Who Am I?

Just got back from therapy a little while ago, a session that was basically a rambling, tangled talk about how I no longer feel as if I know who and what my authentic self even is, much less how to find her.

I articulated my ideas about self (well, at least I tried), and Michele provided some other ways to view self. I rambled over how much I hate that I am still in therapy, almost 30 years later; how I am afraid to "follow my dreams", not even being sure what they are anymore and being afraid of following them and being poor and insecure; about choices I've made in the way of relationships with men that where less than beneficial for me and why I might have made those choices; about feeling so many emotions and how they affect me physically and how I wonder if all my meds are messing me up and I wish I could go off them …. It was a turgid, tangled mess.

Sometimes I wonder if therapy is even helping me anymore, if I'm beyond the point where it could help. I wonder if I can every be functional again, or if I am now stuck in this mental and emotional tangle forever.

In therapy, I posited that we all have a basic (right now I'd say "essential') self — the person we are when we are born. The core of our personality, perhaps. And that we gain layers as we grow, and maybe we get twisted around our core self, or get too many layers between our authentic self and the self we have become, obscuring our authentic self. In this schema, I no longer know who I am when I'm authentic, what my core self is like. Is it the child I remember? The woman in her early 30s who went to Britain alone for a month, who published a story, who applied to and was accepted into a competitive six-week writing workshop?

Or am I the pleaser, the one who has a puppy-like need to make others like me, who makes herself as "normal" and non-threatening as possible, who doesn't make waves?

Michele's concept is that we have a central personality who is the kind of overseer of the sub-personalities. Our sub-personalities — the rebel, the responsible adult, whoever else one may have tucked in there — are kind of like board members of a corporation or organization. And that I, as the central personality, can have dialogues with the various sub-personalities of me. This concept has intriguing possibilities. However, it doesn't answer the questions of who am I? What is my authentic self like? And how do I know what my "dreams" are that I should follow?

I pointed out to her that she didn't give me what I wanted, which was a clear, pure answer. She was understandably amused.


I don't want to be someone who needs certainty, who sees the world in black and white with no shades of gray. I really don't. But that's what I am asking for, what I'm craving. I know that focusing on certainty and looking at the world in high contrast stifle creativity. My creativity, and my mental acuity, are already suffering under the effects of my mental/emotional problems and my medications: they don't need any more weights piled on top of them.

When my friend Julie posted on her blog a card that was about chasing one's dreams, I had an internal freak-out. Here's what I said in the comments:

It’s important to note that whenever I see something like “Chase your dreams”, something inside me recoils. I believe it’s fear. I hate having no money (and right now, I am not able to support myself, so basically, I hate having no income). I’m terrified about my future. I really cannot live where I am for a long, indefinite time. So I want a job that provides me with a large income. But chasing my dreams? Sigh. That would be [writing] fiction, which I have been resisting harder and harder the older I have become. (My mind is a seriously dark and tangled forest.) And maybe illustration. I don’t know how to live (especially in this expensive place) and do those things.

[Continued, next day]

One thing we touched on but didn't pursue, possibly because I launched into other stuff, was when we talked about when I had followed my dreams years ago, which I mentioned earlier: publishing a short story, my trip to Britain for a month (even though it was as terrifying for me as it was wonderful because I'd never been away from everything and everyone I knew before), attending that six-week, full-time workshop, and the certificate program in Scientific Illustration. Michele asked me how I felt when I did those things and I answered "fantastic, wonderful". Now I think "free, like I was flying". But I immediately ran from that straight to other ways I'm hurting and challenged and confused. Avoidance? Sigh. Very likely.

Back then, I could afford to follow those dreams (well the illustration program was a stretch because I was only working part-time). I know it doesn't cost anything but time and energy to write. But I feel ashamed  because after attending the writing workshop, I didn't go out and start publishing like one of my peers did and many who attend those workshops do. I barely wrote afterward. And after the illustration program, I barely drew and painted afterward. I sketched for a bit, but haven't done much sketching or drawing since, and no painting. Obviously I'm conflicted.

After the hugely negative behaviors my colleagues turned upon me after I published, traveled, and attended, I felt the familiar need to withdraw and become invisible. And I guess I did: I haven't done a whole lot to challenge the statue quo since then, other than to uproot myself three times.

Y'know, one of my more recent encounters with the opinions of others was with my best friend in Houston. We are very good friends and he greatly admires my fiction-writing abilities. However, he doesn't seem to have a lot of respect for my professional abilities. He reacts to things differently than I do: he's aggressive and challenges simply spark him to rush them and overcome. He doesn't understand that my historic response is to become passive and hide. Mind you, I like his reactions better than mine, but I have decades of response habits to overcome and he has no patience for that. He things I should be able to do what he does Right Now. And I think his opinions affected my confidence when I was in Houston and are still affecting me here. I love him, but I think his opinions of me professionally aren't a whole lot better than the personal ones previous colleagues have expressed to me.

I know that I need to stop hiding from my talents and desires and start writing, drawing, and painting again. They make me feel good. They feed my soul. They validate my true self. They are a significant aspect of my Authentic Self and my Authentic Voice. Are they the culmination of my dreams? I think so, but I wonder if I'm wrong.

It's not like I don't have the time to work on these things: job-hunting and networking don't take up all my time. Honestly, they don't take up as much time as they probably should. And my usual regret for lost time is here, regretting all these months when I could have been writing and drawing and painting and looking harder for work. I know this regret (any regret) is useless and counter-productive, but I feel it even so. (Yet another issue to work through and discard.)

Fear fear fear: I hate it, I hate being controlled by it, I hate having to deal with it and push on through it to get anywhere.

Sometimes I really have to wonder if I will ever be "well". Not well as in "not having been affected by various traumas", but well as in functional, coping, capable, happy, and healthy. Able to do what I want. Confident. Is it possible, after decades of getting worse?