In high school, I had a boyfriend who was considered one of the funniest, most vivacious people in the school. He was an actor and a comedian and extremely talented at it--the closest thing we had in our small suburban New Jersey town to a Monty Python crew member. People loved him. We started dating and he turned out to be one of the saddest, most depressed people I'd ever met, now or since. No one ever would have guessed this; no one.

There was another guy I was friends with with once who told me that though not appearing so on the exterior, he was extraordinarily romantic and when when he had feelings for a woman he was prone to showering her with compliments and sweet loving statements during sex in a way that could sometimes even be almost over the top. I eventually went out with this guy, and while he was verbal during our sex sessions in the typical dirty talk/moaning kind of way, I can't remember one sweet romantic pronouncement ever being made out loud during sex, let alone many.

I once dated a guy who said he had a huge...

Oh wait, that one was true. Heh, nevermind.

Sorry, just felt the need for a little levity.

Anyway, I'm not sure what made me start writing about this exactly. I guess it's related to the fact that recently I saw an old boyfriend interacting with another woman and it made me think silently to her, I know something you don't know; you have no idea what you're in for. And then I thought, well, then again, he might not know what she's in for, either, because he'd have to be conscious of some of the ways he is; and I'm not sure he is.

And that got me thinking about the public face and private face we have. And it made me think whether sometimes we're even conscious others who are intimate with us (whether romantically or as friends, whatever) see two different faces. Do most people believe their own public stories about themselves? Or even, as in the case of my second boyfriend anecdote up there, if they are aware that they have a public and private self (as I think many people are aware) do most people believe the public stories they tell about their private selves; and are they aware that their private selves are sometimes different than their own perceptions of them? Do most people have a skewed view of their own persona, whether public or private or both? Do most people not even have both--are most people more or less the same in both realms, and I'm just assuming most people have two different personas because I always used to?

Do most people not even define their own persona at all to others? Is the "what I'm like" story just more common to the types of self-analytical people I've hung out with, but the rest of the world is not so navel gazing? Do most people not have a "what I'm like" story they use to define themselves?

It's just interesting. I guess it's silly to posit what "most people" are like; there is no baseline for these things. But as someone who's struggling to work through all the layers of fake definition I've piled on; who wants to strip it down and be the same person, the real person, the aware and genuine person wherever I am, it makes me think about whether even thinking about "who I am" at all will actually help me get to "who I am." Or will it KEEP me from being that person?

I don't know. But somehow this whole being different people in public and private, and different people in story and in reality....something about that feels like something I don't want anymore. Maybe I don't want any stories anymore period. Not for myself, and not anyone else who tells them about themselves.

I mean, I see my friends who are parents doing this about their kids all the time: "this one is like this," "the other one is like that." I wonder if we absorb these self-stories and the tendency to create them so early on that it just feels like a normal, necessary part of creating identity.

But maybe identity doesn't have anything to do with definition or delineation at all.

Maybe it's not "this is who I am" or "this is how I am" and it's only "I am." Maybe that's all I or anyone really needs.

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photo credit: Public private by isadub

I've been...just really happy lately.

It feels an odd thing to say. But it's true. And I find I'm also less and less afraid that claiming it will "curse" it and make it go away. I don't feel afraid to say it anymore. This also feels very strange to say.

But it's true. It came on slowly at first; just a little twinge here or there. But in the last two weeks, it's been almost constant. Just feeling good, feeling at one with the world--or maybe it's feeling as one in myself and being completely cool with that--even when the world is off kilter around me. Even feeling joyful sometimes; having moments when my heart feels ready to burst out in blooms like all the trees I see around me and I just can't stop smiling or singing to myself or communicating with trees.

This is not something I'm used to.

I think maybe I haven't written about this feeling as it's come over me much because; well, one, I've been busy with a new job I started recently, and two, I think I felt afraid that if I said it, it would sound like bragging or smugness or rubbing it in others' faces or possibly that I was being inauthentic...like I was trying to prove something (""Look!!! Look how happy I am!!! Really!!!! Really!!!!")--like I'd appear as if I were trying to convince myself and others of it.

