What is Identity?

Today I woke up at 8 a.m. to take the bus to meet a new friend, one of the best people I've met in Houston, at a park to ride bikes to volunteer in the community garden. The day worked out really well, even with a 5-hour busy Target shift in the middle. I love those days, when I have enough positive energy to not get down about working this job.

Of course, before I met up with my friend, there were dark clouds hovering in the sky and they were making my already irritable mood spiral into that unreasonable place of despair. Yesterday, I was at an anti-police brutality rally and before we started marching, I suddenly found myself in a very real and very serious conversation with this new friend's girlfriend. She revealed to me her longterm struggle with anxiety and depression and she said many things to me that hit so incredibly close to home, things that I almost could have repeated verbatim. I was caught off my guard and continued on with the march, feeling newly invigorated and vowing to talk with this person again and really pick her brain about radical mental health and other solutions to these problems.

Last Sunday, I went to the Zen Center for the first time, for an informal meditation and discussion section. It was a beautiful bike ride from downtown, after spending the night in the park at Occupy Houston. Many ideas surfaced that also hit me hard, like people who will call you out on your flaws in a helpful, loving way and how those are true friends. But how do we tell the difference between kind honesty and brutal honesty? Is it pure intuition? Or does it require a substantial amount of awareness and humility? Does it require mental health?

So I'm not going to rationalize or pretend, I know why my mood took a turn for the worse yesterday. I had crashed on some awesome peoples' couch the night before and woke up with lots of positivity for my day off, but then I had lunch with Dad and his new wife (maybe if I don't even call her my "stepmother" I won't have to acknowledge her as a family member at all) and it went how it frequently does, with a hugely unpleasant argument, except this time in public. And I can't cope with this, I can't defend myself while also casting myself in the best light. I can't be accused of selfishness and blatantly judged and personally attacked for my lifestyle, past & present choices and remain neutral, accept it as "honesty" and keep my composure with calm responses. For, in my mind, this person's honesty is of the worst kind of brutality, the kind that stems from projection of personal problems on a fellow and undeserving human being. Have I also been guilty of this behavior? It's quite awful when thrown in your face. 

Then I think about the other person who has unintentionally set me on an emotional rollercoaster since I arrived in Houston. Who has also pointed out my shortcomings to me, forced me to look in the mirror. I think about these two people and I think about identity. 

So then on my walk home last night, the truth struck me clearly and at full force: I have no identity. Deep inside, I don't exist as a person. What can normal people, including even therapists, answer to this except "get to know yourself," "we're all finding ourselves," "you're not alone," the whole gammut. I can't relate to any of this on a deep level because I know that my lack of selfhood is a chronic condition, not a "phase" and not just related to my youth. To me, finding myself may be the big difference between getting mentally healthy and continuing down the winding road of crazytown.

I am a cis-gendered female. I am heterosexual. I am a Russian-American. I am a 20-something. I am a college graduate. I am white. I am a daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin, niece. I am a "writer." I am a reader. I am a cyclist. I am a polyglot. I am a traveller. I am a semi-strict vegetarian. I am a nature lover. I am a radical. I am a worker. I am a non-believer....what else?

Except none of these things are my identity for they are all subsumed in what I do and how I relate to others. And taken together, they are just a blurry amalgam that I become lost in. As a traveller and as a person in general, I know what I gravitate towards and of course, it has helped me figure out where my true interests lie and how I might want to build the remainder of my life, at least for a good part of the foreseeable future. But in fact, I have come to the startling conclusion that this has very little - if anything - to do with who I am.

The Real Journey, Part I

I know this blog is not really private, but I don't care. Should I? I have yet to retire and replace my long-suffering black notebook, almost filled to the brim with notes and scribbles and travelogues. I'm OK with personal outlines, even here.

Three 1-hour sessions have come and gone. I'm late to a lot of things, even work and even when I have a full free day beforehand. But with therapy, I come right on time every time. I read on a website about "finding the right therapist" that this person needs to "hold you emotionally" and the most important part is developing a personal relationship. I also read on a personal account of an English journalist that you can become "addicted to therapy." Of course, I chose a woman and I'm sticking strictly to one session a week so as not to overdo it. "These things take time." What I'm really addicted to is negative thinking and the spiral that feeds it. How to cut out the cancer...

