The REAL Me

In response to my last post, I had a comment from my REAL son protesting that my blog was too revealing. MY blog? OMG! Don’t tell me I’m the Rummel behind Rummel’s Incredible Stories. You see, all my life I’ve been trying to answer the great existential question: Who am I? I thought I had the REAL me pinned down as a super-cool, super-attractive, super-intelligent being. In other words, the best. Then I turned 19, read Derrida, and got all confused. It turns out everything is relative. Bummer! Canada is to blame as well. I came here and couldn’t understand a word. They all spoke English, can you believe it? So I discovered the new REAL me: dumb, and the addressee of many rejection letters. The phrase WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU came to sum up my existence. Then I had children, which ended every woman’s search for herself in those days. I was handed multiple personalities: the devoted wife, the caring mother, the engaged professional. And that was just from 6 am to midnight. The rest of the time I was the teeth-grinding monster. So, I had a surfeit of personalities for a while and didn’t look further afield. When I could breathe again, it was the age of reality shows. That’s how long it took TV to catch on to my way of life: the woman who is on stage all the time. Judging by the applause meter, I was best in the role of engaged professional. So maybe it was a mistake to give up my profession and go looking for my REAL self again. But you know what? I think I’ve missed the age of the REAL self. We are into the VIRTUAL self now. So, maybe I’m Rummel. Or Siri. Or the author of PLAYING NAOMI, a novel about an actress who impersonates an author. But in the spring I have another novel coming out, HEAD GAMES, about a woman who replaces missing persons, filling the empty spots in other people’s minds. Maybe that’s me. Does anyone out there have empty spots they would like me to fill? I’m desperately looking for the VIRTUAL me.