Psychologically, every person has different personalities inside of them. One side is nice and respectful, the other, rude and easily irritated. I even have Shalaylay, who is my alter ego. However, there is another person in me as well. She’s inside of me full time. You would never know that she’s there either. She only makes her appearance known when I’m sitting on my bed, or at a computer trying to write stories, or doing my homework. She’s a little critical creature who criticizes everything I write about. Whether it is out of enjoyment or to assist me, I don’t know. But I do know that she can get really annoying sometimes, especially when I’m halfway through a 7 page essay and I have to start over.
Jasmeena, as I call her is straightforward and blunt. I can just imagine her watching mischievously out of my eyes as I continually scratch out sentences and write new ones, over and over again. Every time I throw out a paper, I can imagine her throwing back her dark brown hair and doing that squinty thing with her almond shaped black eyes like me when she begins to laugh, with her skinny hands holding her stomach. It takes a few minutes for her to settle back down, which would explain why after I start over, I’m good for a while. Then, when she is finally in control of herself, she goes back to watching my hands scribble down words, and as soon as she reads something she doesn’t like, she makes my hands scratch it out.
Jasmeena is a cold, heartless, impatient, perfectionist who likes things to be her way. If something doesn’t sound right to her the first time, then it isn’t right at all. She doesn’t even go back to reread it. Then she starts her laughing fit again and clasps her stomach in pain and wipes the tears from her eyes. Her joy brings me pain. I know what I wrote was good. It just wasn’t good enough. Jasmeena is the reason I don’t try to write about deep thoughts. To her, they wouldn’t be deep enough. I can easily get away with writings with humor, satire, irony, tragedy, and such, but when it comes to writing analytically, forget it, it’ll take me 5 hours to write one sentence.
But Jasmeena doesn’t just do this to me. During Creative Writing Class, when we have to exchange papers, Jasmeena always has something to say about someone else’s paper. I am good at controlling exactly what notes I write, but Jasmeena always has an influence over me. I just make sure I don’t write anything too rude as Jasmeena normally would have written. I can sometimes do this at home also, control what I write and not let Jasmeena take over. However, for some reason, at my house, Jasmeena has more power over me. I believe it has something to do with being in familiar territory.
Even though she’s this nuisance of a person, when I think about it, she has helped me. She makes sure that I never hand in any work that is less than acceptable. She makes sure I don’t make a complete fool of myself. (Notice I said ‘complete’ fool. Jasmeena enjoys laughing at my absurdity, so she’s not going to try to make me entirely perfect). She also makes sure to point out some of my faults that can be improved. But she doesn’t turn me into a grammar correcting robot. Jasmeena lets me be myself, just a somewhat better version of myself. Even if she tried to turn me into a robot, I wouldn’t let that happen. I am in charge of myself. Not her. I run this show. Jasmeena is just my stage manager, and her job is to make sure everything is ready to go. I’m the director, the lead actress and the screenwriter. She knows that too. That’s why she’s the other me, in me, and stays in there full time.