Shadow Self

There is a world beyond that of the third dimension, or perhaps before it? Behind it?

Regardless of where exactly this world lies on the dimensional planes, know it is there. Know that we are there; the shadow selves.

We are known to you as shadows, simple silhouettes cast by the light, but we are so much more than that. We shadow selves are sentient beings. We exist because of you, our Others — tethered to you from the moment you are introduced to the light and cast your first shadow. I don’t know why we exist, only that we do. I suppose it is possible we are you in some sense. That we are vague fractals of you Others cast over dimensions. Though, now that I’m thinking about it, if this is the case then maybe we are your Others and not the other way around.

Forgive me for getting caught up in the shadow semantics of it all, before now I hadn’t given much thought to the how, why, or who. Existentialism isn’t my cup of tea. At least it wasn’t until I started to worry after my Other.

You see, there is something wrong with her — the me that is not me. Not wrong in the sense that one might say “She’s an odd duck, that one.” but instead that something is changing her.

Our summer months had been filled with dancing. She would laugh and sing. I would follow along, happy to bask in the glow of her radiant joy. We would end those days strolling beneath the dying rays of the sun. She would soak up the last of the golden light, admiring whorls of blushing cloud, and I would get to stretch out against the sun-warmed pavement. We would walk at ease. Shoulders pulled back, our heads held high, we would take our time.

Sometimes we would even skip. When we did, for the brief moments that she was airborne, it was just me — untethered. That feeling of separation, while a little scary, had been exhilarating.

Lately though, our sunset strolls are less frequent, the pavement less than warm. When we walk, our shoulders are hunched and our heads hang as if the thoughts that plague her are too dense to hold them upright. Since the colder months have befallen us, our pace is no longer leisurely, but hurried. We shuffle swiftly across the frosted ground and it has been a while since we last skipped.

We spend more time in her room now, curled up in darkness, hours passing us by. She seems to merge with the yawning black while I become shapeless and incorporeal. It’s hard to tell where I stop and start and where she starts and stops.

In those hours we are paradoxically more connected and more separated than ever; cocooned in a void with no beginnings or ends. When we are nestled in blanket and shadow I don’t really exist, not in the same way — not as the me that is her Other.

The face I am used to seeing stretched into a smile has grown somber. It is a rarity nowadays to see one light her up from within. It breaks my heart — or it would, if I had one — to see her this way. Instead of smiling, she cries and I pantomime her shaking shoulders as she shrinks into herself. We continue to curl in on ourselves, more and more with each passing day.

I don’t understand what triggered this change, I couldn’t tell you why we don’t dance anymore. I can’t explain the lack of skipping either, I fail to fathom why she would want to deprive us of that heady weightlessness and fleeting freedom.

Then again, I am just a two-dimensional being with a two-dimensional grasp on feeling. What do I know?

Despite knowing very little about what plagues her and why I wish there was something I could do to help. That there was something I could do to lessen her burden so that I might see that smile again in all of its eye-crinkling glory. I wish that I could lift some of the weight from her ever rounding shoulders so that we might again soar — even momentarily — over the pavement.

Condemned to this two-dimensional world of grey and black doesn’t leave me with many options though, so I do what I can.

Before she turns off the light and we disappear into that darkness, I curl tightly around her in a semblance of a hug. With tendrils of shadow tucked around her ear I whisper to her that she is not alone, that I am here with her, but I worry that she doesn’t hear or register my attempts at comfort. I worry that maybe she associates me with that dreaded torpefying darkness.

I worry.

You might wonder why I am so concerned, you may even ask yourself; “Why does a shadow care?” I care because to me she is everything. She is the bright light to which I owe my existence.

My world is monochromatic; smudges of charcoal on a plane severely lacking. I am hazy and flat, a shadow puppet. But she, my puppeteer — she is dynamic. Vibrant. Well, she was those things.

It is through her that I glimpsed a world painted in rich hues of glorious colour. Once, I might have said that her world was overwhelming but I have since grown accustomed to it, grown to crave it. For it is through her that I get to live.

Got to live, I should say, we don’t do much living anymore. It’s as if we have been put on pause while the world is leeched of colour and grows colder around us. These shorter winter days seem to siphon the light from her and lately, she is almost as much of a shadow as I am.

This leads me to wonder… Can shadows have shadow selves?

I worry that the longer we spend in darkness, a nebulous mass of umbra with no me defined by an outline of her, that I might cease to exist. That colour might be lost to me forever.

