A Case of Self-Dissonance

by Jay Jeriah

From the beginning, my favorite place to visit in the Neuroscape was the Asylum, a caged room where the other me’s and I go to fight one another. The caged room stands at some street corner where it’s always night, illuminated by the orange glow of a streetlamp and sometimes plagued by heavy rain.

When signing up to participate, the wait time to enter the cage typically lasts one to two weeks, depending on the number of me’s looking to take part. The longer the wait time, the more likely a me will resort to dirty or barbaric tactics while fighting, such as nut-punches, eye-gouges, finger-pulling and ear-yanking.

Last week. I fought the me who decided to wear a plain t-shirt to a co-worker’s funeral. Tonight, I fought the me who thought telling a joke about fresh cookies during 12th-grade English class would be funny. It was atypically ferocious. After I won, I stood over my fallen me while the crowd of other me’s rattled the cage mesh from outside, depraved savages cheering and yelling and waiting their turn.

By the time I entered the Diner, I felt drained and sore. TV screens hung on the walls playing comic-book YouTube videos, distracting the me cooking in front of the stove. I sat in a booth by myself, dining on smashburgers and Reese’s eggs. The other me’s paid me no mind, perhaps because I looked unapproachable in my battered state, although not on purpose.

Most of them connected tables together, discussing matters not serious enough for the Debate Hall, such as whether we’ll ever see another wrestler who induces as much palpitating emotion as Stone Cold Steve Austin, or the pros and cons of collecting Magic the Gathering cards. I enjoyed listening to all the banter while shamelessly gorging Reese’s products.

To end each of my evenings, I would typically walk over to the Nightlight Theatre and watch erotic fantasy films involving girls I’ve been in love with. Tonight, on my way there, I contemplated whether to enjoy either a Laylah movie or a Katherine one, but ultimately I settled for a film starring Genny.

Fantasies involving Genny have always been taboo, even in the privacy of the Neuroscape and, while on some evenings this pleasure is intoxicating thanks in no small part to its forbidden nature, on most occasions — this one included — I find sitting through such a film morally detestable. I decided to leave midway through the film. As I made my way to the exit, I noticed five other me’s scattered throughout the theatre room. They were fixated on the silver screen, trying to commit to memory her golden blonde ponytail, her ocean blue eyes, the smoothness of her skin, the nuances of her expressions. They are the ones who miss her the most.

There is no such thing as rest in the Neuroscape, at least not in my experience. At times when it makes sense to rest, the other me’s and I would fill up the Debate Hall and watch two of the me’s debate on an issue that concerns all of us. We are often swayed by a debate on how we behave in our daily lives, and how we behave greatly influences the me who exists beyond the Neuroscape.

This debate was no exception.

“First and foremost,” began the me in a collar shirt, “Chelsea is a co-worker. Moreover, we are her superiors. Any inappropriate relationship that develops between us will, in all likelihood, get us fired. Which means we’ll have no money and be forced to move back in with Ma, which, as we all know, would be a fate worse than death.”

“The personal details Chelsea has entrusted to us cannot be taken lightly,” said the me wearing a red hoodie. “Her troubled parents, her visits to therapy, her suicide attempts. These are things a person doesn’t reveal to just anyone. She clearly holds us in a high regard. Are we to abandon the role of confidant entrusted to us by this lovely young woman for the sake of our fragile egos? No. We should continue to remind her that we are there for her in case she needs us, even at the risk of a job we’ve despised for a decade. After all, we are altruists at our core.”

“Let me ask you all a question,” said the me in a collar shirt, addressing the packed Debate Hall audience directly. “Is Chelsea any different from Sarah? Is she any different from Macie? How many times are we going to simp over a girl with Daddy issues? Time after time we find ourselves in situations where we are friend-zoned before ultimately the girl finds us boring and ignores us completely. Or worse, she becomes infatuated with someone else and tells us every soul-crushing detail about it. We seem to have forgotten the bitterness that grows and blossoms within us because of lopsided associations such as this. We are too old to waste any of our energy on someone who does not love us.”

“If there is one thing we cannot forget,” continued the me in the red hoodie, “it’s that Chelsea has a perfect ass. Truly it is much too big for a girl as petite and softspoken as her. Its shape, even, is perfectly round; and, as we have established in previous debates, the most important detail of a booty is not its size but its shape. Yes, this is a shallow observation. No, it is not the best booty we have ever seen on a woman. But, as booty-lovers, we are drawn to Chelsea’s derriere like a magnet to steel. We can fight our regrets, but we cannot fight our nature.”

