MY (OUR) SPLIT PERSONALITY (IES)

It is true. I confess.

My personality is in fact split in two.

I call my alter ego the same name to avoid confusion – and the eventual collapse of social life.

I've parenthesised him to divide the bad from the "badder" (You separatist &%$!). This is already chaotic enough as it is and as you can see, he's not that polite too (*grumpy inaudible muttering*…).

Having Split Personality is a bit like a vinyl record playing both sides alternatively; or a coin that's always flipping and spinning; a bit like Janus, the Roman god who suffered from some slight bicephaly problems – more specifically a craniofacial duplication condition – ever since he attempted to break a wooden plank with his nose; or the Greek mythological monster Chimera, fruit of the forbidden love between two sexually confused animals and a very short-sighted one; or Orthrus, a two-headed mythic watchdog famous for both his fantastic Value for Money two-in-one security skills, and his fabled unique ability to bark, non-stop and in stereo, all night long – actually until every single Greek deity began considering suicide "a good career move"… (Look pal, everybody got the picture when you wrote "Split Personality" on the freaking title! Get on with it, I got stuff to do… Gotta tell you though, after all this time together it still amazes me the amount of gibberish nonsense you're able to squeeze into a single paragraph. Jeez!...)

Before the ugly word "he'scrazy" comes springing out with a typical slow sideways shaking of the head, please bear in mind that he's the mental one (oh! Really? You cannot possibly be serious…). I guess that makes me only "half-mental" as opposed to "complete lunatic sociopath" (Just look at the creepy stuff I have to put up with and on a daily basis… *sigh*).

Moreover, what most people describe as "mood swings", might just be hard evidence that there's someone attending the party of brainwaves going inside your mind that you didn't invite. That and ventriloquists.

Anyhow, this had to come out sooner or later and before it became too obvious (before-what?! *laughing all the way to the bank*). It has the advantage of making me look slightly less mad. At least I'm aware of it (Give the guy a nice plastic medal). But, how could it be otherwise? When one talks to one's other self (That's me!), this very topic tends to come up more frequently than you'd imagine it to (Or desire...). The truth is that I'm no longer fooling anyone, so I might as well admit to everything and have some fun with it.

"Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is a novel that speaks to my (our) heart(s) for obvious reasons. We actually got into an argument with each other about this very book because we both think we're the cool evil Mr. Hyde. Eventually we settled with Mr. Hyde also having Split Personality. We are presently discussing which one of us is the Mr. Hyde who pays the bills.

Some people have said to me, on occasion, that the voices I hear are my…hmm… what was that complicated word again? (It was "Conscience" you sick bastard). Oh, right. So it was.

Well, anyway, I then had a rather easy choice to make: either thinking I have a moral intruder living within (We both thought that could become uncomfortable); or else a moron I could easily overcome and ignore (Waitaminute! Who's being impolite now?). You are, for interrupting with your verbal pollution (*long sullen silence*).

I chose the latter and I'll probably be regretting this decision because it is sometimes confusing to exist like this (*whispering*: Tell me about it…). If one writer takes an hour to leave a short note to his mum, five will take the rest of the week just to decide on the greeting introduction (Was that a joke? My God…You should have taken that Paper Recycling job opportunity after all).

We come a long way and I've had, in the past, to do his homework for him (Ha! So you did, so you did…Sucker.). As you can probably tell already, he's a bit slow in the head (What the f***?! &§@%!!! ... *breathing heavily* … 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…).

He really thinks that he too has Split Personality.
I keep telling him that his alter ego is me or his conscience (Oh boy! Here we go again…12, 13, 14,…), but he never listens. I really think he made the whole thing up just to pick with me (Yeah, right…19, 20, 21,…).

The sad truth is that he's recently been diagnosed with Multiple Personality disorder (29, 3o… Ha-A! So, the professionals are, more or less…, on my side. I knew I had something wrong too but always thought it to be you).

