Conscience Visualized

For more than a year I've known about Merebith and "The guy who wears khaki pants."  Meredith has described her little girl Merebith as a seperate person but basically herself.  Admittedly, thoughts of schizophrenia entered my mind, but they never really took a foothold.  I wasn't putting my head in the sand about it--it just didn't seem to fit with what I saw.  Although Merebith has her own persona, it doesn't actually seem as though she is a voice telling Meredith what to do.

It came to me the other day that Merebith is just like Meredith's conscience in visual form.  I learned from Dr. Cheri Florance how her son, who at an early age was using a completely visual way of thinking (he had no verbal skills and was diagnosed as deaf and mute), didn't have that internal voice that most people have.  In her book, "Maverick Mind," Dr. Florance explains in detail how in order to read, one has to be able to pronounce things in his mind.  For example, would you be able to know the difference when reading "chef" and "chat" if you couldn't voice the words in your mind?  From this lesson, I learned to question the concept of the internal voice in relation to visual thinking.

So, the way I see it (pardon the pun) is that perhaps Meredith at an early age had such a strong visual brain that instead of developing that little voice, she developed more of a little person.  And perhaps as she learned to speak, the little voice developed in the form of the little person talking.  We'll never likely know how it developed and I'm simply speculating here.  But what I know today is that Merebith is the vehicle by which Meredith talks to herself.

Here's one example.  As kids do, Meredith did kind of a dumb thing.  A few days ago she had gotten herself a snack and put it in a small bowl.  When she was finished, apparently she was playing with the bowl, holding it on her mouth by sucking it.  Admit it, you probably did this before.  As with most things, however, Meredith did it to the extreme and ended up breaking blood vessels just below her bottom lip.  Now she has a bruise there that looks like she has a soul patch--it's just a lovely look on a young girl.

The point of the story is that I asked Meredith at some point during the day if she ever argues with Merebith and she said yes and that in fact, she's mad at Merebith because for the last three days she has been rolling on the floor laughing and pointing at Meredith's chin.  Can't you just picture that?  If you, yourself, gave yourself a big bruise on your chin, wouldn't you give yourself a hard time just like Merebith?