Personality

I recently made a disturbing connection.

a) For a very long time, I've known that I have something like an alternate personality. I hate sounding like a melodramatic teenager self-diagnosing his weirdness, but it's a mode that I slip into that feels distinctly separated from my normal personality, has its own motivations and goals, and regards my normal self like a different person.

b) I once really upset a dear friend of mine by having a mean, awful conversation with her late at night that I retained absolutely no memory of.

It took me a long time to realize it, but she was talking to that alternate personality. I was thinking about what she told me I had said and acted like, and it suddenly clicked. I went to sleep, then evidently woke up as that other person.

It was a small, strange relief to finally have an explanation for what happened that night, but also a small horror to realize that one of my worst fears had briefly come true. That other force in me, the one that wants everything destroyed, had actually taken complete control of me. I don't like knowing that that's possible.