Human Parts

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You Don’t Have to Choose One Part of Yourself

Anna Cook
5 min readOct 23, 2019

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Photo: Abstract Aerial Art/Getty Images

II have always had a hard time with both and neither. It’s either on or off. We’re friends or we’re not. I love it or I don’t. I’m all in or completely out.

I don’t know how to have acquaintances. People are friends, hope-to-be friends, or I-feel-bad-we’re-not-closer friends. But not everyone wants or needs to be close. There are levels, mountains, spheres, or something like that. Or so they tell me.

I think this way of living in sum totals comes from a childhood split in half.

My parents parted ways when I was four years old, and I have no memory of being both Sara and Iain’s daughter. (Or would it be Iain and Sara’s daughter? I’ve never heard their names uttered as a couple, so I don’t know what they used.) In a way, it was easier that I never knew what it felt like. The division of the world was easier to bear.

I was either my mom’s or my dad’s, never both. I was one or the other, and my identity changed every Sunday. I had to choose. Who do I love more today? Who do I disappoint today?

II was interested in logic from the beginning. When I played logic games, I always tried to solve the questions faster than my mom. I always won. I ate it…

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Human Parts
Human Parts
Anna Cook
Anna Cook

Written by Anna Cook

Philosophy professor. Thinker and overthinker. I’m an ambivalent academic and an academic of ambivalence. Happiest when dancing or starting a puzzle annacook.ca

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