Published on 12, July, 2020
Who am I? I have little idea. I know what I am interested in, and I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, and what I like and dislike. I am often told that I am a very articulate and self-aware person.
However, most of my life has been an act. I have internalised multiple personas over the years, pretending to be someone I am not, regardless of whether this someone is real or a figment of my imagination. As an extreme example, once, when I was at school, I imitated the precise way a girl pouted her lip. I ended up pouting my lip, and must have looked quite ridiculous.
I try and imitate hair styles, dress styles, speech patterns, actions, almost anything. Sometimes this is very conscious, sometimes it is almost unconscious, but I am always aware that I am playing a part. Even when I am alone in my bedroom, I act 'through' others. Even my interests are often dictated by someone else, someone I admire or want to be like. It feels like I have no autonomy or 'self' that I can call my own; everything is stage managed.
My interests currently come and go, but I am only interested in one area of a subject, and find it hard to generalise my interest to related fields. I have always had this problem, but I am more aware of it now; it means that I find it hard to plan my life, decide what I want to do, and what I want to achieve in life.
I also get obsessed with certain people, and live my life 'through' them, often in fantasy.
Can anyone else relate to this lack of self, identity confusion?
I could have written a great deal of the original post. I know what I'm interested in, I know my strengths and weaknesses; I'm intelligent, articulate and self-aware. But for most of my life, I've felt like an actor in a film. I've felt like the Prot character in the film K-Pax - an alien who's come to earth and is looking around and thinking 'This is all very strange. What primitive beings these are.' I don't mean that in the sense of feeling superior or self-righteous. I mean that I look at what people get hung up on - fashion, vanity, money, religion, cults, status, gadgetry - and find it all quite baffling.
I used to be heavily influenced by other people. I tried to copy them. I even ended up compromising my own beliefs so that they tallied more with what other people more generally accepted. Even now, though I have firm beliefs and principles, I can feel myself on shaky ground if anyone challenges them. It's not about lacking the courage of my convictions, but more about self-confidence and personal esteem. After having these things shaken by a lifetime of indifferent, contemptuous or hostile treatment at the hands of others, it's hard to re-build these things. A mere comment can reduce me to emotional rubble.
Having said all that, my diagnosis has helped to restore a sense of indentity. I'm me, and no one else. Nor do I want to be like anyone else. I wish I could be better at some things. But, as I started out by saying, I know what my strengths are. I try to play up to those as much as I can now. I'll always have the weaknesses. But I tend to put them aside much more, because they're in large part what fed my confusion and lack of sense of self.
I've mostly identified as 'existentialist'. I find it a very congenial set of ideas, rather than an ideological or philosophical doctrine.