in progress (as is life)
i sometimes wonder whether my clumsiness is just a physical expression of a psychological fact: i am not very self-aware. yes, in the most basic sense i am, of course, self-aware. i am sentient; i am thinking therefore being. and on a deeper level i am overly self-aware — constant appraisal of future and past action or inaction. i obsess over myself (because i’m the world i know). however, on a further level, a different plane, i’m a stranger to myself. my friends will bring up some facial expression i make repeatedly or some odd, habitual pattern of speech, and it’s like looking in a mirror too long — i don’t see me in their words. there’s a chance i consistently pick friends who lie to me about me, but that seems unlikely, or, at the very least, another example of self-unawareness. and so i trip, stutter, as stub, while my flaws arrive like epiphanies from the mouths of people who don’t know me at all but know me better than i know myself.