Duality.

It almost seems hard to describe when I no longer feel like I have a dual self, a dual world. 

Duality used to feel normal, safe. One life here, one life there. Safe here, safe there. Or so I thought. 

From a young age, my world was split. I immigrated to the US from Ukraine with my parents when I was 4 years old. I don’t remember much of the transition. I do remember starting school and sitting in the back of the room trying to figure out what was happening. I didn’t know English when we moved and had to quickly learn to adapt. From that point on, my world was split. I had a home life that was completely different than my school life, my friend life. At home I spoke Russian, ate foods that were foreign to my friends, traditions were completely different. As I grew up my parents tried to do their best to assimilate, but they were in their forties, having spent all their life in Ukraine and their world would forever be a different one. 

This split in my physical world also created a split within my internal self. All of us have different parts of ourselves. For me, certain parts were shown to my parents and some were hidden from them, and vice versa with my friends and those outside my family. The parts hidden from my parents were ones that I didn’t think they’d understand or approve of. The parts hidden from my friends were parts I didn’t think they’d understand either or those that I was embarrassed about because of my culture. This inherently created two internal worlds. 

I also now realize that I created a part of myself that I shared with no one. That was probably the most dangerous part. I felt misunderstood at home and outside of my home making me feel unsafe in both worlds. I couldn’t explore my feelings with my parents because feelings weren’t expressed or shared in my culture, especially ones such as fear, sadness, or loneliness because that would show weakness. A brave face was the best face to put on while every other feeling was quietly shoved inside. At some point, I no longer knew what these feelings were, how to talk about them, how to sort through them, how to sit with them, how to do anything but keep them locked up inside. I didn’t share them with the outside world either because not only did I not know how, I was also scared to share them. What if they made me feel like more of an outsider than I already felt? I didn’t know which feelings were “right” and which were “wrong”. So I built a world within myself where I kept all these confusing, tough, scary feelings. 

This world within myself created was dual purposed also. I often felt squashed by my parents. They had the best intentions, pushing me relentlessly to succeed academically, but it left me feeling like I was drowning. And therefore, I had a world within me that I could escape to, where I could store all my feelings, thoughts, fantasies, shared with only me. It was my magical, internal world where no one could reach in and judge me, yell at me, tell me what to do. It was my coping mechanism. It was how I got through my childhood. It was how I made sense of this dual world in which I felt like I couldn’t fully be a part of anywhere except inside of me. 

In adulthood, this dual world turned into school vs home and eventually work vs home. I didn’t know how to operate any differently. This was my comfort zone. One life here, one life there, and of course my “safe” internal world. I very roughly came to learn that all these worlds were an illusion of safety. When everything came falling down, I was left looking at my internal world. That one with all those confusing, scary, foreign feelings. All the worlds came crashing into one another so fast, forcing me to try to pick up the pieces. 

I remember starting therapy, feeling like a young child, trying to find the words to how I felt. It had been so long since I tried putting words to feelings that I didn’t even have vocabulary for them. I realized that I felt like a young child because I lost that vocabulary at a young age and truly, I didn’t ever learn that vocabulary, so it only made sense that I felt like I was a young child learning an entire new language. Once I started to learn this emotional language, it was time to share it with the people closet to me who had only gotten glimpses into my internal world. Showing that internal world is terrifying. What if they rejected my feelings? What if they didn’t understand these feelings I am only beginning to understand? 

These questions still pop into my head from time to time before I communicate my feelings. Less so every time I share my feelings, and I don’t get rejected or even better yet, realize that my feelings are understood. I no longer feel the need to have dual worlds, secret internal worlds. My internal world, with all its pieces, finally feels whole and feeling whole is the one thing that feels safe – truly safe. For when you are internally whole, internally integrated, life seems truly boundless.

-Yuliya Wolf