I Don’t Know Who I am, Please Stop Asking Me

I am turning 21 in a month, In this anguish I write some reflections.

The empty stage is before me, and behind the curtain, I am shaking.  I know what they want, I need to make them love me.

I think, I must have been able to do this before, or why would they buy a ticket to my show? But I cannot recall who the version of myself most beloved was or what she did.  

When I step on stage, under the white lights- and the horrifying silence of being watched consumes me, I can only approach the mic and remind myself to appear confident.

Amidst the performance, I lose awareness- struggle, speak without thought- hit and miss- then look up to see what they thought.

Now that it is over, I realize nobody was in the crowd. 

Hello

My name is Carly. I am 5’7 and a half. While I used to hate my height, I have now grown fond of it.

I am first of my name, eldest daughter, anointed after a McDonald’s employee whose warm greeting to my father amid a morning coffee run confirmed to him that, hey, the name on her badge, “carly,” would be a nice name for the little girl, who his wife was carrying.

I don’t know what else people expect me to say, but I am constantly disappointing in the performances I dish out.

If I were a movie, letterboxed would proclaim: 

Carly Campbell, 2003          

The Directorial Debut of Harry and Nidia Campbell               

Comedy, Tragedy 

⭐⭐⭐ “cute coming of age”

⭐⭐⭐ “A little annoying but in the way all 20-year-olds are.”

 ⭐⭐ “A lot of passion- but with no direction in where to put it.” 

⭐⭐ “Forgettable”

Aside from the melodrama.

I am quite irritated that this “obsession-with-my-identity thing” has not faded after age 14 as they said it would. Confidence talks in the mirror can only prepare you in theory until the lights are on you and you grow anxious because you still want to be liked. Really, “being unapologetically myself” fails to amend my discomfort in front of others because, no matter how hard I try, I am not even sure who I am. 

Identity is such a weird thing. 
I have not recognized this girl in the mirror as me since I was a kid. So, now, finding myself at a loss for this “true self” I search for her through memories. I go backwards because the things she liked were just because and never because of something or someone else. 

I remember being headstrong and opinionated, my parent’s worst nightmare for her unrelenting desire to talk and ask “why,” repeating jokes twice and louder- even when no one laughed. I was not yet bullied so I asked kids at the park to “please play with me,” begging for someone to be my friend. 

While generally inconsistent, as any child is free to be, I gravitated towards specific interests I still love and cherish fondly. 

Reading.

Once my father began sitting beside me before bed with a book, I desired nothing else from life but to learn to read. I had already lived in the clouds, so the books directed my travels to these mystical, unknown places, which taught me how to feel. I was like a blank colouring sheet desperate to be painted so that every tale told was an explosion of saturation, a first touch with the magnificence of narrative creation. 
I still remember the storybooks that raised me, the ones I would beg my dad to please read again because, no, I know I heard it before, but this one is really good. 

Music.

I remember my first song, at least the one that woke up my memory to recall them.

walking on sunshine. I was like six.

My first birthday parties were a blur of me crouched near the speaker, trying to understand the lyrics. So then, maybe because it was the only time I was quiet, I would be invited to join my dad in the basement of our second home, where his magic CD player would roar to the height of its glory. CDs would whirl around with a click of a button before landing on a song. I remember amid the “teaching of classic rock”, how my father would tell me, “you have to move your head like this,” shaking his already dwindling hair or “headbanging”. I would mimic, earning an approving nod, “a future punk in the making.”   So when I learned to play the piano, it was only because I wanted to be a guitar player, like Jimmy Hendrix, but I had to “do it properly” and was told to learn piano first. 

I played pretend in my grandmother’s garden and travelled valiantly into the headquarters of the villains I would conquer.
This is all to say that I don’t know what I was exactly; I just know I miss her.

She was so passionate and never worried that what she did was wrong. The novelty of such memories imbue me with a devotion to the me now, in her honour. 

Identity is weird, though; yes, that was me- I can talk about her with a sense of detached pride, but I don’t know how or when she grew up.

It’s hard to retain innocence, but even harder to keep yourself. To just dream without knowing where to stop and plan the future without adhering to the regrets of the past is a privilege of youth. 

When I became an older sister, I changed. 

It is not a bad thing. The lonely dreamer was ecstatic to have a cute and tiny playmate, I couldn’t wait to write her a part in my Star Wars roleplay (as maybe a droid or something secondary). But the space between two people is a new realm of self you can’t control, and you must eventually consider how the other sees you. I wanted to be a good big sister, so I tried to be good, even when I had to play as a kitty, not a Jedi- because she did not like Star Wars. I had to let go of some self-importance. I learned to love for and change myself in that love. 

To grow is to become more selfless, but identifying with the “you” in the mirror becomes more challenging. Entering the great unknown of society, you start to think of yourself through how others treat you. No one wanted to play in my stories as the characters I wrote for them, and that was a difficult pill to swallow. 

