The shadow self

There’s something peculiar about shadows that I never noticed until that Tuesday afternoon in September. I was sitting at my usual coffee shop, the one where the barista always remembers to make my americano with exactly three ice cubes, when I saw it behaving strangely.

The simple shadow of a beach tree on my garage wall.

My shadow wasn’t following my movements anymore. When I lifted my cup, it kept its arms firmly planted on the table. When I turned my head to look at the clock on the wall, it continued staring straight ahead. It was subtle at first, like the way you might notice a photograph hanging slightly crooked on a wall but convince yourself it’s just your imagination.

The thing about shadows is that they’re honest in a way we can never be. They don’t pretend to smile when they’re sad. They don’t hide their true shape behind carefully chosen clothes or practiced postures. They simply are.

I started watching my shadow more closely after that day. Sometimes, late at night, I’d catch it dancing when I was perfectly still, or reaching for things I’d been wanting but was too afraid to grasp. It was as if it knew all my secrets, all the desires I’d buried so deep I’d forgotten they were there.

One morning, I found a note on my desk written in a hand that looked like mine but wasn’t quite right. It said: “I am what you are when no one is watching. I am the you that exists in empty rooms and dark corners. I am the truth you hide from the world.”

The strange thing wasn’t finding the note. The strange thing was realizing that every word was true.

Now, whenever light falls across my path and stretches my shadow long and dark against the ground, I wonder which one of us is more real – the carefully constructed person I present to the world, or that dark silhouette that moves with its own will and knows every truth I’ve ever tried to hide.

Sometimes, in the moments between sleeping and waking, I think I can feel us merging – the shadow and I – like water flowing into water. But then morning comes, and once again, we are separate: me walking through the world, and my shadow dancing just at the edge of sight, reminding me of everything I could be if I just dared to face it directly.

The barista at my coffee shop doesn’t make me americano anymore. She says I never ordered one. She says I’ve been ordering black coffee, straight and bitter, every day for years. Maybe my shadow knew this all along.