No matter how many times your gaze transfixes the mirror, encapsulating the photo of ‘you’ it can never convey who you truly are. I’d stare at the wretched thing, postulating my goodness from my evilness; hemming and hawing at the future it would depict for me. Yet, there are times I could stare at the face boring into my own and wonder if that was truly me. “Who am I?” better yet, how do you find yourself?
When I was young, I knew who I was. Convicted and self-assured, I was confident in what I believed in ‘me’. With age, somewhere along the way, I lost it and have been searching for it ever since. There’s hardly a person out there who has stayed the same throughout the entirety of their lives. You grow older, you mature and go through lessons. Development and evolution are an integral part of life. The people and places that surround you are evidence of the fact. The push and pull of other’s projection spiraling into an intoxicated delerium. Like a star, their dedication to pulling me into their philosophies and ideologies was gravitational.
Regardless of some of the unease I felt, at some level, I was always steadfast. I realized no matter how vigorous the change may be, the core of who you are always stays constant. Honestly, I’m unsure of how many people felt about this, but for me, it was monumental. Born in the 2000s, I witnessed and experienced the pull of the stout changes society beginning to venture though. The loss and displacement I endured was harrowing, as much as I wanted to stay involved and connect with others, that simply wasn’t me. I am not and have never been a complied about what’s happening. Acceptance was the only thing that freed me from the swirling turmoil inevitably I brought upon myself.
It’s important to expand your bubble, have a plethora of personalities, cultures and experiences to communicate with to keep you from engaging the world as a broken record. Those people kinda suck, otherwise known as the ignorant, naïve and the arrogant. But having time to yourself, I discovered, kept me grounded and kept things in perspective, allowing me to no longer deem ideologies as ‘self’. I sometimes found myself drawn into philosophies I wouldn’t have originally claimed. But, we are always growing, self isn’t just one thing. It never has to be a limited, transfixed statement. People are more than a sales pitch. There is I, then there is the group. Your group can constantly change. Mine did. I never had a loyal group of people I connected with, and that’s okay.
Good and bad parts compose us all. We have views, likes, ideals, dreams, history, habits, perspectives that affect our present and future selves. Navigating you is simpler said than done, but once it’s traversed, it gets easier. Write your odyssey, discovering who you are.
“The Between” now available.