Somebody Else

Jan Mankes

Somebody Else

If I was not myself, I would be somebody else.

But actually I am somebody else.

I have been somebody else all my life.

It’s no laughing matter going about the place

all the time being somebody else:

people mistake you; you mistake yourself

Jackie Kay

“I have been somebody else all my life.” At first this poem sounds like clever talk in a light tone, easily read and dismissed. If it weren't something I think about a lot anyway, I might have smiled and turned the page. But it so happens that curiosity about what it would be like to be someone else, or the question of what a particular individual is made of, is universal. We all wonder. Rimbaud's poem from "Childhood" shows different characters, as if we slip from one role to another, depending on our circumstances. Derek Mahon in "Heraclitus on Rivers" questions whether we can even think of ourselves the same being that initially came into the world, considering how many times our cells have died and renewed themselves, and that our physical bodies are constantly changing. "You are no longer you." he says. May Sarton ("I Now Become Myself"), writes of being as a ongoing "gathering" rather than losing or moving. "All fuses now, falls into place." Jackie Kay's "Somebody Else" makes a lot of sense to me. Aren't we all strangers to ourselves? The people we think we are (if we think about it at all), may look very different from the outside, to others. And what about those moments when, looking in the mirror, we see someone we've never seen before? No, I do not know myself. It turns out, all this time, I've been somebody else.