On my way home from work the other night, I was slumped in the back of an Uber, mindlessly wandering through my phone, as a relentless batch of precipitation said it’s overwhelming “hello” to my city. Water pounded on the outside of the vehicle, and it was damp, and I had forced myself to make a slight detour to the grocery store in an effort to avoid another night of playing “food delivery bingo” with my GrubHub app.

There are many times in life that am happy for the rain: when you can cozy up with your dog in comfy clothes, ideally, by a fire, grateful not to be “out there.” That day wasn’t one of them, though it matched my sentiments, regardless.

Since I am a project manager at the hospital I work at, a lot of my day doesn’t involve interacting with other people (which I sometimes prefer…), and since I live alone, the only time I need to speak is if I call someone or talk to my dog. The latter is arguably often, but I’m not sure it really counts as dialogue.

As a result of the aforementioned circumstances, it’s not often I hear my voice outside of my body. And since much of the time, I’m thinking about a lot of things that are heavy, like feeling unwell, or how dumb other people can be, or the feeling of loss when someone leaves you too soon, the voice inside my head seems reasonably consistent with the emotions that would come from the thoughts I just mentioned. It’s tired, and padded with sighs, and could possibly audition for the voiceover for Eeyore in a ‘Winnie the Pooh’ reboot.

But when I was exiting the car at the supermarket, that wasn’t the tone that left my mouth. Instead, my “thank you!” was light, and cheerful, and frankly, alarming to hear, because it’s not something I expected when it happened. Try to picture those body-swap movies, like ‘Freaky Friday’ or ’17 Again’, where the characters are taken aback when the outside isn’t matching the inside, except I’m both people in the equation.

To be honest, while momentarily jarring, this observation wasn’t really that shocking. I have said for years that there is a very different version of me – a darker version – that exists deep down. And even though I can usually stifle it, that version never completely goes away.

What worries me though, is if I am being disingenuous when communicating in a more vibrant way. I wondered if it was possible for my thoughts to be living in an environment like the Upside-Down from ‘Stranger Things’, but the presentation of my demeanor was more likely to be found in a field of flowers from a Cymbalta commercial. I thought about it for a long time while I threw items into my shopping cart, trying to determine which affect was more “me.”

And while I’ve been learning in therapy that everything doesn’t have to be “one or the other”, and I think it’s reasonable to support the idea that both versions of myself are a part of who I am as a whole, I would like to think that my sunnier disposition wins out, which is hopefully why it’s *still* the version my body defaults to when other options are available.

Or maybe that’s worse. Maybe hiding the darker version is what causes everything to crumble, because if the foundation isn’t stable, everything else on top of it will be more likely to crash.

Either way, this might potentially be an alarming post for some people to read, because I think it’s a little unusual for someone to vocalize these kinds of thoughts. But I think the most important thing is to stay tapped into them. I think being self-aware is the the ultimate practice of self-care, because by understanding how you feel and why, you will hopefully fine-tune the external factors that impact your internal existence.

So ask yourself: who are you today?

xoB