Posts tagged identity

Hello.  My name is Lesley.  I’m 26, single, non-smoker, Capricorn, deist. I like knitting and kung-fu movies.  If I was really drunk, and you were really, really drunk and neither of us were wearing our glasses, I’d try and convince you I look like Jessica Rabbit dressed as a librarian.

All of that is true (the Jessica Rabbit part slightly less so), but how much of it is ME?

We all go through a struggle to identify who we really are, it’s a big philosophical question, and in my own personal opinion, the less you wonder about it the more yourself you’re likely to be.  We construct a persona, an outside layer to present to the world at large, and beneath that our true self lies, some of us are acutely aware of who that person may be, and some completely ignorant.

I’m depressed and anxious, which is something I try and keep largely hidden, no one really gives a rat’s arse about it, but is it part of my identity or just an illness?  You wouldn’t define yourself by a broken leg or a bout of flu, but would you feel like your diabetes was part of you?

I do feel like “Being Depressed” is a big chunk of who I am.  It’s been with me my whole adult life, shaping my choices and my personality just as much as anything else has.  So it feels doubly hard sometimes to face up to the idea of “getting better”.  I don’t want to take pills to stop me liking computer games, or go to therapy for my Depeche Mode obsession (even though some people probably think I need it), and sometimes I don’t want to go through a huge struggle to redefine myself.

My counsellor leant me a book once, where someone was talking about how their depression had interrupted their life, how they wanted to get back to where they were before it happened, and I got angry as hell about it.  There was no “before” for me, nowhere to go back to, and I felt quite bitter about it at the time.  I can only go forward and take things as they come.