Debates take a considerable amount of time to conclude. Once they are completed and every detail of the subject matter has been exhausted, all of the me’s take a vote to determine which side of the argument has won. I voted to cease communication with Chelsea. The majority vote disagreed with me.

* * *

Each landmark of the Neuroscape is unique. The Asylum, Nightlight Theatre and Diner all stand upon concrete, surrounded by the night sky at various times. It is always midday when approaching the Debate Hall. The Room is the only place that cannot hold multiple me’s yet, somehow, each me has access to a Room of his own. It’s magic, in a way. In the Room there is black writing desk where a laptop and piles of junk mail sit, and to its left a window lets through a perpetual morning glow.

I was looking for the Room, traversing the Neuroscape pathways that resemble a retail store, complete with the Stonhard flooring and claustrophobic aisles stocked with deodorants and lotions and fruit snacks. The red shirts and jeans the other me’s and I always wear match the type of clothing one is expected to wear while employed at a retail store. There is an ever-present feeling of anxiety as I walk these paths, as if at any moment I will be stopped by a stranger who needs help finding bikes or baby formula.

I could not find the Room, and it fills me with dread how it’s somehow the one place I cannot always find when I want to. Countless times, I walked in circles, passing the pillow aisle then the party supply aisle then the make-up aisle then the toy aisle then the pillow aisle again. I walked past other me’s picking up merchandise off the floor and collecting products placed on the wrong shelves. Items should not be misplaced; only the other me’s and myself walk these floors. Yet the aisles seem to have minds of their own, mistreating their own products, taking advantage of our built-in impulse to be considerate to future shoppers, as irrational as that seems here.

I wanted to be somewhere peaceful. But I could not find peace. I guess that’s why I did not find the Room.

The other me’s and I sat shoulder to shoulder to watch the latest X-rated film starring Chelsea and her perfectly proportioned assets. Most of the me’s were quickly satisfied yet felt immense shame afterwards. Five minutes into the film, I realized how repulsed I am ogling someone who does not view me in the same light. So I left, followed by a handful of others.

For hours I waited my turn in the Asylum. Bout after bout, a me who has grown to loathe Chelsea exchanged blows with a me who was still infatuated with her. The fights were more gruesome than most, the surrounding crowd more bloodthirsty. My teeth were clenched, and my fists were balled. I bounced in place to release some pent-up energy. But the hours passed. The fights became less intense. By the time I entered the caged room, I knew my old vices wouldn’t satiate me. I fought because I was already locked in, although half-heartedly. The other me was more passionate and kicked my ass.

When I left the Asylum, I limped on without a destination. My right eye was swollen shut, my left arm throbbed in pain, and I couldn’t put much weight on my left foot. I limped on until I found myself somewhere unfamiliar, some dark corner of the Neuroscape that felt outside of it. The space had an indigo lighting, although I couldn’t tell where the light was coming from. The rest of the setting was pitch black.

Ten me’s occupied this space, some standing, some sitting, a couple pacing back and forth, all with their heads hanging low. Two more walked past me to join them. They were depressed, dejected, nihilistic. Happiness or anything resembling it was either not reserved for them or otherwise unearned and undeserving to them. They were right, or rather, they were right as long as I obeyed my simple pleasures. They were right while I stood with them, in this Dark Space.

But then they were not right anymore, when I started missing the light. Not artificial light that illuminated the other landmarks, but rather the soothing glow of the Room. I still wanted to sit in it.

* * *

“Today, I propose that we abolish the Asylum,” I said behind a podium, into a microphone, on the Debate Hall stage. “I hold similar feelings regarding the Nightlight Theatre and the menu of the Diner, yet it is the Asylum that damages us the most, physically and metaphorically.”

“And today I argue against this notion,” said another me, who wore a red button-down plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

I stared at the audience of roughly 500 me’s. They stood patiently, waiting to be swayed one way or the other, although I was convinced they’ve made up their minds before they even took their seats. There was a lump in my throat. I waited for it to go away.

“I understand,” I went on, “that we all love the Asylum, myself included. It feels good to release our aggression. The problem is, we’re releasing our aggression on each other, and how is that productive or even healthy? We are all the same person. We embrace different emotions, sure, but we’re the same, nonetheless. Hating each other is literally no different from hating ourselves.”

