Jellyfish self
I’ve been thinking and talking about what it means to have a sense of self all summer—how do I know who I am, how my life and actions are perceived by others vs how I perceive myself to myself? Is the self a fixed entity or a fluid held by whatever containers and systems I build up around it or am given?
moonflower, which blooms only for one evening.
There are certain environments in which I bloom in a certain way, radiate more intensely. There are others where I find myself more mellowed out, humming in a resting mode, content. Is the less brilliant version less or more myself than the higher octane version? I don’t know. Around and around the rose bush I go.
My friend is in love and she tells me that she doesn’t know what to do with herself. “I’m not starving all the time,” she says, referring to the gaping hole that hungers for family and companionship in our souls at all hours. “I don’t know how to live like this. It’s bewildering.” I felt that way a few times, too. It was disorienting—suddenly I had the thing I had been striving for, and now how could I maintain it and grow in other directions? I wasn’t sure. And it didn’t last, so I’m still unsure. Is the hunger innate to the self or is it a function of the experiences that have shaped me, the neighbor girl who made me cry at 7 because I wouldn’t give her some precious belonging of mine when she demanded it to prove that I wanted to be her friend and had stormed out after and refused to acknowledge me in the street, the father whose love was tied to performing his religion to the beat of his own making, the husband who demanded a divorce with almost no explanation, the friends who leave without looking back? Is this forever or is this just something to outgrow eventually, when I find myself full?
I’m watching another friend slowly open up like a fist exhausted from clenching, stiff and tense still. She’s been through betrayals upon betrayals and works in a field where rules and privacy and discretion are paramount. But she’s started posting things on her IG stories recently, a gesture of invitation to the world at large: see me, maybe? For a second here? She’s been doing months of neurofeedback, a processing/re-integration therapy that is recommended for PTSD. Slowly, her perspective on the world is shifting away from protect defend deflect to try ask hope try again. Is her openness herself, or a function of her environment and the work she’s done? Is my other friend’s satedness her true self or a function of her labor to get to this point in a relationship? Yes.
Another friend writes two short fiction-ish pieces back to back set in nightclubs, describing the scene on the dance floor like people moving under water, reminding me of jellyfish. When I was a child, I used to watch the jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in my mind’s eye when I fell asleep. The sight was the most soothing scene I had ever encountered, and I memorized it, stroking the edges of the memory like a cherished photo. The slow un-collapse of the jellyfish bulbs as they grew and swelled, the flutter beneath their skirts as they pushed the water back and away. On and on, they swelled and melted, taking on and losing shape over and over. Which shape belongs to them most truly? The fullness or the curling in on themselves? Again, yes.