i am not who i thought i was
i am completely out of sorts. all of the routines i had are gone, and it’s not quite time to start new ones as we are not in our permanent home and i am not in school yet for another 2 weeks. for the past 23 days since leaving California i have eaten odd things at odd times, slept in various places and lengths ranging from 1-12 hours, and only figured out where i am part of the time. before i left i had very particular patterns, working in the same place for 12 years and also being a bike commuter and having to plan my days out and figure out the order and times to do things to avoid backtracking/extra effort/timing. so this total lack of pattern is surreal in many ways. it happens to most people while on vacation, and what people enjoy about escape, but this feels like a very long time to be without anchors, especially since i am not going back to what was before.
who am i in this place?
i am regularly feeling, very acutely, that i am not who i think i am.
meaning: the idea of myself (and the ideas that others had of me) that i had in that place, where i lived so long and had a distinct community and reputation and established relationships, was mostly being defined externally. if you take away all the patterns and defined spaces/relationships, it’s kind of scary how much is revealed; how much of who you thought you were is not who you really are.
it’s easy to see why some people are mortally terrified of moving outside of their comfort zones, their known reflections.
there are other personal matters too, relative to this flux, that have made this dissonance loud and clear of late. it’s disorienting, realizing you are not who you thought you were, who you said you were, who you felt you were. but it’s also liberating, when the things defining you fall away, discovering you can be someone else, someone more like who you want/ed to be.
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6 Responses to “i am not who i thought i was”
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moving as many times as I have has not, truly, been about “instability” for me… it’s this… pushing myself outside of routine, of reevaluating and reinventing, regularly.
I support this in you- it’s never a bad thing. good luck with all of it!
DISORIENTING LIBERATION! So confusing and so powerful.
What to do during the day in NYC? NYC is the best place to waste a day when people should be working. It feels so decadent and rich lady.
1. Take lots of yoga classes everywhere. I’m partial to The Shala and the Jivamukti mothership, although Greenhouse Holistic is my neighbohood jam. Do you know about Sandhi Ferriera? Google her. Take her Friday class.
2. Go around and pet couture. Seriously. I’m partial to West Broadway, myself (of course, Madison Ave is the most famous, but West Broadway has more variety). You will be amazed at how receptive the sales people at insanely fancy places are. I once had a dress-up session w. a bored clerk at YSL. It is an amazing lesson in garment construction and hard-core fashion details.
3. Galleries. Look at shit. SO MUCH ART EVERYWHERE. Fuck, you can do this out your door in Williamsburg or you can go to Chelsea. Get a coffee, bring a book and lay in the sun on a chaise on the Highline (only good during the workday when tourists are gone) then hit some galleries.
4. Spa Castle in Queens. Also, The Russian Baths.
5. Take a dog from the BARC shelter out for a walk.
6. Laze in the sun at the Williamsburg waterfront park.
7. New York Public Library!
That happens to me when I have no “house” keys. Even if they are temporary keys to wherever I’m staying, the no-keys is the most fragile point in my heart. It’s like having no cave to hide from a storm. I have no words of advice, just acknowledgement that All this Stuff is Really Big Stuff. I trust you to navigate your space however you need to.
thx for the comments and suggestions, ladies!
lara, i plan to do all of those things except the dog walking. i like dogs, but am not good with them.
i experienced this identity confusion in a major way in cambridge. without my friends, with my community, without event planning, without dancing, without orange, it was extremely different for me to feel like anyone. i was a blank slate. it was particularly hard, too, because i wasn’t as into my program or my studies as most of my classmates. i didn’t take on much new identity from school.
good luck with this… <3