“‘Hating’ is certainly reaching,” said plaid me. “It is not as if we’re murdering each other. It’s just violence. We have been fascinated with violence all our lives. As children, we re-enacted pro wrestling moves with our brother. As teenagers we always imagined how we’d fare in a fight with the bigger school kids. Even now, well into adulthood, only time and money stand between us and kickboxing classes. We will always choose violence in our dreams, and that will not change until we are old, or crippled, or dead.”

“We are intelligent and creative,” I said. “Even at the peak of self-loathing we do not dispute this. We can find alternative ways to exercise our violent needs. But we cannot continue to enact violence upon ourselves. We have all traversed the Neurospace. We know there are versions of us that are particularly perverted, or needy, or wasteful, or even callous. They are our equals. They are as essential to the man who represents us outside the Neurospace as we are.

“Punching and kicking and biting them until they bleed all over the concrete does not make them disappear. We could not kill them even if we wanted to. The Asylum would be less serious a topic if we simply fought for sport. But when have any of us entered the Asylum just for ‘sport’? We enter with all our hatred for one another — and no, that is not an exaggeration — hatred that is unearned and undeserving. We. Must. Do. Better.”

“Okay,” said plaid me. “I will concede on the point of us hating one another. However, we are human, after all. We are prone to self-hatred as much as is any other human alive. I’ll admit it: I hate the me’s who are obsessed with Magic the Gathering. I hate the me’s who can’t get enough of Reese’s eggs. I can’t pretend like those feelings aren’t there.

“If we all ignored the aspects of ourselves we dislike, well, for one, we’d go absolutely insane. For two, we’d never let them know that we want them to change, at least we would not let them know as effectively as we do now. Self-hatred is the secret ingredient for the changes we want to see.”

“Self-hatred does not breed change,” I said. “Self-hatred breeds more self-hatred. We push our vices, they push back. As corny as this may sound, we must love instead of hate. We must love ourselves, which is the same as loving each other. Instead of an Asylum, I propose we erect a writing center, a place to write and gain inspiration for writing. Through the act of writing, whether by fictional storytelling or by journaling, we will embrace our vices as part of us, as valued members of our community. By doing so, they will change on their own, for the love of the community we all share.”

* * *

“I love them so much that I wouldn’t dare share them with anyone, not even if my life depended on it; I have already lived a long life, after all. Well, let us say that one of the cashews came to life and claimed that she was my long, lost daughter? I’ve always wanted a child, but it was never meant to be. So could you imagine how I’d feel if a daughter came into my life like a miracle? I would cry tears of joy. But my daughter would still be a honey-roasted cashew. So, I would eat her. It is in my nature to eat cashews, just as it is in the nature of wolves to each everyone else. We cannot fault nature for eating those who want to be loved, only accept it.”

Mr. Bear was taken aback by the odd analogy. But when he went to ask a follow-up question, Mr. Squirrel had already fallen asleep on the rocking chair.

I stopped writing. Even now I don’t know how I should wrap up this story. Even though no one will ever read it, and I have no deadline to write it, I still want to do my best.

I cannot feel the warmth of the sun as it lights up my Room — perhaps because there is no literal sun in the Neuroscape — yet to sit in its glow still feels... forgiving.

I left my Room to take a walk and give my brain a break. I strolled carelessly across the Stonhard floors, greeting other me’s as I past. We picked up discarded merchandises whenever we spotted them, not worrying about why they keep falling. It’s an issue, sure, but we felt too relaxed to care.

More of us found our individual Rooms. There isn’t much to these rooms. There is a TV with a PS5 plugged into it, but we rarely turn them on. There is an unkempt bed with clothes scattered on top, and next to it is a little bookshelf filled with novels waiting to be read.

We spend most of our time in our Rooms sitting by the window, in front of a black desk that props up the laptop we use to write stories for the sake of writing. Every one of us, without exception, thinks it is weird how satisfied we get after typing a bunch of words on a word-processor document.

I walked past the Debate Hall, which is empty and has been used less frequently in recent weeks. Perhaps all of our writing has led to less indecisiveness as to what we want and how we should act. Such changes have not, however, reached the Nightlight Theatre or the Diner. And the Dark Space is still an entity all its own.

The Asylum is still there. I lost that debate. Ultimately, we concluded that as long as we exist, there is the chance of strife amongst ourselves and thus the need to fight it out when words won’t do. The Asylum was empty for the first time in a long time, save the two locked in the cage: the me who hates loneliness and the me who sees loneliness as an inevitability. The latter was on his knees, his face pressed so firmly against the mesh that it might have squeezed through the holes like Play-Doh. He makes eye contact with me, in full acceptance of his pain.