Infinity Pool: Shedding the Skin, Rebirth into New

(originally written Feb 3, 2023) (much growth has taken place since then, but I still enjoy this piece and thought I should share)

I am fresh out of my first viewing of the movie in theaters and I’m left with billions of questions and dialogue floating in my head. All of which reflect this life quest I’m on to discover me. These past few months have been an inspiration I’ve been seeking for a while now in regards to my writing. Just like James, I am waging war against the imposter syndrome that dooms every artist that has ever existed. 

Huge shifts have forced me to snap out of autopilot and pivot to introspection on a deeper level than I’ve ever allowed myself to go. I’m feeling myself wanting to revisit versions of me I had in my head that never were able to come to fruition based on fear. Fear of others projections, fear of being seen, fear of rejection after being seen. All that casual stuff. But my body and my mind wouldn’t let me get comfortable. My hair was stuck at the same length for 3 years, growing and then shedding all over my bedroom floor. My gut convulsing in pain at the void of sustenance and vices I tried to distract myself with. My arms and legs and fingers and ankles cracking with every mundane movement like a rusted machine. My nerves overreacted to the simplest of tension… so many signs and all I did was ignore them. Keeping myself stuck in ways I’m just now noticing even as I write. 

Now that I’ve let my truth be bare and have had to face one of my big fears being validated, I am left with the question of me.  Who is the person that isn’t hiding? Who is the person that embraces the power that lies within. What does it look like to have her peel me open and step inside? Is she the real me, am I the double? I feel her breaking through the cocoon of dermis I’ve built, busting at the seams waiting for her turn… and she knows it’s coming soon. I think I fear her too. 

For so long, I have been a soul in a husk of meat, watching one foot go in front of the other and still managing to trip. I don’t think I’ve ever truly felt connected to my body. In fact, I think I’ve been thinking of myself as a whole separate person despite it. Like the person I look like in my head and the outer shell are nowhere near the same family. So neglecting it was easy, as I thought of mind me as the true self and the body as a way for others to project whatever they wanted onto me. But this cannot be. The body and soul are one, at least in this lifetime. The distorted masks of indifference, pettiness, and shortness hide the scared individual within. The one who would rather go down swinging than be caught vulnerable, yuck. 

While I start the movie as James, I see who I want my ‘her’ to be in the character of Gabi. Relentlessly pushing and pushing to get a glimpse at the creature… at the primitive power tucked away. She uses her powers of perception and seduction as a sort of metamorphic shaman. She is tapped into herself, her surroundings… She is the captain, she is the definition of a dominatrix. At first, her approach uses that as a doting fan who is excited to meet her favorite obscure author, then slowly shifts into the relentless succubus who won’t let James run away from discovering the truth; that he despises who he is while simultaneously not even knowing who he is outside of the safety net of “husband to a rich woman”. Gabi takes him through psychological turmoil much as the position a therapist would when it is time to start really doing the work of healing. 

I don’t feel bad for James. Even though I can see my journey in his, dude deserved every bit of trauma that he received on that trip. Staying stagnant for 6 years means a different kind of death. This is his rebirth, not so subtly hinted at with the baby talk and subsequent suckling of his own life blood through the breast of his surrogate mother and creator. He got what he deserved and he got what he needed. He’s been playing the cuckold silenced husband for too long and his art form (and therefore his “Self”) suffered for it. He was yanked into the physical embodiment of the death he already internally went through, which is why it is nothing to watch the husk of meat die off.  Not to mention the hubris and full frontal ego he showed when stepping to who he thought was the doctor responsible for his doubling. Instead, he is faced with the third iteration of this clone. His empathy and reflection only extended to himself. When he thought he was violating and dehumanizing a local to the country he already broke several laws in, he easily shifted into his ancestral roots of hedonistic, destructive, whiteness. Once he realized who was actually under the red cover, suddenly he couldn’t handle the reckoning that came alongside it. 

I do think that squeezing this entire experience into the span of a few days is absolutely insane. There’s not one person who can handle everything that went down and just return to civilization even within a month (assuming because the resort was shut down at the end). I understand why he ends up exactly where he does in that final shot, finally displaying a human reaction that is relatable.