After a bit of a dry spell, I have decided to get back into writing. Not that I really stopped, but it’s been a little more free-form than what I post. You could say I have been lacking the inspiration to put myself out there.
As usual, I have been doing a lot of reading, and as usual I often read to make sense of my life and experience, but in the last number of months there has been a more intensive quality to the soul searching I have been doing. I have felt that my life is not mine to live. I have often wondered who I am and been quite alarmed that I really can’t answer that question. I have felt that this transition period is still a transition not because I am actually still in transition, but because I have not yet recognized what I need to in order to know that I am moving forward. I have felt helpless and useless, that for some reason I am not allowed to do what I want to do, and I have felt that my brain is somehow being rewired.
What does that mean, you may wonder? Well, it was an exhausting process of trying to concentrate on something practical and 45 minutes later finding that I had been staring into space…or actually falling ‘asleep‘. I would begin meditation and find that I had ‘slept’ for a 10 or 20 minutes and afterward feel, relieved, recharged or sometimes as though I had been visited by people whose faces were still vivid in my mind’s eye and who crammed my brain with more information than I could handle. I refer to ‘sleep’ because it is a state of mind/consciousness that I experienced is not one that I am not familiar with. I can best equate it to that nap-like light sleep the brain slips into before you go into a deep sleep, but not. Perhaps I will have more to say on this at a later date, as I continue to search for an accurate description.
Anyway, I was learning a new level of patience when it just stopped. It was a Friday morning not long ago; I got up and began to struggle through my day as usual, and a little after lunch I felt lighter. By dinner, I thought ‘I feel different now’, and the next day I tentatively recognized that it was over. Say tentatively, because I waited to see if, perhaps it was a hormonal shift, then I looked at the weather to see if I had recovered from a mild form of seasonal affective disorder, and then I looked for some other mood altering shift in my life. After a few weeks I accepted that the months of rewiring were finished.
Now that things feel relatively stable, I am left to sort out who I am and what I want. The task feels daunting.
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Identity
I am not the composite of the impressions I give other people because I listen to them, because of how I relate to them, how I interact socially, because of the job I have or where I live or who my partner is. It is interesting to hear what impression others have of me, but it is not who I am.
My identity comes from somewhere else. I am not sure where, but it's not from an external source. A series of identity crises has stripped away all of the things that seemed to make up who I was - school, work, friends etc. and as I lost each of them them, I had to redefine myself. If I am not a student, who am I? If I am not doing something I like to do - if I work only for money, who am I? If I am not a social person with a lot of friends, who am I? If I am wrongly perceived to be a person who (fill in the blank)... Is that who I am? It is who I am to that person, but should I do anything about it? Should I care? How much energy do I tie up in what other people think about me?
A friend told me a while ago that she tries to talk to people about what she is going through - about how unhappy she is about work - for instance - and the response is a general lack of comprehension because she has done some great things or that she has been an inspiration to someone. Not surprisingly, she was so frustrated by these responses. When you try to express to someone what you are going through, the last thing you want to hear is that you are not person the 'listener' thinks you are - perhaps the person they need you to be. The people who listen because they want to know who are are real gems.
It takes a lot of courage to figure out who you are and to do the things that are in harmony with your self. Those outward expressions, as they change, throw people off, upset people...sometimes enough to make them leave. Not everyone accepts change.
My identity comes from somewhere else. I am not sure where, but it's not from an external source. A series of identity crises has stripped away all of the things that seemed to make up who I was - school, work, friends etc. and as I lost each of them them, I had to redefine myself. If I am not a student, who am I? If I am not doing something I like to do - if I work only for money, who am I? If I am not a social person with a lot of friends, who am I? If I am wrongly perceived to be a person who (fill in the blank)... Is that who I am? It is who I am to that person, but should I do anything about it? Should I care? How much energy do I tie up in what other people think about me?
A friend told me a while ago that she tries to talk to people about what she is going through - about how unhappy she is about work - for instance - and the response is a general lack of comprehension because she has done some great things or that she has been an inspiration to someone. Not surprisingly, she was so frustrated by these responses. When you try to express to someone what you are going through, the last thing you want to hear is that you are not person the 'listener' thinks you are - perhaps the person they need you to be. The people who listen because they want to know who are are real gems.
It takes a lot of courage to figure out who you are and to do the things that are in harmony with your self. Those outward expressions, as they change, throw people off, upset people...sometimes enough to make them leave. Not everyone accepts change.
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