who am i without who i used to be?
I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am lately. It’s not something I’ve struggled with before—I’ve always had a strong sense of self, to the point of stubbornness. But lately, I feel myself evolving. It’s a quiet evolution, almost bashful in its subtlety—but unmistakable. Another student in our yoga teacher training cohort reads energies (make of that what you will). After spending time together, she told me that she felt an uncertainty in me—that my energy was confident and strong, but uncertain. I immediately explained that I was at a seemingly solemn crossroads in my life—making meaningful plans with Tom about our future together, something I’d honestly thought I could postpone indefinitely, holding out hope for the cure for mortality that would lessen the gravity of such decisions. But it seems that I’d waited long enough and biology is a bitch and love is real and true and maybe soulmates are too (don’t quote me on that though).
I had a minor panic attack for two days after Tom and I filed our domestic partnership papers with the California Secretary of State (a Kafka-esque journey). I’ve spent so much of my childhood, my life alone, singular, that my identity grew around that—so much of who I am has been defined by the space that has surrounded me. It’s alarming to feel that changing. Now, I spend most of my waking moments in the company of at least one other person. I spend less time writing, reading, thinking than I ever have before. Who am I without my solitude?
i am most at ease when i have a plan for everything and still i woke up one day and found i’d fallen into a routine of loving you
These days, I find myself writing love poems. I hate love poems. There are a thousand different dimensions to heartbreak; somehow, the experience of love always seems the same. Maybe because love is such an abstract ideal, unlike pain, which is visceral in its sharp edges and piercing angles.
While wading through breakups, I secretly basked in the brooding, imagining meaning in my suffering, insisting on depth to my experience. In the effort to make sense of it, to justify it, pain inspires art—good art. My pandemic depression was ungodly—but I wrote more than I had since high school (when I was editor-in-chief of our literary magazine 💁🏻♀️), and almost everything I wrote throughout those years has now been published.
It’s a terrifying realization, the realization that you’re happy—not least because it might still fall apart, or because there’s a restlessness that comes with contentment, a new uncertainty without the solidity of striving. Like love, happiness seems one-dimensional; there’s a frivolousness inherent in happiness. Can a person “contain multitudes” if their default state and predominant emotion is…“happy”?
As I continue to heal, as I love with more and more conviction, I can feel my past self leaving my body, mitosis of sad girl from the rest of me. I’ve found what I’ve been looking for for so much of my life—and in doing so, I might have lost something essential, a dimension of being that was core to who I am.
Still, I have to hope that there’s a gentler way of being myself Shame is a strange shadow I keep watch for grace A myth of my own making Waiting to catch sight of its trail of stars or tail of clouds or some other sign that my faith has not been futile I’m ready to be proven wrong or right or just to know what it’s like to be past yearning, what it’s like when there’s more present than future
Jared once suggested that I name my poetry chapbook, A 100 Ways to be Sad. In a workshop, a writer commented on the sense of yearning, of searching for something elusive, that always lingered in the bones of my writing. Who am I once I’m past yearning? Who am I without the vague sadness, without the melancholy?
As I’m emerging from the cocoon of wintering, as I’m discovering that I’m happy most days, as I’m allowing myself to believe that these good days will stretch on, into a faraway horizon, I wonder if I can still be whole, still be me.
who are you without others?
Have you ever noticed that identity is often defined in relation to someone else? “Wife,” “daughter,” “mother,” “dog mom,” for example, are monikers that only exist in respect to another person. It’s almost as if we use our relationships to triangulate our identities. Who might we be in the absence of others?
From an advice column on The Cut: “I have this fear, you see, that I’m not totally sure of who I am, and so I need other people to tell me.” This fear is only becoming more palpable as our identities become increasingly predicated on how we show up, and who we show up as, on social media—and as performing on social media becomes a mainstream career.
who are you without what you do?
In San Francisco, there’s a tendency to conflate identity with vocation. We lead with, “she’s a product designer,” or “my founder friend.” On the west side of Los Angeles, there’s a tendency to conflate identity with activities. We learn that someone surfs, skis, golfs, before we know the industry he’s in.
We can’t possibly be defined by these details, can we? We can’t possibly be defined by the things we do, either in our day job or in our time off. I want it to be true that I am not what I do; that these are the things I do, but these are not the things I am.
who i am
I’m struggling, however, to propose an alternate definition for who we are.
During the 19th century and throughout the Gilded Age, the daily lives of members of the aristocracy were similar to each other—the same schooling, the same chores, the same obligations to the church. The distinctions lived in the family name and its associated prestige and wealth (two things that only occasionally went hand-in-hand)—and, as documented in Jane Austen’s books, in an individual’s “charm,” in their ability to be “good company.” From Persuasion:
“My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”
Similarly, the emphasis throughout stories like Pride and Prejudice and Little Women is on the protagonists’ strength of character: their values, their sense of right and wrong, of fairness; their curiosity, and appetite for adventure.
…she recognized the beauty of her sister’s life—uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues.
Today, we rarely consider whether someone is “good company,” and we definitely don’t talk about character anymore.
I want to be “good company”— a charming dinner party guest, or a fun addition to a girls' trip—but more than that, I want to be a person of character.
I’ve begun to despise Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself for the fact that it’s become common. The Oriah Mountain Dancer poem, The Invitation, was a revelation to my high school self—and I have doggedly distanced myself from it since then for the same reason. I admit though, that when I think about character, its inquiries still hold water.
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
Shakespeare said “I have immortal longings in me.” His longings are immortal! I’ve always loved that.
Looove lils <3 How someone chooses to define themselves speaks volumes. A fourth thing I might add to career, hobbies, character is someone's values. Is what someone values most how they would like to be defined? How are those two be related?