Alter ego

Many times we feel alone in the world. And many times we truly are. It is not only a feeling. It is a reality. A reality that prevents us from realising that it cannot possibly be true. It isn’t, because our alter ego, our inner self, is always there to accompany us, to complete us, and to show us that loneliness is only an emotion, not an absolute truth. Sometimes it is enough to notice how a thought answers us from within, as if someone —another part of ourselves— had been patiently waiting for us to stop making noise so it could finally speak. That other self is not a shadow, nor an invention born of nostalgia. It is a discreet presence, almost shy, which only reveals itself when we stop listening to the clamour outside and allow ourselves to hear that inner voice that gently guides us.
This piece attempts to link our “two selves”, the conscious and the complete —the ego and the alter ego— to show that the emptiness we sometimes feel is nothing more than a lack of communication. That we need only a little silence for them to join hands and walk together. Because when silence dissolves the noise, that presence appears: the complete self. The one who acts outwardly while observing from within. The one who knows what we think before we think it. The one who contradicts us softly, corrects us with a touch of irony, and embraces us with words we do not remember writing. And then the inevitable happens: the “two selves” meet. One, character. The other, author. One, actor. The other, spectator. Both real, both fictional, both necessary. They do not recognise each other at first. They look at one another like two strangers who suspect they have shared the same thought. But a single gesture, a phrase, a memory that belongs to neither and belongs to both, is enough for them to understand that they have spent their whole lives speaking to each other without listening.
This prologue is the doorway. What follows is the dialogue. And perhaps, if we are fortunate, the reconciliation as well. Because in the end, loneliness is nothing more than a misunderstanding between our two voices. And this book —this experiment, this bridge, this mirror— exists so that they may finally speak to each other without fear.