Part of my self-directed series for my Spring 2022 art class.
I think I’ve always been a little bit more of a follower than a leader when I was younger. I remember that one of my earliest friends was kind of a “queen bee” type and I was just one of their drones. A carbon copy that would adopt their likes and dislikes at the drop of a hat, lest I risk getting stung. It’s not like I was miserable being friends with them; at the time, I genuinely did enjoy their company and their interests. However, I didn’t realize how much they dictated my personality until they had suddenly disappeared from my life. I was alone, with no idea how to move forward and very little social skills.
Since I was struggling to make new friends after that point, and because I had more wiggle room, I began to explore more of my own personal likes and dislikes. I particularly indulged in fantasy media very heavily, which only got worse when my depression had started to set in. Escapism became one of my main ways to cope. I would adopt personality traits of characters that I liked and completely immerse myself into their fictional worlds. Sometimes I would even insert myself into their stories, take on a gender-bent role, or just completely take on the identity of a character. I was able to completely detach my mind from my body and become whoever or whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I lived in my mindscape, on the very edge of fantasy and reality. I was never to the point of complete delusion or split personality, but it was so much easier to like myself as a fictional being rather than a real one.
I hated thinking about myself. My gender identity, sexuality, and personality were very unstable for several years. I felt like my real self didn’t actually exist, like all the bits that made me “me” were either stolen from somewhere else or constantly being shifted to form a different version of “me”. I felt like nothing existed underneath the surface, that I was just a hollow shell of something that had died a long time ago. Something that was pretending to be human. I especially couldn’t stand to look at myself, anywhere. I would deliberately avoid looking at reflective surfaces or photos because it always felt like I was staring at a complete stranger. Nothing ever seemed to match how I felt on the inside.
As of the time of writing this, it’s something I’ve been trying to learn more about these past months. I’m learning to be okay with the uncertainty for now and I’m starting to solidify the parts of me I want to keep, but there are still moments where it feels like everything is falling apart again. I hope that someday I’ll be able to say with confidence, “This is who I am.”