Session I
"Have you done this before? Why are you here?" etc.
Blah blah blah ramble ramble ramble oh woe is me I am so emotionally unstable blah blah blah...
"Can you bring something you wrote next time?"
Weeeeee I love writing!

Session II
I brought in my last blog entry. That's the last thing I wrote. I also have a timeline of my life and goals for therapy, oh la la the narcissism...
"Why don't you read it out loud?"
Really? Wooooooah! Okay here goes...
"laughs charmingly at 'normal mental health practitioner'" and 'unbearable' etc."
spill out stories about the men and the stupid things I've done
"why do you have sex? it seems that's the problem...[in reaction to goal overcome depression] "have you considered medication? What about St. John's Wort?"
You are such a lovely, smiling, calm little old lady, nothing you say comes out as judgmental and if it came from anyone else, I would absolutely resent it. Personal approach makes all the difference. 

Session III
Too distracted to bring in anything. However, I was very good and rode all the way to Whole Foods for St. John's Wort for mood lifting and Valerian for sleep.   
"Is it helping?"
I have an affinity for dreams, so I go on a tangent about the one I had the night before after taking one of the herbs. I was clearly in Houston with a group of "good guys" and we were working on a video project. Things suddenly became clear and joyful as we rode in a car down "avenues all lined with trees." I woke up with warmth. Dreams, how can anyone just blow them off?
"Can you admit that you don't like someone?"
No, I can't stand that feeling. I want to know why....isn't thinking too much about how people may not like me or hurt me part of having an overblown ego? Reduce the ego, reduce the suffering?
"No, your ego isn't too big. It's not shriveled, but it's fragile. You become cold and distant to protect yourself."

When I was alone and stir-crazy in high school (much much worse than any other time since, all things considering) I used to read a lot more and above all WRITE. And not just journal entries, I went way beyond that. I typed up dozens upon dozens of pages of a story, really spent time on it. I'm not sure anyone else read it and it might be lost, but it comes back to me in snippets and its wistfulness is really a thing of beauty.

"Do you hate them, 'cause they're pieces of you?" Jewel's first album, a true masterpiece, no matter how much it smells of melodrama and stupid 1990s radio hits.

Astrology, it might be a hoax. I'm willing to accept that possibility about any system that includes a healthy amount of dogma or blind faith. But I reread my natal chart and then read about those crazy Aquarius men and there are some things that really stand out. The funny thing is, I don't see astrology as useful in predicting the future or believing in destiny. I see it as an interesting study of human psychology, how we relate to each other and explain why things work out a certain way. It's just one piece of a very large puzzle and as a hardcore skeptic, I find it open enough to interpretation to suit my liking.

"People tell me it's a sin, to know and feel too much within." Because people like us are dangerous, or at least just prickly thorns, pricking ourselves and others. We simply refuse to accept and I will go so far as to exclude many self-proclaimed radicals and anarchists from this category. "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them." There is nothing quiet about us and desperation is not our driving force. We are not elitist, but we are naturally not a large group. We are simply born with the burning desire to shine like stars. We don't want to judge you. We just can't understand how anyone else would want it any other way. A poor subsistence farmer, a slum dweller, someone in the streets, any of them can be among us and they can create joy even out of a hard and restrictive existence.

Who the hell do we think we are, people like us who demand, who accept nothing less than joy and freedom? Who refuse to be content with "Everything's going to be OK?" Every time I hear it, I feel nausea and irrational rage in the pit of my stomach. Rape, torture, poverty, illness, murder, prison, an endless list of the sickening things that humans have imposed on each other since the beginning of time. Maybe for survivors and constant witnesses and bearers of horror, just "OK" may be a nearly unreachable milestone. And this makes us even more indignant. With so much unnecessary suffering, how dare we resign ourselves to "just OK" and not put up a fight for a life sparked by wonder?