Lost and Found

Hi lovelies,

Today's post is a long one and quite personal. I debated a lot over whether to post this or not because I felt, after writing it, that I was making a bit of a mountain out of a mole hill. Maybe I am. But it's my blog and I want to share this with you, even if it's not the best or most interesting thing I've written. But, on with the show....

It’s been hard for me to pin down my identity. Who am I? I know who I was. A couple of years ago I was sure – my identity was solid. Irrefutable. A done deal. But, identities change, they flow, they transition. One day you wake up and realise that you are not the same person you were 5 years ago. And that’s okay. It’s okay because you know who you are now. You’ve been changing so slowly into this new person that you didn’t realise that you had changed. It’s not until you realise what you are not, that you realise who you actually are.

My very first school picture. I was 6 at the time.

Everyone changes all throughout their lives. You change more so at some points than others. Through primary school and high school and university you go through major changes. You become a child, then a pre-teen, then a teenager and then an adult. Some changes are physical but the majority are non-quantitative. You mature emotionally. The structure of your relationships change. Your understanding of things in the world changes and your interests change. They fluctuate, they come and go. Some come and stay – like my love for the colour purple. Some come with a passion and leave with disgust – like my obsession with calling everything ‘random’ and having every second word being ‘like’. Some wax and wane, being really important at some times and not so at others – like my passion for really bad teenager-y supernatural TV shows (such as The Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf). And some you lose along the way and never quite realise why you left them behind – like my love for always wearing the biggest, flashiest earrings I could find. For me, it’s those bits, the changing of interests and likes, that is the scariest bits about change. It’s when you wake up one morning and realise that the person that you were, that you loved and that you knew inside out, they are gone and the person that is now staring back at you from the mirror is a very different person entirely.

I distinctly remember this holiday as the time before the fall. I was so happy here. I had also never seen a post box like this before in my life. :)

When I struggled with a really bad bout of depression during high school, this terrified me to no end. It got to the point where, when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t know the person looking back at me. They didn’t like what I liked – they didn’t like anything. They didn’t do I what I did – they didn’t do anything at all. They weren’t me. The real me smiled. She laughed and joked and did things and she didn’t have such a dead look in her eyes. The real me enjoyed jewellery and accessories and didn’t see them as an unnecessary chore. The real me wasn’t so… blank.

Here's me, a little older and a whole lot worse for wear.

After a while of living like that, you stop thinking about how you used to be. It just adds to the sadness that permeates your world. I got to the point where that person, the one who laughed and smiled on a regular basis, the one who enjoyed life, she was just a memory. A good dream. The person I was now, all emptiness and loneliness, that’s who I was.

I did have some interests. I cooked, I cleaned, I baked (though never ate the goodies I made) and I exercised. They were hobbies, right? The problem was, they were all driven by eating disorder. Yes, I kept myself busy, but because I had to – my anxiety and ED wouldn’t have it any other way.

Excuse the terrible quality and fuzziness, but I put this in the highlight how totally not okay I was at this point. Believe it or not, I was not quite at my lowest here - I actually lost a couple more kilos...... :/ Oh, and this was a themed 80s dress up. :) We don't generally dress like this.

And so I thought I’d found my medium. My new identity. Yes, it was sad and anxious and scared and empty and lonely – but at least I knew it. I understood it.

But then I made the decision to start recovering. I chose life. I chose to stop going down the path I was on and to chart a new course. I wanted to live, not die and I finally realised that continuing to live the way I was living was going to kill me. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But it was going to kill me. And, to be completely honest, it probably wouldn’t have even taken a year.

I realised pretty soon that my few interests were not actually all that interesting. I stopped cooking and baking (because I’ve never really enjoyed it), I stopped cleaning everything and exercise (eventually) went out the window. But where did that leave me now?

When I looked in the mirror now, all I saw was a sad girl who had to battle with her demons everyday and that didn’t have anything else. Without my demons taking over my mind, who was I? I looked back over my interests that I used to have, but realised none of them fit the girl I was today. They were too soft, too round, too warm for the sharp and pointy girl I saw in front of me. I felt a bit like Rapunzel from Tangled – ‘I’m terrified. I’ve spent my whole life wondering, waiting, dreaming about this moment. What if they aren’t everything I dreamed they will be. And what if they are? Then what do I do?’ To which Flynn replies ‘Well, that’s the good bit I guess. You get to find a new dream.’ But I didn’t have a new dream. I didn’t know where to start.

Source here.

But start I did. I started with little things – I talked to people again and I listened and contributed. I spent time with my family and I was consciously there. I started a blog and began cultivating it, building it up and making it mine. My lack of identity definitely had something to do with the fact that when I started blogging, I used I different name (which you can read more about here, if you are interested).

And, at the end of the day, I’m glad. I’m glad I went through with my resolution. I’m glad that I learned to enjoy life again. I’m glad that I started a blog. I’m glad that I chose to live.

I now know more of who I am. I am someone who likes painting her nails, who likes calligraphy and talking with friends. I like the beach and the sun and I like to swim. I like to watch movies and discuss them with people afterwards. I like the supernatural and I like myths and legends and I like folklore. I like to watch lots of TV and get really emotionally invested in the characters on the screen. I like to talk but I also like to listen. I like learning and I like to sing. I like bad jokes and dancing. I like to experiment with make-up and I like to ice-skate.

My identity is still a bit of a mystery. I still feel a bit like I’m in limbo. I feel caught between the ridiculously bubbly girl of years ago and the sad, withdrawn girl of my lowest periods and how they factor in to who I am now. I see elements of both within me. I still like to paint my nails and laugh much too loudly, especially at bad jokes. But I also listen more, I’m quieter, I no longer have to always be wearing jewellery – often I don’t wear anything but my watch.

These bits confuse me. Are they because of what I went though or are they just a natural progression of change as I grew from being 15 to 18?

Maybe the best way is to just let go of both of those versions of me and just start again. Refresh the page and start with a clean slate. Maybe the answers to my questions lie in simply not asking the questions. By not needing to know why I’m the person I was and instead focusing on the person I am now.

Believe it or not, these were some of the reasons that contributed to my decision to dye my hair. I’ve wanted to dye it for years and years, probably since I was about 13. But I never went through with it because of worries about upkeep and bleach damage and so I never did it. Eventually though, I got to the point where I was like, ‘yes, it may damage your hair and yes, you will have to do more to keep it looking nice than you were doing before but you want it and so just go for it’. And I did and I’m glad. It’s not major – I only got the tips dyed so I won’t have to worry about my roots. And yes, it’s fuchsia but that’s what I wanted and it’s my hair so let me do it. It seems so silly that there was so much stuff that factored into this decision to do something that a lot of people don't even think twice about. It seems stupid to write a whole blog post around something that, in the end, is such a minor thing. But, for me, at that time, it was hard and it was an important decision. As was my choice to not really include anyone in my decision making process. I decided to dye my hair by myself, I set the appointment and date by myself and I chose the colour all by myself. And for me, that is huge because I've always, always needed other people's reassurances about my decisions. But this time, I didn't. Or rather, I chose to battle through my worries and do it myself.

And I felt really good about doing it. When my hair-dresser was finished and I was leaving, her husband came in and caught sight of it (she works from home and we’ve know each other since I was about 10) and he said ‘Well you’re not that little girl from primary school anymore’. It was just about the best compliment anyone could have given me. Not because I hated who I was it primary school, but because it meant I was finally different. That finally, I had left my old, defunct identities behind and I was starting anew. And right now, I can’t ask for anything better than that.