Dichotomy

I don't think there is a real dichotomy between ewa and eva... I think it's just easier to think in such terms to be able to deal with my two worlds and transition more or less seemlessly from one to the other. But it is still quite amazing how many different experiences, attitudes, thoughts, and feelings one can carry around in a single human brain. It's rather astounding that most of us somehow avoid suffering from some kind of split personality disorder. From time to time, during moments like now, when I'm balancing on the edge (still physically in Poland but with my mind already in NYC), I do get to hear some whisperings of my alter egos, as if this life on the edge promoted personal disunity. 

So who is ewa? Do I leave her in Poland every year to meet again next summer? Or she has never truly left me? Shy, lacking confidence, pessimistic, ambitious but not working hard enough, systematic but overly scrupulous, sensitive, dreamy, emotional, but still practical, rational... puzzling, unstable, but still able to be responsible.

How is eva different? Is she more confident? Maybe sometimes, maybe under some circumstances, maybe. Being among strangers forms an illusion of having a lesser need to exercise constraint when dealing with people. But this is just an illusion of a person who grew up in a small community where nothing went unnoticed. One still needs to be cautious, there are still constraints, there are still limits, maybe we have them within us, maybe we cannot escape them. But is eva more daring, more energetic, less contemplative?

I would probably never see the contrast between the two if it weren’t for my comings and goings all the time. I wouldn’t even notice that I have changed. If I had never gone back for the last 10 years and then suddenly visited my family here, they would not know me. I would not know them. I would see then how much I have changed but I would not be able to put my finger on how and when and what exactly changed. I’m so glad my mom comes to stay with us almost every year. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t understand me. We would not be able to talk as we do now. And still, there are things that I cannot tell her even now. There are things that have grown in me secretly and as I have not really talked about them, they made me more distant, more withdrawn in a certain sense. Because I carry these things in me and nobody realizes what’s in my mind, nobody is allowed to without my control over the amount and form of the information to be released. If you deny access to your mind to most people around you, you alienate yourself more and more. I’m not that far yet, my way of dealing with this is letting people know a bit of me, each one knows only a bit. This way, I’m not completely shut within myself but also not completely open. Being open is just not an option. Too dangerous, too risky, what would be the point? 

The only problem is that sometimes it’s so hard to carry this stuff by yourself, with nobody to help you out. And you add a grain of this and a grain of that as you go and soon you are choking on it. You cannot contain all these things that you’re not supposed to share. I’m so tired of pretending I’m somebody else. So tired of not being able to be truly myself only because most people would not have a stomach to accept me as I am. It’s not that I blame them – why should they step out of their conventions and let me be myself. And also, maybe it just would not be good to let yourself be too ‘yourself’… I mean limits and conventions are not all bad, they were probably created to protect us from going too far in indulging our whims that could become something serious and potentially destructive.

I think my husband is right. Having too much time to think is not always so good. Usually it is easier and safer to have your time filled with things to do and take care of, filled so effectively that there is no way a stray thought could enter your mind, no way you could find time to do anything beyond the necessary, productive things you have planned. Of course, a bit of contemplating is useful if you do it in order to improve your life, make it healthier, happier, better – not only for you but also for others around you. The problem is my contemplating does not usually bring such results. I guess it’s positive, then, that soon, in just a few days, I will have so little time to do anything beyond the practical and the necessary that I may forget about any whisperings or alter egos that surface in my not so busy time. Time to go back. To my good, academic, tedious incarnation… Being idle is not serving me well. I need things that will take over my mind. Completely.