Depersonalisation
I looked into the mirror today. I put my face directly to the mirror until there was no boundary between the mirror and my vision. In it there was an avatar that I could control. The muscles that are machines with organs: with this signal I could make the eyes move; with that signal maybe a muscle by the chin would move. The nose-like machine that I saw appeared whiter than the rest of the face. The skin surrounding the nose was overlaid by a slight shadow such that it appeared browner than it would be under direct light. That browner skin tone I could identify as conforming to a preconceived ideal that stems from the view I hold of the "I". But in this “I” I cannot identify with the oily skin, the balding and messy hair. What is “me” in this context? It is easier to say what this “me” is not. This me is not white, not a reactive machine-muscle. This me, or really some position that perceives, cannot recognise the bigness of the face, or the beard that brushes on the edges of the stranger. What is it that I see? A man? I am not a man, I don’t even feel human most of the time. To be human means to be defined in some way by some social organisation, as well as the biological organisation of the “individual”. I feel like neither here in this position of viewing the world, in control while at the same time not in control. I feel the breathing; I feel it affecting me; I feel me affecting it, but I do not feel I can fully control it. I cannot turn it off. If I breathe in too much it stops me. It has limitations, and those limitations bring me to the realisation that I am not in control of “I”. And yet this “I”, which I am not in control of, controls the avatar in the reflection, an avatar that is not the “I” that is me. To both the “I” and the avatar, there is a wish to be able to identify with their whiteness.
…but:
the wish is not me
me is not “I”
.