Suddenly,
amnesia strikes me from behind, like a
frying pan in a
Three Stooges skit, and I'm left, knowing nothing about who I am, or my history. Who would I be at that point? Would I be the same me? Would I find interest in the same things? How much of what I do now is based on who I was and not who I am now? Would I be at all the same person? This is the kind of thing I wonder about, sitting here in my room at night, trying to figure out who I am, and why I am what I think I am.
So much of what I do is in habit. I was quiet during highschool. I'm more
outgoing at college. When I'm with my friends from my hometown, it's almost as if I'm a different me. It's not that I'm being false, but I show the same facet of me that was there in highschool. At college, I show a different facet of myself. What would happen if I had no experience of what I was like with these people. What kind of person would I be now? Why can't I change the way I act towards old friends when I change the way I act towards new ones? What sort of
social inertia brings me back there?
I wish for amnesia, so that suddenly, decisively, in one fell swoop I could destroy this
accumulation of self-history and any possibility of being the person I feel I have been. Even if it's simply an unconscious thing, I would be able to discover who I am, and what being me is really all about. I know it sounds silly to want to have amnesia, but...I often think that I personal growth would be much easier. Amnesia gives the possibility of true
self-discovery and not just small
revelation.
I guess in a sense there is almost too great of a downside to this. I would lose all
friendship that I have had. Would those people still be friends with me? Would I even be the same me? Perhaps in that sense,
amnesia would be a horrible thing. I have a friend who had a horrible car accident and
amnesia for a while because of a
concussion, and I'm certain he would not like to have lived through that again. I'm certain it was a horribly frustrating experience to lie in the hospital, and see crowds of people who all knew you, while he lay there unable to remember their names or anything about them.
It's just times when I sit here doubting and wondering who I really am that I feel like amnesia herself might be
a welcome tool in the process of self-discovery.