The Painful Difficulties of Defining Myself, Day 274

I struggle with the barriers that exist in defining myself which makes me question if I truly do have a strong sense of self. No matter how crappy life felt, no matter how helpless, no matter how painful, no matter how alone I felt in this world, no matter how much I was convinced that the world deliberately antagonized me for its own amusements, I always prided myself in my strong sense of self. I'm independent, I'm opinionated, I'm uncompromising, I didn't let things intimidate me, but lately things feel different. So many people say the same thing that this could read like a clique and maybe it is, but I'm only me and I can only feel what I go through.

For the first time I feel lost within my own identity. I may have gone through identity crises or transitions that I wasn't too proud of but through it all I was aware of the changes that were occurring as foreign as they may have seemed. When I was sitting alone in my soon to be just mine pad, the power of the blank canvas began swallowing me whole. I began realizing that this is my own space that's going to allow me an opportunity to identify myself in my own space, and I have no idea how to decorate it. I managed to turn decorating into an identity crisis nightmare.

It sounds pathetic and I can't properly defend myself and say it isn't, but it was genuinely horrifying. My place is supposed to be symbolic of who I am and display my identity. For someone who knows herself, I need others to define for me how to decorate my own space. Do I even really know myself? Maybe this inability to make this space my own without the help of others is actually an insight into who I am and why I need to be away from others. I grew up fast, too fast, that I skipped a couple steps and years later I'm realizing from a distance how much those missing pieces are affecting me. It sucks to go back and fill in those gaps after so many years as I see everyone else progressing forward, but I can't keep existing with pockets of emptiness inside of me. That's no way to live.