To make things even more complicated, he calls his other personalities the same name we already have (Obviously to avoid confusion and social holocaust). This has the downside of making it impossible to hold credible elections as to see who's going to drive the body everyday. The same guy always wins and we can never come to realise just who he is.

Which one of us is real? (Me! Me!) We have long discussions about this and never seem to agree.

Myself, my alter ego and his imaginary friends, once came to the conclusion that none of us existed outside the scope of each other's imagination, but then we all sat on the two-day-science-project looking Lasagne lying forgotten on the sofa and the whole thing had to be thought all over from scratch (Indeed. It was a terrible blow as we were pretty certain we did not exist, but that mutant Lasagne on the pyjama was contradicting the very fundaments of our reasoning, namely because it did exist for sure).

Nonetheless, It was cool not to exist and to be able to utter the original excuse: "I haven't paid the loan lately because I realised I don't exist" to the cashier at the bank.

The fact is that this brain is getting a bit too crowded and sometimes it's difficult to accommodate everybody. There are some conflicting interests as we all have to make do with a single skinny body (Not to mention a deliriously imaginative mind).
Maybe larger and taller people can fit in more characters inside of them (Come again? You've just sunken into a new personal low. Incredible…).

Sometimes I want to sleep but he doesn't. It's also somewhat awkward, when one of us needs to use the toilet. We usually take turns which means I have to make the trips there twice as many times.

We don't even have the exact same taste in clothing, but fortunately wear the same size.

He usually picks - quite randomly I'm affraid - the top part; I get to choose - very carefully - the lower ones (This usually takes us two hours as it has proven to be almost impossible to put on a shirt and tie the shoes at the same time).

That might partially explain why we both (You) sometimes dress as if daltonism was a part of our (Your) psyche when in fact he is the one who's incapable of sorting out the difference between greenish blue and bluish green (It can't be done, I tell ya.).

Good thing we both enjoy watching the same shows and do some of the same stuff or else it would be impossible to survive this strange condition. For example, I don't like "Futurama" as much as he does but I make him watch the "Simpsons" to compensate.

It's terrific when I go to the cinema with him because we get a discount (We can purchase two tickets for the price of one and a half!).

We once dated the same girl for some time, but then he got fed up with her and met another in a different town. It was horrible to watch them make out. But on weekends he had to see me do it so I guess it was only fair.

Well, the good part with this situation is that sex has always been a threesome with one of us being rapped (Damn! Just how sick are you? Ok. You get to be the paying bills Mr. Hyde.). That's also why I'm a bit timid when it comes to dating for it is hard to express poetic love when there's this creep laughing through every hint of sentimentalism.

It's also infuriating when he changes the channel while I'm watching a movie (Yeah! And I always wait for the moment the main character is about to have the usual staggering revelation that twists the plot). I've actually used this to justify my apparent anti-social TV watching. The expression of disbelief on the faces of friends made me rethink my straightforwardness (Wow! Now this can't be a real word. You clearly made it up. What the hell is that? A train in disguise? A bulimic bird? No! It's Superword! *smiling sardonically*).

I personally think this whole thing has something to do with mirrors and Parallel Universes, but couldn't really quite figure out how. This hypothesis sounds a bit farfetched, notwithstanding it is still in the realm of possibilities (He surely means in the realm of "psychotic" possibilities, folks).

But if there are really Parallel Universes living in mirrors then I may be merely in touch with my outer dimensional self from another dimension (Probably the Fifth). And that would imply that even the Universe has Multiple Personalities. And then I wouldn't feel so peculiar and misplaced.

At the end of the day, this is like owning a private Parallel Universe in easy-to-carry format (Same here man).

(Oh, wait. That's it? You're done!? Phew…Glad this crap is finally over. For a moment there I thought I'd never hear the end of it. I feel…happy and... hmm… Psst! I think I need to use the little boy's room).