Who Am I?

"Know thyself"

It's what the oracle was said to have inscribed over the door, right?  Everybody knows that.

Hell, when I watched the commentaries on my Babylon 5 DVDs, there was the huge long going on about which faction asked what.  "What do you want?" vs. "Who are you?"  It was some sort of big hairy deal.

I can easily answer, "What do you do?" or even, "What are you?"  We live in a culture where who you are is supposedly defined by what you are paid to do.  No big shock there.

I'm paid to make quick judgment calls on social media content.  Sometimes I'm excellent, sometimes I'm merely human.  The brand gives me a set of rules, my employer gives me a set of guidelines and specialized training, and the customers of my clients give me a bunch of grey areas.  My job is to say yes or no, based on all of those things.

If you think that's who I am, you're just being ridiculous.  What a silly thought!  I am not a person who says yes or no.  I am not a bit or a switch.  I do not exist only in a state of on or off any more than you do.

I'm also a mother, but that itself is not who I am.  It falls into what I do, most of the time.  My son is a teenager.  I teach.  I guide.  I punish when I have to.  I hope.  I do the best I can, but...this is not something different or unique.  There are all kinds of mothers out there of varying skill and ability.  Motherhood only defines me to one person.

I'm also a step-mother.  I'm a wife.  I'm a daughter.  I'm a sister.  I'm a grand-daughter.  Etc.  I'm a member of a family.  Okay...

I'm more of a cat person than a dog person, because I don't really like it when I'm licked and slobbered on.  Of course, the joke's on me because my kitten (she's a year and a half and only weighs 5 pounds, so her age does not define kitten-hood or cat-hood) likes to groom me.

Let's see...what else?  Dig a little deeper and I am someone who feels like she's missed out on a lot of things in favor of experiencing other things that no human being should have to go through.  Some of the things I feel bad about missing out on are petty.  Some of them are completely alien to normal members of society, though.  But, then I think of cultures outside the US and realize how lucky I am.  If I'd been born in a war zone, or a land of plague and deprivation and drought, I wouldn't feel the loss of all the things I never had from where I'm sitting now.  I'd just know how lucky I was.

I have a house.  I have a paycheck.  I have food.  I have a computer.  I have a TV!  How can I be someone who feels loss, when I know how ephemeral those blessings can be?

Okay, so I'm still at a disadvantage compared to most of the country.  Eh, so what?

Who am I?  I prefer to be an optimist, but sometimes I can't help but be a pessimist.  I've had a rougher life than my peers.  I have retreated into books, I have retreated into video games, to escape the horrors I have seen.  I have written books to help me cope with the horror show that has been my life.  I crawled out of a hole much deeper than the one I am now in.  I can do this.

I've been labeled as a survivor, because I was abused.  I've been labeled as a privileged white girl.  I've been labeled as bisexual.  I've been labeled as a snob, because I was too shy to speak.  I've been labeled as a nerd, a geek, a freak, a goth, a mod...  My husband calls me old.  My son says I'm not that old, which makes me feel even older.  Actual old people roll their eyes, because they know how young I am and how far I still have to go.  I still have more ahead of me than behind, I hope.

I try to be honest, but I'm pretty good at those little white lies.  I try to be kind, but sometimes (usually in self defense, but not as often as I'd like) I can be a total bitch.  I try to be spiritual, but it's hard not to be a skeptic.  I try to be a good person, but most of the time I just feel helpless because there's so much I can't do.

So who am I?  I am a collage.  I am a collection of my experiences and my genetics and my environment cut up into pieces and pasted together onto one canvas.  There's still room, but I've got to admit I've had to start overlapping and editing.

It's okay.  I think, so are you.  And maybe we don't know what the big picture is on this whole, "Who are you?" question, but I don't think the big picture matters so much.  We're all made up of parts and pieces, and that sounds good to me.