Searching For My Self

I dug deep and came up empty-handed

“I just can’t seem to nail her down,” a relative said to me the other day. “I don’t know what makes her tick.”

“Really?” I said. “Hm. Well, she’s…” I’d barely begun the sentence before realizing that I, too, was stumped. We were talking about my five-year-old who, admittedly, is a bit of an enigma.

I know my daughter exceptionally well; she and her sister are essentially extensions of me. But that’s more of an implicit kind of knowledge, really. If you asked me if she would like a particular toy or book or article of clothing, I’d be able to answer you without much thought. But if you asked me to describe her, I’d have to rely on very specific examples — like the fact that she designed and built a playhouse out of cardboard, or that she won’t go to bed unless her waist-long hair is braided — to get my point across.

Who is she? I thought, embarrassed that I couldn’t come up with a good answer.

Later that day, she and I were in the car alone. She was starting to doze off, and I knew a 4 p.m. nap would smell trouble for bedtime, so I decided to engage her in conversation to keep her awake.

“Hey, kiddo. I have a question for you.”

Her eyes drifted lazily in my direction. “Mmm?”

“If you just met somebody new, and they wanted to know about you, what would you tell them?”

“Um…” She wrinkled her brow. “I like butterflies. What are we having for dinner?”

“Grilled cheese,” I said. Then, trying to steer her back to my question in the most obvious way possible, I said, “Well, if someone asked me about myself, I’d say I’m…”

Shit, I thought to myself. I got nothin’.

I sighed. “What do you want with your grilled cheese?”

So that backfired, kind of.

But it also got me thinking, Who am I, really?

Here’s what I’d say if someone asked me about myself:

I am a mom first. After that, I’m a wife, daughter, niece, sister-in-law, and auntie. And, I’m a friend. I like nature and seltzer and travel and hoppy beer and flavorful food. I cook and I write and I drink strong coffee. I try to work out and eat right and be present for the people in my life, but I often fall short.

Okay, that’s adequate. For a bio, or a résumé, maybe. But as a description of who I am, I find it to be pretty weak.

It doesn’t capture what I’d consider to be the essence of me. It doesn’t describe me at all, in fact. Rather, it describes my relationship to the environment in which I live.

It’s a description of what I do, my likes and dislikes, and my relationships with other people.

But what about my fundamental self? Who am I, in the absence of all those external reference points?

I have to dig quite a bit deeper for this one, but it’s worth a try. Here goes:

I am smart. Like, not “graduated medical school at age twelve” smart, but “won lots of awards for academic achievement and skipped a year in school” smart. Academic challenges usually come easily to me.

I am perceptive. When it comes to the people closest to me, I know them very deeply. I know what makes them tick, and what sets them off. I recognize the themes in their behavior and name them.

I can be hyper-focused and über-productive. I learned to speak Spanish fluently over one summer. I learned most of the grammar from a textbook, which I read cover-to-cover one night. I used to spend hours organizing my CDs alphabetically.

I am empathetic. I feel the pain others feel, and share in their joy as well.

Paradoxically,

I am naïve and idealistic. I assume people mean well, even when their actions indicate they don’t. Because I can’t imagine doing [insert awful thing here], I assume no one else would do it, either.

I am a horrible judge of character. This has improved over the years, but I’ve traditionally made really bad choices about the people with whom I surround myself.

I am a whirlwind and can be infuriatingly disorganized. I often start projects with such gusto that I burn myself out before finishing. I leave clean laundry in baskets for a week, and I keep piles of papers, bills, and school notices around because if I don’t see it, I won’t ever attend to it. But then the pile becomes overwhelming and I never attend to anything.

I take responsibility for the well-being of others. I try to fix people or protect them from hurt, usually to my own detriment.

These yin-yang qualities get closer to describing my true self. They begin to answer the question of who I’d be without the anchors with which I typically identify.

But I’m still not satisfied.

These traits, as I look at them, still have their roots in my relationships with other people.

I’m smart because I was praised for it as a child. It seemed like the only thing I had going for me, the only way to get any attention. I’m a bad judge of character because, growing up, I was violated by those I should have been able to trust. I am perceptive because the best way to avoid a blowout with an unstable person is to learn to pick up on their cues and get out of dodge when they begin to decompensate. I’m rather bipolar with my focus and efforts because my childhood was so unpredictable and I was mostly left to my own devices.

I love some of these qualities, and I work to overcome the ones I’m not crazy about, but either way — they’re not mine. They belong to the other people in my life — people who, in many cases, abused and neglected me and otherwise put their own needs before mine.

I have tried over and over again to find something inside myself that’s not of, by, and for someone else, and I’ve come up blank each and every time. Even if I try to boil it down to the most basic claim, I am good: my goodness is still dependent on other people — especially those who are bad.

Is it really true that I cannot possibly define myself without relying on other people?

It would seem so.

Well, is that such a bad thing?

I like that I am smart, generous, and determined. I like that I know the important people in my life well. Those qualities, while borne in large part from discord, have served me well as an adult and as a parent. I like who I am, regardless of why I am this way.

Questioning my identity and getting to know myself, if anything, has made me more appreciative of who I became — regardless of whether I consider it to be despite my upbringing or because of it.

So, who am I?

I am what I do. I am my likes and dislikes. I am my relationships with other people.

I am the experiences I’ve enjoyed, and the ones I’ve endured.

I am the love, and the loss, and the abundance and the missing pieces.

We all are.

We rely on each other to define ourselves.

That’s the beauty and the tragedy of the human experience, and we can either deny it or embrace it.

I choose the latter.

This piece is part of a series I created for mental health awareness called Myths About Me. If you liked it, chances are you’ll like the others as well. I’d be honored if you’d check out the series!

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