hi.

[arimle.livejournal.com]

Hello. I'm new around these parts. I'm Elmira -- it isn't my real name or even the name I go by, but it is the name of this very specific, pared-down self. It's the name I have inside. (And when you pronounce it in your mind, pronounce it with a soft I, please.)

I'm newly becoming selves-aware (I heard that term somewhere else and I liked it). I've had such a tenuous grasp on my own identity my whole life, really, to the extent where I know I haven't been living my own life, my memories are memories of other peoples' lives. I'm pretty sure of my plurality; the thing is that it seems that we are many people sharing one consciousness. Slávka is the one inside who I know the best (and even I don't know her well enough), and when she writes it is really less her writing than me interpreting these Slávka-buzzings into thoughts and thoughts into language and language to the paper. And yet I get the feeling that when I write it is just as much Slávka interpreting my thoughts. And there is still a fairly clear Elmira and a fairly clear Slávka. I can have conversations with Slávka, but it's a very abstract sort of communication.

And also now that I'm separating us out like this, I've become a lot more clear-headed. I've been identifying as our collective consciousness and I have considerably less control over that than I do over my own self. I've also been retrieving various wonderful things from the inner life I used to have -- for instance, I can talk backwards again. I enjoy being this person and thinking this way and I'm clearing the air. So. Here I am.