This last week was... a strange week for me emotionally, and it's partially the reason why I ended up falling behind on my blog. I've always considered my personality to be a little fluid between the two halves I see in myself: My "pleasure" self (whom I refer to in my head as "Kima") and my "rational" self (whom I refer to in my head as "Riddle"). 90% of the time my personality is strictly what Riddle embodies, but every once in awhile, Kima springs up to cause a little chaos.
It's definitely not to a bipolar or a dissociative identity disorder extreme, and I would never try to avoid responsibility by pushing it off on my other "side," because it's always ME, but there's been a distinct divide in my head between the two for years. Riddle and Kima have different interpretations of things, and a few personality traits simply don't overlap between them. They also have distinctly different writing styles, so I can look at a piece of writing I've done and instantly recognize whether I was "Riddle-dominant" or "Kima-dominant" when I wrote it.
Put simply, Kima is my "write drunk" brain, and Riddle is my "edit sober" one. Their inability to agree on consistent character portrayals makes revision a nightmare, so about two years ago, I cut off Kima's access to my main writing by setting aside a Google Docs file that is specifically for her to play in. When I'm "Kima-dominant," I write sex scenes all the time. When I'm "Riddle-dominant," I have full memory of writing those scenes, and I know the exact word choice found in certain sentences, but I can't stand to open the file and read anything because it grosses me out. It's a weird experience, and with no scientific evidence to back me up, I usually just blame it on my fertility cycle. I guess there's a small part of me that's boy-crazy after all.
Kima is usually only dominant for an evening or two every few weeks, and it's not normally a problem. She'll fixate on something, stay up for hours working on it, and either not eat dinner or indulge on dessert, but it's not a big deal.
But this last week... Kima was the dominant half of my brain for multiple days straight, which has never happened before. It was incredibly weird. I had the distinct sense of the "Riddle" half of my personality being "offline." During my Sensation and Perception class today, I actually opened eight different documents and wrote eight different "letters" to myself, trying to describe the experience. For example:
Kima brain was dominant for multiple days straight this week for the first time ever and I’m kind of freaking out because I legitimately feel my self control slipping away and I can feel myself not caring about consequences and that’s gonna be a problem if it goes on but I… don’t… care.
and
Literally writing this in class instead of paying attention, which is NOT USUAL and Riddle would NEVER ALLOW THIS. We’re watching a video. Why am I not watching it. It’s a super interesting video.
I don’t know how I feel about this. Curious more than anything. Still legit not concerned about social consequences. That’s… foreign… to me…
Distinct sense of Riddle being absent. Like. He’s literally off right now. Has been for days. This never happens. Where is he.
and
I’m gonna have to cut myself cold turkey and reassess my priorities holy wow this is weird and I should probably be freaking out more than I am.
and of course
I legit don't know where Riddle is. What is he doing. Where is he. RIDDLE WE'RE GONNA CRASH KIMA NEVER THIIIIINKS. Guys I'm thinking rationally I swear I 100% know what I'm doing. You don't need sleep. Ahaha I'm okay making jokes about this. I totally know what I'm saying and we can talk about this openly when Riddle comes back ok.
Kima is the "pleasure" brain. She's energetic, ambitious, a babbler, and I don't always make the best decisions when she's "dominant." Don't want to fold laundry? Leaving it on the end of the bed for two days is probably fine. I skipped breakfast, skipped dinner, and stayed up until 3:00 in the morning for several days in a row. I pushed off an essay until the last few hours before it was due, but thankfully it was intended to be a messy first draft and I still have a week before the final needs to be turned in. I was fully aware of the poor decisions I was making, but nothing felt important to me unless it was immediately going to make me happy. Like eating candy, looking at pictures of pretty animals, and just drawing things that I wouldn't have prioritized when in my "Riddle" mindset.
It was... an interesting week all in all. Riddle "clicked back into place" this afternoon for the first time in days. Thankfully. We did our usual laid-back rational thing. Dishes were washed. Laundry was put away. Food was eaten. I read through all the "write drunk" writing I did this week with my "edit sober" brain, shaking my head in frustration. On Tuesday mornings, I share bits of my writing with my online friends, and we spend our free time in the next several days bonding with one another and offering critique on each other's works. Before he went offline, "Riddle" had gotten 6,000 words into the new chapter I was working on. Kima decided it wasn't good enough for her, tossed it aside, and pounded out 15,000 words this weekend using HER interpretations of characters instead of the established "Riddle canon" versions, and submitted it to the group yesterday, so that's our new canon and I have to work with that now. It's not a big deal story-wise, but I was uncomfortably aware today of how I need to put this energy to better use. If Kima would stop writing things that Riddle has to rework or entirely undo, maybe I could actually get somewhere in my writing career.
My "personality fluidity" has never been a problem before, and hopefully it doesn't develop into anything serious. Maybe this is just a girl thing- some girls get moody and snappy at a certain time of the month, and I get energetic and hyper-fixated. It's never been a big deal to me, so I hope I'm just being overly paranoid because of my psychology classes. I've been writing a bipolar narrator in one of my stories for the last year, and I recently picked up the project again after being on break from it during the summer, so maybe my recent research is just messing with my head.
It's probably best to make a written record of this odd week anyway...
