Hair: there, I guess