summons

the versions of yourself that show up uninvited — and the ones you learn to call

Opening the fridge at my parent’s house after being away for months on end is a wonder. More than one type of juice, milk, takeaway boxes with different dishes in them, and then you turn away from the fridge, and on the stove sits another potential meal, with the rice cooker semi-full. I never once think in the months prior that I haven’t been eating well, and then I come home. And it becomes undeniably true that I could’ve eaten better still. My ability to cook a decent meal unprompted by my parents folds itself away, like a part of adulthood I get to shelf while I’m at home. I show up to eat, wash the dishes, maybe chop some veggies for Mama, and then I eat.

There’s a version of me that only exists past a certain threshold. She doesn’t show up at work. Or at dinner with friends. She’s the one that’ll sit on the piano for hours once the house is empty with people off to work, the one that’ll binge a show on Netflix snacking on her father’s sneakily stashed snacks behind the sofa. She has no audience, no context to mold into, no room to read. The one left over when every other version has clocked out for the day.

My grandmother calls me on FB messenger from halfway across the world. And something in my posture shifts before I even pick up. My voice softens, pitches slightly higher, the Tagalog spilling out in a way I can’t access otherwise. Wistful, ever curious, ever gentle. In a single moment I’m the teenager escaping to my grandmother’s room. Seeking refuge after a heated argument with my uncle or my aunt. The chaos shut out as the door closed. Less guarded. A little more willing to be told to let things go. She passed away recently.

I’m afraid that version of me went with her. The one that was willing to let things go.

A Filipino nurse once commented on how I kept coming back to the hospital job well after I finished my undergrad. I’d be ringing the cleaner to come do the floor or restocking linen, and she’d say it like a question that wasn’t quite a question: my mother has had one of the most impressive careers in that building, so what kind of mother lets her daughter keep doing this? The controlled hum I’d respond with is immediate, a polite hmm ta, it’s my choice, and there’s nothing wrong with this job.

The sharper part of the sentence left unsaid: hasn’t Covid shown us how integral cleanliness actually is? And the part I’d never say at all: if my mother could spare me this, she would. She’d also tell me not to let her.

I didn’t ask for either of these versions. They showed up like old songs do: without warning, fully formed, dragging an entire context behind them. The body has a filing system the mind never approved. A voice, a phrase, a certain kind of silence, and a drawer opens whether you wanted it or not.

For a long time I thought this was a problem. One I had to be ever conscious of, something to try and police. That the goal should be integration. One self, coherent, consistent, legible to everyone in every room. That the switching meant something was unresolved.

Patricia Linville, a psychologist, found that people who carry more distinct versions of themselves are more resilient. When one self takes a hit, the others hold steady. The structure doesn’t collapse for it was never a singular pillar to begin with. It was always a constellation.

I like that. Perhaps the multiplicity isn’t the thing to fix. It might be the thing that’s kept me standing.

And if they can show up uninvited, it turns out they can also be summoned.

One of the hardest nights in b-school was the night before a consulting pitch for one of France’s most powerful beauty brands. Six months of work, all of it compressed into fifteen minutes on a stage. My friend and I didn’t sleep, doing last-minute edits and prep. Now, I’ve won pitch competitions. Played a complicated piece at a piano recital. Narrated a play. Performance and public speaking have been some of my most reliable skills since I was a teenager, the kind where I can hold a room with context alone, no script, ad-libbing on the spot. But I’m a words person, and for pitches I almost always have a skeleton. And my god was I freaking out that morning.

On no sleep, we arrived at the venue. I asked our professor about the prompter. There was one. But I’ve been stubborn about my eyesight getting worse over the years and have never gotten glasses. I could’ve used them that day. Every minute leading to our turn, I read and re-read my opening and closing lines.

Before I stepped onto the stage, I took a minute. Closed my eyes. Told myself: you have been this person before. You’ve ad-libbed the narrative before. You’ll remember what to say, when, and in what tone. And if the exact words don’t come, whatever does will be enough.

We won. Not because I didn’t stumble. But the version I called off the bench that morning knew what to do with a stumble. She’d been there before.

It was closer to opening a door inside my own house that I’d forgotten led somewhere. And the version who walked through it didn’t need the situation explained to her.

I think of all the rooms I’ve walked into across all the cities, all the jobs, all the versions of a life that didn’t always feel like one continuous thing. Each room asked me to be someone slightly different. And I obliged. I used to think that made me inconsistent. Now I think it made me resourceful.

The trade-off is that the version of me who exists at home, the one past the threshold, the one with no audience, is the one nobody else will ever fully know. She’s too quiet for a dinner party, too still for a work call, too honest for most conversations. She’s the closest thing I have to a whole person, and she only comes out when everyone else has left.

The house empties out eventually. People leave for work, for errands, for lives that don’t involve me. And the version at the piano resurfaces; the one who plays the same few bars over and over, not because she’s practicing but because repetition is the closest thing she has to stillness. She doesn’t need to read the room. There’s no room to read. I sometimes wonder if she’s the real one, or if that’s the wrong question entirely. Maybe she’s the one who holds the others. The shelf they all return to.

The piano was my idea. The deposit, the first few payments, mine. I was strapped for cash so Mama covered the rest. I bought it before a sofa, before a desk, before anything practical, and put it in my father’s house because I love hearing him play. Even more than I love playing myself.

It’s mine but it lives somewhere I don’t. I think about that sometimes. How the thing I chose to spend my money on first sits in a room I can only visit. And whether I could contain in myself as many versions as the melodies I could play on it, if I sat down long enough.

what’s yours that doesn’t quite live where you do?

- it’s michelle d.

---

Hiii, in case you stumbled upon this serendipitously,

A quick intro:

I’m an intersectional human trying to figure out life, love, business, and help others a long the way. I write about the human stuff: the relationships we navigate, the decisions we second-guess, and the quiet confessions we keep to ourselves until someone asks the right question. Or rather, until someone gives us a safe space to voice out our questions.

One thing I learned from writing essays is how much I love the interaction and community around it. Hence the core concept of this newsletter: unsent letters.

Send me a Letter

Send me a quiet confession. Dilemmas that keep you awake, unspoken feelings, the truths that live only in your head. I don’t advise severely; I’m not qualified for that. But I can read, reflect, and remind you (& me) — it’s not just you. It’s us.

Unsent letters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Personal rambles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Behind-the-letter: 1

---

Join me in building the kind of community that reminds us someone out there understands. Everything here is free to read. Paid subscribers get a behind-the-letter post for certain pieces: the cuts, the detours, what I almost wrote instead. If the writing means something to you, that’s one way to stay closer to it. Or buy me a coffee. Both appreciated.

Never miss an unsent letter.