Which is the real you?

This is a question that bugged me more several years, ago, than it does, now. It's come to-mind quite a few times in recent weeks, though, so I thought I'd post about it to both, purge it from my system and see what others' perspectives might be.

I had a friend, for a few years, who suffered from some sort of mental illness that she managed with medication. I'll call her "J." I didn't find this out for a while, but when I did, she'd already pissed me off quite a bit with some of her behavior. Often, when she'd go off, for no good reason, she'd explain it away by saying it was because of her condition (I don't precisely recall the details of the condition). After a while, though, that got old. Eventually, she flipped on me one time too many and I had enough. I'm not sure I was even angry, at that point. I was just tired.

For me, the burning question was, "Which was the real J?" Was it the one I'd gotten to know and care for, despite our mutual imperfections, or was it the person she was when her meds weren't doing the job?

Maybe if I'd met her and, right away, found out that she had this issue, I could've integrated my perception of these two people into an amalgam that represented my friend. And, really, I tend to think that's the most likely answer to my question. BOTH of them are the real J.

That answer seems hollow, somehow. Maybe it's because, when these negative episodes took place, I interpreted her excuses as her way of saying, "That's not really me," while my emotions were saying, "That IS you! If it ain't, whoever the hell it was is gettin' on my #!$^in' NERVES."

I don't know how clear my statements and inquiries are, but I'm hoping that the general gist comes through - especially to folks who have some experience dealing with their own or other people's dual selves.

Further explanation and examples follow or you can just skip to the question in bold:

In an NPR segment from a month or so, ago, a couple recounts the last days of their life together in an unusual fashion. The husband died of cancer, iirc, but he spent his last few weeks or months recording his thoughts on tape. The NPR segment alternated between his recorded and his wife's live explanations and accounts of those final months. Again, by this time, the husband was already deceased. The worst part of the whole ordeal was the fact that the wife felt that she'd lost him well before he died. Something about the brain tumor or whatever it was affected his personality. He'd snap at people and sometimes yell or even threaten them with physical violence in ways he never did before. His wife tried to tell the kids (and herself) that this wasn't Daddy. Daddy was sick, so when he acts mean, that's the sickness talking - not Daddy. After a while, that shit wasn't working out too well. Even after he passed away, she still had to deal with the emotional turmoil of, not only the loss of her husband and her children's father, but the way that he left them. Trying to piece together and remember who the real husband and father was, as opposed to the man he became as a result of his illness and his reaction TO his increased frailty.

There are so many ways that this type of duality manifests itself. Mental illness, physical trauma, medical side-effects, recreational drug and alcohol use, emotional trauma, etc. can make us behave all sorts of ways that we may try to differentiate from our core selves.

How does one know which version of you is the real you? How do you know?





EDIT: (copied and pasted from CBR post of mine)

And that's part of what's so hard about the whole thing. You (general "you") come up with this answer that seems and sounds wise and mature and appropriate, but it's emotionally impotent (for me, anyway).

Like, here, a lot of folks tend to applaud and embrace the more out-there behavior from some of mentally ill citizens. That sounds like the product of an enlightened perspective on mentality, in general, and mental illness, in particular. Yet, there are clearly limits, otherwise, the ill wouldn't be on medication.
Of course, some folks just see it as a source of amusement, so there's that.

Then there's the fact that, like in the movie, A Beautiful Mind, some who suffer from mental illness want to maintain elements of what they consider to be their core selves, like creativity or analytical skill, so they try to find that biomedical fulcrum that allows them to have the best of both worlds. That, again, sounds like our dual selves are just fragments of a single self... but clearly there's some mental excrement that folks just want to be rid of.

So, we're back where we started from. Which is the real you?