I remember wanting friends so badly that I was willing to do anything to be liked.

Carly, the storyteller, was my next step in selfhood. I recall modifying the “play pretend” narratives, eventually looping the recess loners into my world. I would fill their ears with stories I built and wanted to share. When they listened, I was able to bring people into my dreamlands. But it was not easy to get people to stay. I wanted to become a good storyteller, a change from a state where I was satisfied to just be.

Then I recognized a second condition to my identity: I am a girl.   
Dating, attraction- all that jazz- I had a new consideration for my audience: one must be liked- and a girl wanted. 

I was much slower than others in learning my place in line, learning how even to consider the qualifications of femininity. I was dorky and childish amongst quickly maturing friends and failing to follow the new rules- I found myself strangely always omitted from sleepover invites. One day, I realized I was being laughed at and not with, while the boys who used to be my friends never cared to speak to me anymore- and eventually, feeling rejected- I didn’t want to be.

Why oh why did my hair not dry straight as the other girls and curse these damn glasses!

It’s harder to like yourself when you live with others and they don’t. When it is a rejection so quickly received from appearance. I wanted to change this part so they would at least want to meet the “real me.” In the meantime, I would retreat from reality more often to inner daydreams like always, but it is never as fulfilling once you know others are around, or life can be a daydream- as unpredictable and fun as found in books.

I can fast forward through years of self-reflection turned hatred and attempts at self-love fueled by envy of others. Obsessive makeovers, forcing my mom to buy me leggings, and eventually, the insecurity of my voice finally got me to stop talking so much.

I lost myself somewhere along this attempt to be taken seriously. To be seen was overruled by a desire to be loved- and the sheer isolation of such complex desires created a division between the self I once loved and the one I should be. 

At some point, exhausted with it all, I stopped yearning, accepted grief- and began to prefer the freedom of being unseen. This was different, though, because left alone- I hated her, mimicking the judgement of others, to be alone was always worse. 

The coward hides in her room to recapture girlish daydreams where no one can hurt or hate her.

Then, the coward would prefer to cease existing. 

The audience…. yes…. this grand stage where I perform, it taunts me. 

I used to live in narratives, but I must now create myself as one. We are aware of the fourth wall, and I act. 

Who am I amongst conflicting definitions or the active desire to be liked?  I don’t know. I don’t know at all, and maybe no one does. Asking itself attempts to cage a transient existence into a consumable display. Carly! The 20-year-old model of this doll is .. insecure, witty, and sad, yet she still likes to read and is now weirdly obsessed with politics and philosophy. 

My identity is not hidden behind a locked door; underneath my skin, it is not something I may explain. My self is scattered across the people I live with, in pages of old notebooks and words I once said and remembered. My identity, I must acknowledge, belongs to others. My memories, love, and passions, though, belong to me.

While I have changed, I can open my diary to any old passage since 2017 and find the same unmistakable angst - this yearning- which, albeit insufferable- is somewhat lasting- amidst a language I’ve grown to adopt- slightly aware of itself as corny- and maybe I am in there somewhere.

I would kill to read the book I wrote about a tsunami when I was 10. 

In identity obsession, you forget that what made childhood so fun was the lack of concern for other’s opinions. Recently, I have discovered that “being yourself” does not involve treating everyone as obstructions to the real you but forgetting yourself and resolving to belong to the people you get a brief moment amongst. 

I was joyful in childhood for reading everything and finding joy in each journey, but I also re-read and tried to understand the pages I felt found in. People are similar. It’s weird how when you care about identity, obsession with self-worth constructs others as mere means to your end of self-acceptance- which negates their intrinsic quality- beauty and identity.  

I like to think of everyone as books or songs. I could never dream of creating myself- but before me- a chance to open my eyes through another- hear and see them. I love walking through library aisles and glimpsing the cries of humanity through each published piece. I pick a red book off the shelf and live in the world of another- take a bit of it with me. People are dying to be seen the same way you are, and you can gain more than validation from a conversation or a friend. Empathy is not pitying another but attempting to cross into their world, read their book and if not understand, enjoy the experience. 

We may walk around in something fashioned as an identity. We are all book covers and song titles on the streets- a summary, a glance. Yet we are filled with pages, and there is beauty in every genre, every unique language. I am sick of editing myself as if the critics want the same thing. I would instead prefer to read. 

The people I love are beautiful, wonderful people. Passion flows within everyone- and the ability to fall into other worlds is a connection in a way impossible from the confines of your headspace. I am a reader first, writer second; my pages are only inspired by the books I love the hardest. 

Love is our first state, not war or competition. My love created me, so I try to hang on to that directed feeling rather than claim control over the love I may attract. Whether or not people love me, I can love them; we can all be children trying to find something we care about. It is in accepting others we come to receive ourselves.