who am i? should i even be asking this?

on friday night, i found myself writing on a sonic cup…and one of the words already written on the cup was “your”. so, i wrote, “who are you?” oddly enough, the phrase fit in well with the conversation going on around me that i was having a hard time paying attention to for the conversation going on within me, but it also fit well with questions i have been asking myself for a long time. the topic came up again with a friend the next night. just today, as another friend brought up these thoughts that have been rolling around in my head, i decided to blog about it. so, here goes.

for a long time, i have striven to find my identity, as we all have and are, i think. i see myself differently than others see me, and than i see others. i see my faults and my struggles most prominently, and i begin to believe that that is my identity. i am reminded of AA groups here. now, the 12 steps have some fabulous things to offer the world, and they have done much good. but, they are steps. you don’t sit in the step of admitting that you are an addict, though often we sit there and find our identities there. i used to see nothing wrong with finding my identity in my struggles. i thought that admitting that i had them meant that i was dealing them. hi, my name is meg, and i struggle with this and that was done to me and it hurts. i was confused and believed that the only way for me to deal with these things was for me to find my identity there. but, when i do that, i always come back to what happened in the past, and what i struggle with. i incorporate it into what i have to be. i struggle with x or y, and therefore have no choice but to eventually fall prey to that temptation, so why not now? i think that is wrong. but, i think what i, at least, must do in order to fight that tendency and temptation is to find my identity somewhere else, but where? my identity is so multi-faceted. the word identity is often used in struggles with “sexual identity”. People must find themselves to be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. what does this mean? someone who struggles with homosexuality must then be labeled as homosexual, even though they are choosing not to choose that as their identity, since they definitely do not fit into the heterosexual or bisexual category, and they’re not asexual. therefore, we create anxiety by pushing people to decide not only who they are today, but who they will be forever. we do not know what tomorrow holds. we know what yesterdays held, and we know what has happened thus far today, but that’s it. what if we allow people to admit that they know where they have been, and they know where they are right now, and who and what is around them, and let it stop there? how about we let people sit where they are, instead of pushing them to decide where they will be forever and ever? how about we admit that we don’t know everything? how about we let ourselves sit in the tensions, in the unknown, and REST? there is no rest when we push the question of identity, unless we are telling people to rest in something they don’t want to forever be in. can we let people rest without telling them they have to admit what their sexuality will forever be, that they have to admit what their struggles will always be, that they have to tell us what they will always like, wear or drink? i think we can do that. i think people can get over being surprised at the fact that i’m drinking tea instead of diet coke, or diet coke instead of diet dr. pepper. i plan to not try to know what tomorrow will hold. but, then again, i plan to do that tomorrow. we need to change our language, and the questions we ask, and how we define ourselves and others. i am meg. i am some things right now that i will not be forever, thankfully. i can admit that i am those things, but they are not forever. they are where i am today. i can rest in today, and wait for tomorrow to unfold, because i am not in charge of everything, though i still make choices. and i, myself, make the choice to rest in today, and let my yesterdays be yesterdays. i choose right now not to let my struggles and pains define me, but i am also letting them exist right now. they will exist where and when they exist, but they do not define.

there is no failure except in no longer trying.
where are you right now? who is around you? are you willing to give up your supposed hold on tomorrow and those days that may or may not follow?