Have you ever felt your Personality Islands collapse?

Do you remember the Personality Islands from Pixar’s Inside Out?

Riley has five – Family Island, Friendship Island, Honesty Island, Hockey Island and Goofball Island. In the second half of the film, as Riley’s life spirals out of control, one by one they collapse.

Hockey Island (Inside Out, 2015)

All the islands were created by core memories from Riley’s childhood. An island collapses whenever she loses touch with these memories.

Have you ever felt the collapse of one of your personality islands? I think I have. It’s an incredibly unsettling experience. A sickly mix of devastating, confusing, nostalgic and painful.

I was in the French Alps with an ex-girlfriend. We rented downhill bikes and went mountain biking for the day.

Bull Track, United Kingdom

I used to compete in the South East of England. I hadn’t been for a couple of years but naively thought I’d have maintained at least some of my abilities.

I hadn’t. As I took to the slopes, I felt like a different person on the bike. When once cycling was an expression of my personality, an exciting means to communicate my passion and love of adventure, it had become something entirely different. I was cautious, tentative, unskilled. I felt like an amateur as local riders shot past me, flying over the kinds of jumps and drops I would have previously taken with ease.

To put it curtly, I felt pathetic. And what’s more I was with a girlfriend, someone I wanted to impress. She didn’t care of course, she was too preoccupied with trying to get down the mountain herself. But still.

At the bottom of the slope, near the chairlifts, I remember just standing there, silent, blown apart. I thought of Inside Out and realised what was transpiring. One of my personality islands was collapsing. Downhill Biking Island.

And not just the abilities I once had, but the memories I’d attached to the whole process of cycling, those too were collapsing. Riding every year with my cousin in the Alps. Eating chips and drinking Monster Energy on the long chairlift rides together. Basking in the sun in-between runs. The races. It was all gone and would never return.

My cousin and I (photo by Luke Jarmey)

I haven’t ridden since that day and don’t think I will again. But I’m glad I had Inside Out to conceptualise what I was going through.