Perhaps that makes me selfish, to fret for her because it intrinsically affects me, but I ask that you consider my selfishness in a light of self-preservation. We shadow selves are aware that you Others exist within the darkness, that you do not need us as we need you. Your physical bodies keep your essences contained in a way that ours do not. That darkness is something we, the intangible, fear. We lose ourselves in the all-consuming of its pitch black, bleed into it until we are no longer shadow selves — just shadow.

In recent days, it is more often than not that I am just shadow. No self to be found.

I think…

What do I think?

I can feel my edges fraying and unravelling in the dark - when there is a voice. It is jarring, this voice, and the shock of intelligible sound is enough to pull the scattered bits of my consciousness back together.

You might think that odd, but my existence has been one of near silence. It is as if the sounds of her world are muffled behind a pane of thick glass, but this sound, this voice, is loud and clear as a bell. It emanates from within the me that is fraying and diffusing. “I need help.” The words are choppy and puckered as if they taste bitter.

Then there is a light.

With that light, we are suddenly ripped from the cloying embrace of inky black, swathed in brightness. Edges defined; I am whole once more. “I need help.” She repeats as we emerge from our chrysalis of tangled sheets and the words reverberate through my being. I am whole. I can hear her. She is moving, and I am moving too.

Our steps are still heavy, our shoulders still cave in, but there is a determined tilt to our jaws. We are moving, on pause no longer, through the sleepy blue light of a winter morning. It’s no summer sunset, but I’ll take any swatch of colour I can.

I had forgotten how nice it feels to stretch my shadowy limbs, forgotten what it was to be tethered to her. I have missed this.

Our steps slow to a stop as we arrive at the entrance of an unfamiliar building. There is a noticeable hesitation in the way our hands reach out for the handle. We stand there for a moment, our outstretched fingers trembling a breath away from the cold bronze.

Why is there dread written across the sallow pages of her face? What is this place?

We open our respective doors, passing through into a hallway of plush green carpet. We walk through more hallways of beautiful green before stopping at another door. We knock on this one.

A woman and her Shadow answer the door. The woman greets us warmly with a soft smile before beckoning us into a room painted in tranquil blues.

We sit across from them on a couch and I hold onto my Other tight, curving around her. Even though sunshine drenches the room, I fear if I loosen my grip that the darkness may come to tear me away from her again.

The woman holds a pad of paper, scrawling on it as my Other talks. Sound has returned to it’s usual muffled incoherence but I know she and the woman discuss the darkness. Her chin dips slightly as her lips give shape to words that I cannot hear — the light in her eyes sputtering.

If I had breath to hold, my lungs would be full and aching as I wait for her to unravel in rivulets of tears and for our shoulders to curl inwards. They would be near bursting as I wait for the darkness to pounce — but the darkness does not come. My Other cries, yes, but it is not the same as before. These tears do not drown or consume her; they seem to offer her reprieve. Our shoulders still shake but with each word passed between the woman and my Other, they straighten.

After more indistinct discussion, they extend their hands and we reach out to grasp them. Though I cannot feel the warmth of their hands in ours, I imagine it is akin to the warmth in the woman’s eyes. It is a comfort I will not soon forget. To my surprise, when we pull away there is a tentative smile etched on the lips of my Other.

We exit the room, back into the hallways of rich green, but I barely notice the colours; all of my attention is rapt on her face, on the smile still embossed on her lips. While it is not the smile I am used to, a sort of giddiness pulsates through me at its appearance. We open the door, stepping back into the cold.

I notice the slight bounce to our steps and wonder what the woman must’ve said to my Other during their time together for she is still smiling and our feet no longer drag along the ground. I don’t know if I am ready to skip quite yet — I have already spent too much time separated from my Other. For now, I am content just to see her smile.

The sky behind her is blue and endless, unmarred by cloud, as we walk home after our visit with the woman.

I am caught up in considering the different shades of blue and if I have a favourite when the unfamiliar scenery registers. We have taken a different route home and are marching through ankle-deep snow in a slumbering forest.

We walk for a while, sometimes reaching out to brush our hands against a nearby tree, before we settle into the snow.

She stares up at the treetops, eyes pensive as they rove over the naked branches interlaced above us. Though we are connected, her mind is hers and hers alone. I am not privy to her thoughts but I wonder if she too is contemplating whether the trees ever tire from holding up the weight of the sky — the world.

