This isn’t going to be easy. It is my belief that my identity is predominantly something I do not decide nor really understand. Who and what I am is decided upon by those around me. They see me, and form judgments regarding my appearance. They hear me, and form judgments regarding my thoughts. I am a construct. I am a fabrication. I am a simulacra.
Upon my birth, due to the physical manifestations I expressed, it was decided I would be classified as “male.” The family I was born into was of lesser wealth and dubious class (my father was raised elsewhere and rejected his own upbringing before I was born). I was born in the central area of the province of Alberta in the country of Canada, and I was born in the latter half of the twentieth century. For the first 20 or so years of my life, I was provided the education and conditioning that society and my parents felt appropriate for one of my birth.
By the turn of the century, I had already begun questioning virtually everything about myself and about the world within which I existed. I viewed myself as a duality, holding two contradictory halves. At the time, I would refer to these halves as the Light and Dark sides of myself. Now, thinking back upon this, I would describe the Dark half as being the part of me that accepted the education and conditioning I had been given, and the Light half as being the part that rejected it. However, this distinction isn’t without its problems.
As I can only know the world from my own perspective, I cannot say with certainty what others think of me, but I believe the following should be relatively close. To others, I am an incredibly intelligent and capable individual. Fiercely independent, I do try to accomplish all of my projects on my own without assistance. Far too serious most of the time, conversations with me slip into the abyss quite frequently. I have very few friends, but many acquaintances. My absence in this world would be felt by many.
I see myself differently, as would be expected I think. I am lonely, constantly frustrated as I try to express my thoughts to others only to find them confused or misunderstanding my ideas. My partner in life is the person who knows me best, and who probably is the closest to truly understanding my thoughts. But as I respect her as her own fiercely independent conscious entity, with her own thoughts and her own projects, I do not expect her to give up her own identity for mine.
In my youth, I was particularly stubborn and tried to conform the world to my own expectations. Now, I am still stubborn, but I have tried to adopt a policy of adaptability and flexibility, trying to conform myself to the world instead. I have many sayings, but this one I think captures me best:
Yesterday, I was a fool; for today I now know the truth of things. But tomorrow, I will realize that today, I was as much a fool as I ever was.