The loss of an identity

I have rewritten this article about the loss of identity seven times now. It’s the hardest one I’ve written to date. Why is it so hard? It’s just my identity. Who I am, what group I belong to. How I define myself so others with similar definitions can find me, and I them.

I’ve certainly changed identities over the years. Mostly when adapting to new environments as I moved across the country. I even went so far as to call myself a chameleon for many years. I was proud to refer to myself as one that could adapt and change to my surroundings. That identity wasn’t always a positive one, though. Sometimes adapting to someone else’s identity instead of finding my own.

I’ve never lost an identity. This concept is new for me and why I think it’s so hard to adapt. This time it feels involountary, forced, out of my control. I don’t like it.

I’m also just not ready for change. I was just getting my life together. Stable career, establishing roots in my community, meeting my soul mate, buying my first house, making my first home, starting my first permanent garden. I’m not ready for a new identity.

What even is identity?

Good question, what is identity? Your favorite search engine will give you a more detailed answer, but I tend to think of it as answering the question “who am I?” Simple right? Not exactly. Try answering that for yourself. If you’re anything like me you answer with things you do: “I’m an analyst, a climber, a volounteer, a rope rescue technician, a team leader, a x-country skier, a biker, a gardener, […]”.

The problem with that way of thinking is only apparent when you can no longer do the things you identify with. Who are you then?

Since succumbing to the pain I do a lot less than when I used to push through and endure. If I stick to my default way of thinking about identity, I don’t really like what I come up with: “I’m on sick leave, on disability, recovering, depressed, anxious, in pain, sitting, staring into space, […]”.

What a shitty deal. Is this really how I want to think about myself?

Something doesn’t fit right

That identity doesn’t fit right, like all the hand me down clothes from my sisters that I had to grow into. Sometimes I just didn’t wear them.

Is that an option? Can I skip this identity? Can I just wait to grow out of it and then have the best excuse to never have to wear it in the first place?

Identity and self-worth

I believe this tendency to equate accomplishments, or doing, with who you are is quite common. Likely because we live in a society that seems to assigns self-worth by how hard we work and how much we endure. Because I’ve adopted this way of thinking for so long, I’ve essentially tied my value as a person to how well I can accomplish a task.

It doesn’t help that I have this tendency to approach tasks with an all or nothing, or black and white, attitude. So when I can’t complete something to my level of perfection I immediately feel like a failure.

I’m nothing if I can’t contribute.

Where’s the middle ground?

Reassessing the narrative

I have to ask myself whether I believe in that narrative anymore. When I really think about it, that identity has caused me a lot of pain, physical and mental. I’d push through pain to get a project done or put myself in uncomfortable situations just to show that I could do it. I don’t think that suits me anymore.

I’ve recently been introduced to the gray area, the middle ground. Thinking in this way is not instinctive for me, but I’ve started to see some benefits of doing so. It allows me to live in between the hard boundaries I’ve previously set for myself: success and failure, extrovert and introvert, abled and disabled. I can stand in the middle and observe both sides to see that neither is perfect and neither is wrong.

The gray area feels like giving myself permission to do my best without needing perfection. To fail at a task without failing at life. And it gives me a safe starting point to search for my new identity.

Searching for something new

While hanging out in the gray zone, I’ve found the space and time I need to ask myself that “easy” question: “Who am I?”.

It’s still a challenging question to answer to be sure, though I’m starting to get some clarity. For one, I know that I don’t want my identity to be defined by what I do or by how I feel. I want to have an identity regardless of the job I do or the pain I feel.

I’ve also been encouraged to think about identity instead as the essence of my being, my humanity. What qualities define me? If I think of my qualities that have helped me through the lowest times of my pain journey, I get: resilient, empathetic, curious, intelligent, honest, adaptable, […].

When I think of myself in this way, I can continue being me without having to do anything. My life can turn upside down and yet I’ll always be the same person on the inside.

I’ve often worried that if I didn’t have a “thing”, something to do regularly, that it would be impossible to find a group of similar people, my community, my crew. Although I find it important to have hobbies and activities to meet people, they’re not essential to my identity. They don’t define me.

When I instead express myself honestly, I’m sending out an energy signal into the world. That energy is what attracts my people to me and I to them, not what I do or how I do it.