Who Are You?

What are the descriptives we use in dissecting our view of ourselves? I find that I tend toward familial terms. If I'm being specific I already had several at my moment of birth: daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, cousin. A few years later I could add aunt; a few more after that wife and mother became applicable. And since then I have experienced becoming stepmother, mother-in-law and grandmother. Somewhere in the midst of all that I hope I can claim friend. That one is earned, not awarded by default.

Some of those monikers have changed. I'm no longer a granddaughter and niece is hanging on by the thread of one aunt. I don't want to think about a time I cease to be a daughter.

But like so many titles we own, these can be meaningless to those around us if they have no experience of seeing us fulfill those roles. So it is, I think, with all those excess designations with which we also define ourselves. When we find ourselves out of our natural habitat--as we do when we move across the country well into adulthood--we carry with us no record of all the things we are and all the things we were.

In high school I loved my involvement in music and drama, in fact I continued to participate in those arts until just a very few years ago. But no one here knows that. I like to believe I have a good sense of humor and a bit of clever wit within me. But when you're starting all over in a new place, a new life, it takes a while before you can establish those traits. When no one really knows you they can't possibly understand when you're serious and when you're excercising humor. Facetiousness is lost on strangers. That's too bad, really.

And no one knows how I looked years ago when I was young and considered attractive by some; when I was thin and dressed with style and taste. Perhaps they will eventually see pictures and say things like, "Wow, is that really you?" or, "you were really _________" (fill in the blank with something you wish you still were today.)

This is all part of the past we leave behind when we uproot and go far, far away. It's as if all the good we ever were or ever did is just gone. And we're left at an age when we're a bit tired to start all over again to do just that--recreate who we think we are for the people we know now.

In thinking this through I suppose some would enjoy the opportunity of remaking themselves. We can tell people who haven't known us for all our lives almost anything and as long as it's not too outlandish they have no reason not to believe it. But liar is a title I have been trying to shake off for many years. Not only does not it seem worth it, but I simply don't have the energy to try to remember a bunch of things that aren't true. I have enough difficulty remembering that which is true.

This feeling that I've lost my identity is definitely part of my difficulty in adjusting to life so far away from where I was born. I wish people here could know me the way I was known there. Or maybe it's just the way I thought I was known there.