Hollow

Every time I look into the mirror, I see a me that is not me. In all seriousness, this is not to be taken as a metaphor or whatnot for my soul or anything else. I really do not know (or recognize) the cliché “man in the mirror.” What’s worse is that I have no substantial self image to compare the image reflected with either. To top off all the madness, the image reflected changes drastically every new time I step within the light of the mirrors. Now, I am not talking about something sci-fi, where my entire face is novel and unrecognizable. Just that when I look into the mirror and face my reflection, I do not quite grasp the concept of the image reflected. The reflection has semblance of me, but I cannot find any truth in that image. Often, when I come upon my reflection, I gaze needlessly, fruitlessly, for something tangible that is me, was me, could be me, but have yet to find any trace. The face has the same features of course, yet they never match correctly with the way the reflection looked before. My physical attributes just don’t seem to match. I mush my face with my fingers and scrunch my thick eyebrows in a manner to find some sort of identification, yet like an amnesia patient; the image only looks vaguely familiar. Others might recognize the image I see as me, as they see as I do not (if that really makes any sense at all).
As I was on my deck, smoking as I should not be (in my condition), I had an epiphany. Though it will not be as strongly argued, opinionated, as the one I gave to the rose bush outside, I will do my best to reconstruct it again here. My epiphany was that my thought habit, pattern, whatever one calls it, my inner monologue is hollow. That is the best way to describe it. In the sense of the word as all of these and none of these definitions:
1. Having a cavity, gap, or space within
2. Without substance or character
3. Devoid of truth or validity; specious
4. Having a reverberating, sepulchral sound
I am not saying that my head is completely empty or void of anything, but in the same sense it is. My mind is so empty that the emptiness has somewhat cluttered together? I don’t know how else to describe it. It is both. My head is an empty mess. Like the drone reverberations that occur after the stroke upon the heads of differing sized drums, which emit differing sounds/pitches (which are my thoughts, memories, everything...) they bounce off the mental walls erratically throughout me in the empty space of nothingness that is the mind, my mind. I reach up with my mental arm and latch on to the separate vibrations flying every which way. As each sound/vibration is an individual thought and memory, each vibration eventually fades away after time. Newer sounds still bounce loudly throughout as the old ones are for the most part gone and dead (or at least not capable of being perceived with these deaf and insensitive ears). Too many mixed metaphors here, so I am going to try something else.
In my head, there is no past and there is no future, only present here and now. Imagine thoughts being like strands of spaghetti (why spaghetti, because I ate it for dinner tonight and I am hungry again) and my mind (if these could be at all tangible) the plate that the spaghetti sits upon. My strands of spaghetti would be flying at blinding speeds erratically around the room and I have to throw my plate up in the air to catch one of the strands, whether it is the right one or not who knows, to eat it. Perhaps this example too does not really serve me any good so I shall try another.
A better example and one I might think may relate better would be to think about any movie you’ve seen where the protagonist is recalling a memory from childhood and the scene changes to an elaborate recall of details, smells and etcetera. When I try to recall a memory, it is nothing like one sees in Hollywood, but only a flash of an image or some other sensual faculty. In one quick instant, I know the memory, own the memory, from the blurred flash, and yet couldn’t recite too many details about it. There is no prolonged scene or daydream presented in a somewhat grandiose montage or special movie effect that comes to relay such fine thoughts of my past. And similarly, the future, in via the creations of my imagination are made in the same way, by flashes.
So what does this have to do with my supposed problem with my physical self image? Well, it seems to me that the reason I may have no recognizable one, one that appears to shift from visit to visit to the mirror, is because I cannot produce an image of my past self from memory long enough to discern any details to compare with. I vaguely can recall something that looks like me when I look upon my reflection, but can not truly recognize the image at all.
Now, do not think at all that this essay (or whatever it is) is a sad, pathetic attempt for pity or such nonsense. It was a simple exercise in trying to describe my mental (I don’t know the word I want or should want to use in this case so I am leaving it blank instead) to others. I have never in my life, or at least to the extent I can recall, had an assured physical self image. Even when I was really small, I never thought the boy in the mirror brushing his teeth (or something like that) was actually me doing the action. It was always some other little boy, stuck in mirror-world, my doppelganger (though I hardly at the time knew what one was), who was cleansing his teeth like a proper boy should. Though I too completed the task, further evidence that my breath usually smelled bad (yes, later...) and I always had cavities when I visited the dentist, only further fueled this belief.
Simply, I am trying to see if I can express something that is rather too difficult to describe with any substance verbally in the first place. To see if anyone can comprehend any significance at all. Yes it is a vain notion, as anything written with the intent of focusing on autobiographical content usually tends to be, and I make no excuses for it. It is what it is. If you understand what I was trying to convey then great, if not, then there is no blame, for I am not a great communicator when it comes to writing as I have. Much to my chagrin, my writing, written always as I think, freely, is very erratic. And in a sense to stay with the word I designated for the title of this piece, it is hollow.
-sib-