I marvel up at her placid features, the brightness of her eyes as she absorbs every detail of the soft winter day. Knowing that her joy is not as permanent as it once was, I will treasure moments like these. I hope we take this route home more often.

She perks up; gaze catching on something in the tree boughs. “They don’t usually come out during the day.” The words are whispered around a soft quirk of her lips, but they peal through me all the same — I am still unused to the full resonance of sound.

In the trees, barely discernible from the brown bark and white snow caught in its grooves sits a barn owl. Its gentle heart-shaped face cocked as it considers us considering it. With a flare of tawny wings, a screech erupts from its hooked beak. My Other beams up at the owl as its shrill cry booms around us. When the forest is quiet once more, the plumage of its white chest fluffs up before it settles back into its perch.

She is still smiling up at the bird when she speaks next, “I heard somewhere that the barn owl is a symbol of power and wisdom. That to see one is a sign — a reminder — to rally your innate strength to overcome adversity.” Her smile falters and her lashes flutter before she drops her gaze to where our hands rest by her side. She flexes her hand and I flex mine, an ink splotch on a canvas of white snow.

Our fingers skate over the glistening powder, but we do not touch. Her gaze flicks to me and — to me? She is not looking beyond me but at me.

In the past, when her gaze would land on something behind me, I would pretend that she was seeing me instead of looking through me. I would imagine her eyes alight with recognition, rather than unfocused apathy, as if she were gazing at an old friend. This time though, I do not need to pretend.

The excitement I feel at this realization is short-lived when I notice how she is looking at me. There is recognition there, but her eyes are sad and wistful, her mouth pressed into a thin line. The fact that she gazes at me with such sadness makes a small part of me wish I were dissolving into nothingness again instead of holding her gaze. The look of familiarity that I have craved for so long is not quite how I imagined it to be.

“I hated you.” I take that back — all of me wishes I were dissolving into nothingness. A crack echoes through me at her words and I wonder if I do have a heart after all. I wonder if it is breaking.

She blinks down at me as her voice continues to fill the empty woods. “For so long, I hated you.” “Why?” I ask wordlessly, though I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer. “You were a reminder that I wasn’t who I wanted to be.” Our shoulders deflate as she sighs.

“I was a happy kid,” a bitter smile tugs at the corners of her mouth, “always smiling-,” “I know, I remember.” “a little ray of sunshine.” She presses on, the bitter smile twitching downwards, “Until I wasn’t.” My Other picks at her finger, already ravaged and raw around the edges.

“I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when things started to change — when I started to change, but when my sunshine became overcast; the people in my life started to look at me differently. Instead of gazing upon me reverently, instead of praising me, their eyes would glaze over with pity and disappointment.” The last word curls at her lip. “They started to say ‘used to’ a lot. Reminding me that I used to be so happy, used to be a ray of sunshine.” My Other huffs a laugh. “It hurt because I was all too aware of everything I used to be and didn’t know how to be her again.” She drags her hands over her face, “And I was ashamed that I no longer matched up with the me they used to know.” Her voice is muffled as she scrubs at her eyes to wipe away a fresh bought of unshed tears.

She leans forward and I pull away, shame spasming through me, because like those people aforementioned — I too had compared her to the person she once was. I had mourned the her that sang, danced, and skipped unabashedly. I only began to wonder after her well-being and the state of her internal world because it started to affect me. Selfish, I know. “Why did you change?”

“I’m not sure why, but it felt like I was eroding to time and circumstance; bits and pieces of me rearranging into sharp points and rusted edges. Sunshine no longer, I became an amalgamation of stormy feelings that were too colossal, too ferocious for the sunshine shaped box that was designed for me.”

Her eyes glisten as she turns her attention back to me. “It sounds silly, I know people change and I’m not exempt from that, but I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed over the person I had become. I felt — still feel — like a puzzle with missing pieces.” She gnaws on her thumbnail for a moment, eyebrows furrowing. “Eventually, after desperately trying to make the puzzle fit together every which way, I started to understand why others looked at me the way they did, why they started treating me as if I were a fragile, broken thing.”

I flit through my memories, catalogues of colour I have hoarded over the years. I pause on the ones of her friends and family. At the time I had been entranced by the colour of a sun-soaked leaf or by a dazzling flower bowing in the wind. I hadn’t noticed how we had flinched away from their gentle touches and loaded gazes.

