Who am I?

I think a lot of people around my age start to go through this phase, wondering who we are. We want to know. We want to define ourselves. And it’s never enough to merely say I am me.

I am a person with blood in my veins and a universe in my soul. I am a series of endless possibilities, a limitless creation. I can do anything and be anything. I am who I am.

As much as all of that is true, we still feel the need to set these definitions up for ourselves. We still need a solid ground to stand on, a place to build off from.

So, who am I? 

Am I a lover? Am I a friend? Am I a daughter, a sister, a mother? Do I need to attach myself to people? Can I exist alone?

Am I a woman? Am I a man? Do I exist in between? Do I exist in neither space?

Am I kind? Am I cruel? Am I a slippery serpent hidden beneath a kind word and a smile?

Am I ambitious? Cut-throat? Willing to do anything and everything to get what I want? What do I want?

Am I a scholar? A worker? A layabout? Am I someone who can be satisfied with all this? Am I someone who craves more, who needs more? Am I someone who can ever be fully satisfied?

And what does all of this mean?

Man, woman, child, good, evil, intelligent, hard-working—what do all these words mean in relation to me? Am I any of them? Am I none of them? Can any of them ever fully apply to me? Can I ever receive answers?

Or is that all that life is—questions? Just an endless series of questions, a continuous attempt to fill in the blanks until it’s all over and there’s no more you left to be defined?

Maybe the problem is that we keep asking these questions because we cannot define ourselves.

Maybe it doesn’t work that way. Maybe others can define us—they can look at us and make decisions about who we are based on the way that we act. But the truth is, we can never be fully satisfied with the definitions that we place upon ourselves because we are constantly changing.

We are not simply one thing: We are ever evolving, always growing, always becoming different from the definitions that we place upon ourselves.

One day we are kind and nurturing, and the next we are angry and all-consuming, a destructive force, our own villains that must be overcome by the hero within us.

By the goodness and the contemplation that we are equally as capable of.

So who am I? I am all and everything. I am what I want to be. That’s who I am.

~

Author: Ciara Hall
Image: Marvin Meyer/ Unsplash 
Editor: Sara Kärpänen