Tracy and Tracy2

This post is going to be strange. I promise you that I have not developed another personality, but it might sound like I have. I'm perfectly aware that I am a complex human being with multiple layers, and that I have not birthed another being inside my head (besides the fact that I am one of those therapists that has mixed feelings about the actual presence of multiple personalities, or as we call it in the biz, dissociative identity disorder). That being said, I've been having the sensation recently that I am living in an alternate reality. It's the most bizarre thing. There's the Tracy we all know, the social worker, the social butterfly, the tall, crazy girl.

And then there's this alternate-Tracy. Tracy2, we'll call her. Tracy2 has directed a play for the last four months, and has dealt with such obscure details as lighting cues, promotional fonts, sound clip length, and bench-height decisions. Tracy2 has watched the same play come together from a series of short scenes into a full-length play, and has orchestrated the final overall play. Tracy2 made some tough decisions, and was not always nice and came dangerously close to crying many times. But managed to hold it together, in the end.

It is the most bizarre thing, to feel like you are truly living two different lives. It gives me a weird sense of other-ness. I don't really know when I'm Tracy and when I'm Tracy2. But Tracy cannot process thoughts related to Tracy2, for some reason. So if you compliment me or criticize me on the play while I am there, watching it with you, I will be able to absorb it as Tracy2. But if you have a compliment or a criticism and I am in my regular life, I find that it has very little weight. I am able to farm it out to Tracy2, and not let it affect me at all in my view of myself as a person. Mostly because it doesn't feel like I, personally, had anything to do with the play.

Seriously, it's the weirdest thing. So people have called me and said that they've liked the play or they've called to find out my feelings on finding out about someone else's negative view on the play, and I'm like, "Whatever." In a way, I guess it's a protective sense, that I'm protecting my creative side by not allowing comments to absorb into it willy-nilly. I think that it truly protects me from being a "wounded artist", from being overly-sensitive to whatever people say about the play. But it feels kind of bizarre to not really ruminate on them, to let them fall flat on the ground next to me. I'm glad that I'm able to write about it, because it's almost impossible for me to explain it to people. I received a phone call yesterday about a negative comment someone made about the play, and the person on the other end of the phone call found it incredulous that I honestly did not care, that I was not bothered by the comment at all. I understood the negative comment and was able to rationally see that person's point, while at the same time disagreeing with it in principle, and yet, it didn't ping on my emotional radar at all.

I've always been the kind of person that has been able to compartmentalize emotions, for good or for bad. I can shelve this horrible feeling for now, but there is always that chance that it will pop off the shelf at a most inopportune time later (I remember a particularly violent tantrum that I threw in high school over a TANK TOP that had been ruined in the wash. Suffice it to say that the emotion behind the tantrum was not related to a $10 piece of cotton fabric). It makes it easier to be a social worker (can turn off my own emotions when trying to help someone else process theirs), but it also enables me to dangerously dictate to myself what I will allow myself to feel in a certain situation. Like a switch, there goes that sadness and loneliness, popped off into the corner of my psyche somewhere to be dealt with another time. I wonder sometimes how much that makes me an actor in my own life, taking on another emotion, another personality to best fit the situation instead of sharing how I really feel, or allowing myself to be truly in the moment with my emotions. I think that we all do this, in a way, because, honestly, our world would be a mess if we allowed ourselves to operate completely on emotions all of the time, instead of reason peppered with emotion.

Even though I've always known that I, like all of you, have this ability to compartmentalize my emotions, at no point in my life have I been more acutely aware of this than I am right now. There is a part of me that is a director, that has directed, that created something huge. But I, while rationally being able to acknowledge that I have, in fact, done such a thing and have devoted large amounts of time, effort and passion into it (and have sacrificed my own personal health at great detriment!), have a hard time believing it. It's truly surreal. I've never known really what that word means, until now. I have directed a play and people are watching it, and liking it, and disliking it, and crying through it, and applauding at the end of it, and the picture of the play that was in my head 6 months ago is set up in front of me every Friday, Saturday and Sunday and acted out just like I imagined it. Yep. Surreal.