But it's not about that. And it suddenly occurred to me tonight how entirely ridiculous it is that I saw absolutely no dangers of inauthenticity, bragging, etc. in writing repeatedly about unhappiness when it hit me. So why should this be any different?

Anyway, what's happened to me lately...it's really odd. It's like this kind of letting go. I can't explain it because it's almost a physical thing; as if a really heavy layer of something has been lifted off me, and I'm just walking around lighter than before. But it's not exactly physical. It is as though I've finally lost something, though, something that has been some kind of invisible albatross for many years. The strange thing is, I don't even know what the albatross WAS; I never got to see it. It just, through small tiny baby steps of work, seems to have just lifted, and I'm just...different. Things seem easier; and I seem less impacted by the small everyday things that used to get me spiraling into negativity.

And it seems that along with this is this fresh, slowly burgeoning change in how I sense myself in the world. I just wrote that and realized I'd said "sense myself" instead of "see myself," which is the familiar phrase. And now I realize that is exactly it! There's this shift from seeing myself to just sensing myself. This move from a staunch stance of "I think, therefore I am," to "I am, therefore I am."

Am I making sense to anyone out there? I think what this means is I'm losing my self-consciousness. Which is SUCH a relief. But even more than that--or maybe it's the same...what I'm trying to say here...and this is so new and confusing....

What I'm trying to say is that...well, for most of my life, I've created my identity (and others' identities, come to think of it) from identifiers--which are, of course, mental constructs. I thought that thoughts--mine and others' about me (by either agreement with or reacting against them)--were what made me me. Like this:

What do I believe in? The answer to that defines who I am; I am what I believe.
What do I know? The answer is who I am
What is my cultural identity? This is who I am.
How much more do I know than others? This is who I am.
How well do I fit the requirements for the labels of "cool," "smart," "pretty," "sexy," "talented," etc.? This is who I am.

Actually, these ALL boil down to the first statement: What do I believe in? This is who I am. Because all of the others in their way are beliefs about myself that I invent for myself.

And this has led to inordinate anger, frustration, and fear when I'm confronted with others whose opinions butt up significantly and forcefully against my own. I've been in therapy for a few years now; and the whole time I've never really been able to grasp how one can believe strongly in something (say, for instance, that racism is awful and destructive) and while holding that belief strongly, at the same time be okay with the fact that others don't.

I think this was because those beliefs were who told myself I was. I made those beliefs my identity. So someone opposing that belief was, on some level, threatening my right to exist.

I've been living so much in my head. And my head created labels for everything: for myself and others. I was alternative. That person was mainstream. This other person: materialistic. Me: stubborn. That person: racist. Me: creative. On and on and on. All these one-word stories for myself and everyone; all generated by me, all designed to keep my thoughts protected and safe from encroachment of others. Interestingly, I had both a great anger for/resistance to labels and "grades"--and yet such a great need for them, too. In fact, I made my resistance of them part of my so-called identity.

I'm getting off track. I'm sorry this post is so loose--I'm free-forming here.

The point is, this shift I was talking about earlier, and the happiness and lightness...it seems to be about losing all that. About getting out of my head--"losing my mind," if you will. About realizing none of that shit matters; that none of that stuff, none of my thoughts or ideas or beliefs, none of those identifiers define me. That I'm just ME. That's it. That's all it has to be about.

Moving away from thought and into this greater...sense of being. This is what feels lighter. And, by the way, this doesn't mean I think thinking or intelligence is useless. Far from it. It's useful; but it's just a THING--not THE thing.

You know, all this time as I've been healing, I've been trying so hard to figure out--now that I've had to let go of so many old, negative patterns of self-definition--what the new way to define myself will be. I kept thinking, "Okay, but what will I BE now? I'm emptying out of stuff, but what will I fill up with? Who can I say I am now, if I'm not any of those things anymore? I need to find an answer before it's too late!"

And damn if it hasn't turned out that the answer is I'm not anything.

And this...it turns out...is everything.

I'm not anything. I just am.

I'm not anything. It's possibly the one phrase that has scared me the most all these years--the one thing I was most terrified to be identified with; to believe about myself. The thing I've worked consistently to avoid anyone thinking about me.

Who knew in the end that it would be the source of all empowerment?

I am staggered by this.