She drops her hand to hover over the snow once more, our fingers nearly brushing against each other. “I tried,” a muscle flutters in her jaw. “I tried to shove myself back into that fucking box but… it wasn’t big enough.”

“People don’t belong in boxes.” She flashes a ghost of a smile that lessens the tension in her jaw. “I’m starting to see that now, thanks to the Good Doctor,” she nods her head towards our footprints — in the direction of the woman we had met. “and thanks to you.”

We sit in silence for a moment, I am too stunned by her words to answer. Before I can formulate a coherent response she sighs. “I didn’t always see it that way though. So I crafted a mask — a persona of the used-to-be-me — to put people at ease so they didn’t have to deal with the dissatisfaction of knowing I wasn’t who they thought I was.” Her lips press together again, one of the corners tugging downwards. “Looking back on it now, I don’t think that mask was solely for them.” She looks so forlorn that I wish I could reach out to take her hand — to offer her some comfort. “I think I was in denial about who I was and thought that if I could fake it for long enough — I might become that ray of sunshine again.” She brushes her hand along the side of her face, and for a heartbeat my shadowy fingers trail over the skin of her cheek. “But like the box, I outgrew the mask; it cracked, and I couldn’t pretend anymore.”

“You-,” she swallows and touches the tip of a bitten finger softly to mine on the snow. “you served as a reminder of all the things I was trying to pretend I wasn’t. Looking at you, my shadow self, was like looking in a mirror and seeing the darkness leaking from the cracks in the mask.” She looks back to the owl, still sitting solemnly in the branches, as if for encouragement before continuing, “I blamed you for all of it, and tried to hide from you — from the dark me I saw in your outline.”

The owl stretches its wings wide. “You were too much for me to face. The true me — composed of sharp points, rusted edges, and ill-fitting puzzle pieces — was too much for me to face. My final act of denial had been to sequester us in darkness, where I didn’t have to look at you and be reminded of the me I was avoiding.”

I don’t know what to say to this. All this time, I had been trailing after her with a hunger for colour, trying to glean pieces of her life so that I might live in that world vicariously through her. Meanwhile, she had been trying to run from me and my biggest worry had been realized; she had in fact associated me with that dreaded suffocating darkness. “I’m sorry.” My apology falls flat in comparison to how I feel, but I don’t think words could appropriately embody the depth of my guilt.

“You shouldn’t be.” She says it with a puff of laughter. I don’t understand why she’s laughing. “It isn’t funny.” She sobers a little, but there is still mirth in her eyes. “I know. It just surprised me to hear you apologizing is all. You have nothing to be sorry for.” She brushes her hand along my outline. “I heard your voice when we were in the darkness. I heard you comforting me, telling me I wasn’t alone. Those words pulled me out of the shadows,” I try to keep myself from reliving those moments. Those comforts had been as much for me as they had been for my Other. “and for your help — your unconditional support and acceptance — I am thankful.” Her eyes crinkle as she grins down at me and if I had lungs I don’t think they would be able to draw breath at the sight of that smile. “I said I hated you, but maybe ‘didn’t know how to love you’ is a better way to put it.”

The sun shines down on the snow, “I’m the one who should be sorry, for trying to punish you.” prisms of light sparkle around us. “Facing you made me uncomfortable. The reality of you — us —,” she stumbles over the words, “me. You are the most basic reflection of me and it was too raw and disconcerting.” We shake our heads slightly, “I still don’t know how to love you properly, but I’m trying. I’ll continue to try as hard as I tried to fit myself into that sunshine shaped box,” A single tear leaks from a crinkled eye, “because you are not at fault for being me. I am not at fault for being me.” Branches above us clatter together as the barn owl takes flight into the cloudless blue sky.

She lays back in the snow and we watch as the owl flies away. I curl around her as laughter puffs up towards its wings. She is the sole splatter of colour in a world of white — I watch as she cries and her colours run. “I’m sorry,” My Other’s voice is thick but she is still smiling. “I’m so sorry.” “It’s okay.”

We stay like that for a bit, curled around each other, until the sky changes from blue to pink and orange, the sun sidling towards the horizon. Only then do we push ourselves up and begin to walk towards the distant glow of the sunset.

We are known to you as shadows, simple silhouettes cast by the light, but we are so much more than that. We are you, and you are we. Two halves spread across dimensional planes. I still don’t know why we Shadow Selves exist, but maybe we are here to help you accept your most authentic self.

You are the light and we the dark, neither can exist without the other. Together we are whole.