How did it come to this?
In other words, how did this project come to be?
There was a short term catalyst: losing someone I wouldn't hesitate to characterize as the great love of my life.
This loss surprisingly generated a number of larger thoughts within me about myself, my relationships, and my life. I couldn't help, in grief, to wonder at how I'd become the person I am now. I felt insecure, at times worthless or hopeless. I felt empty of distinguishing characteristics. I felt loveless and unable to love. I felt a total and cripping loss of what were once my creativity, my senses of self and of self-worth, my confidence, and my self-esteem.
In other words, I had become what I could only call a ghost. I wasn't a shell. I was a shade of a human being.
At the risk of sounding too full of self-pity, I would like to recount the rest of my process of realization about where my life had led me. As I thought more about my situation, I couldn't help but go over the past seven or ten years in my head, trying to reach back to some kind of origin I felt should be there.
I think I wanted to find the core or the kernel of my identity.
What I came to identify as an overarching issue over these years was my readiness to change or adapt in reaction to boyfriends and other love interests. This may sound silly or obvious, but the extent of what I had been unconsciously doing was, to me, somewhat shocking.
I remember a time when I was more self-assured; when I was deeply creative and devoted to my own projects; when I did what I wanted without much thought of what others would think of me. I related to others on my own terms. My approach to dating and to becoming involved with other people was very much based on them liking me the way I already was: someone who wanted me to change the way I looked or acted would be someone beneath me.
The thing is, I never found myself in a situation where a change was demanded of me. But I realize now that over time, when I became involved with people I deeply admired, I desperately wanted these people to return my feelings. I wanted to be liked by someone I looked up to and respected and ultimately was the kind of person that I wished I was like, whether or not I realized that myself. In anticipation of anything strange about myself that could scare off others, I became self-conscious for the first time. I examined myself critically: my style, my behavior, my hair, my clothes, my hobbies, my social interface with other people. I watched what I did, what I said, what I thought.
I did this for so long, to such a great extent, and so unconsciously that it is hard for me to tell whose body I inhabit now. Who is this woman that I see in the mirror? What are these things that I do as though they're habit, when they don't feel natural to me at all? What are these ways of thinking that I have now, which don't seem as thought they'd come naturally to me as I remember myself? What about that girl I remember being? Who was she, how does she relate to this person I've become?
These are the realizations that led me to what I'm doing here.Labels: analysis, me-gazing, origins
