An Analysis of the Intrapersonal Persona

By Asche Keegan

“Tell me, I beg of you. Is it too late to find myself?”

I turn to the specter, solidifying before me even as we speak. Her red hair falls limply behind her shoulders, and I wonder how long it has been since she bathed. Deigning the sight not worth my time, I turn my back and stride away.

“Please!” she cries. “I want to discover who I am. I want to fix all the things that are wrong with me and build a world that is better for everyone that comes across it. I want to change the world, but I can’t like this. I’ve got so many things wrong with me…” Her voice cracks.

I pause and steal another look, and I find her on her knees behind me, hands clasped. Her head almost touches the ground, and her shoulders shake with silent sobs.

“You have too many things wrong with you for that,” I tell the girl. “You think you’ll be something great one day? Right now, you are nothing, just a spineless piece of filth who desperately needs a shower. You think you’re smart? You haven’t met smart people. You think you’re pretty? I don’t even have to show you why you're wrong with that.”

She continues to sob, but not an ounce of compassion stirs my soul. “I came to you for help,” she says. “Will you truly deny it to me?”

“Yes.”

“You are a wicked person.”

“Playground insults mean nothing to me.”

She shakes her head and pulls herself to her feet. “You can not feel. You’re a narcissist incapable of recognizing that someone else might be at the center of attention. You’re a rotting ball of greed and anger and cold pathological logic. You are emotionless, and you don’t even deserve to be called human. The forces that drive you are envy and the judgement of others. How you can be so foolish is beyond me.”

The words hit a nerve, I must admit, but I refuse to allow her the victory of seeing me hurt. “And your point is?”

She chokes back another sob of hate and sorrow then rushes at me, hands grasped to tackle me to the ground.

Easily, I swat her attack aside and seize her neck, lifting her up to my eye level. She writhes and croaks, the pathetic thing, and I contemplate how easy it would be to kill this small voice that does nothing but beg for things and condemn me. Yet, an unwelcome part of me protests the act of violence and I toss her aside instead.

“How dare you attack me,” I say.

“I—hate you,” she says, the vehemence in her voice fiercer than any I’ve ever heard.

“It looks like you have a bit of spine in you after all,” I say. Turning back, I stride away—to where I do not know. I only peer behind me once more to ensure that she has evaporated just as she came. 

Summoning a rock to support my weight, I sit exhausted against it. In this moment of rest, the insults come flooding back, the attacks, the cruelty of what was said.

The last time I had been called a narcissist I was weak, and she had been the one to take control. As the memories replayed again and again, I shoved them away, refusing to acknowledge that once she had been strong, and I had been the vagrant pushed to the side. Once more she dredged up the insults that hurt the most, for only she could have known the pain her words could cause.

Pathological, I can understand, and though what heart is left in me yearns to unfurl itself within my chest, I refuse to allow it. Emotions make me weak, and empathy is a tool for pawns. I wonder what the others would think if they saw me here, and I almost choke as her condescending words come back to me. "The forces that drive you are envy and the judgement of others."

I can not focus on these thoughts now or they will be the death of me, I realize.

Limp red hair falls around me as I lean back on the stone, and I contemplate how foolish one must be to destroy themselves from the inside out.