There’s no better way to start off a blog post than completely annihilating Shakespeare, but since the zombie apocalypse hasn’t quite begun, I think I’m safe from the brain-eating playwright from Stratford.
And with that in mind, I’d like to revisit a quote about being yourself by another dead writer, Oscar Wilde:
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
How true that is, and yet I wonder how many of us actually know ourselves enough to be ourselves.
This is my current conundrum: Who the hell am I?
I know who I used to be:
- A freak girl
- A club brawler
- An act first, think later person
- A ram who was more inclined to butt heads than to be all sheep cuddly
- A fearless explorer and adventurer
- Someone who loved as easily as she despised.
And now?
No clue. I still feel like a freak (which I use in the best possible manner because I wear that as a badge of honor) even though I don’t look like much of one anymore. I’ve lost the brawling in clubs, thank God. I now think about things first, except I think about them so much I’ve lost my fearless side. And I can still butt heads with the best of them, although that’s become a rarity these days mostly because I’ve been too exhausted to bother with it. As for the love part, well I love wholeheartedly, sometimes to my detriment, but my desire to be vindictive is long gone. That’s probably a good thing.
In my quest to figure out who I am I’ve read a lot of books about how to discover who you are – it’s amazing how many are available – but honestly none of them felt geared toward me. I don’t mean this as an insult to those who find them useful, but I’ve never been inclined to more normal ways of doing things and that does make it difficult for me to connect with ways of thinking that most everyone else would find helpful.
So I’m going to have to make my own path on this one, I think, which leaves me wondering how I’m going to do that. Not that I’m not capable, mind you, but I’m a bit rusty in the whole forging a path department. Despite feeling suffocated in the coffin of societal rules, I’m pretty sure making up some of my own is probably a good idea.
More to come in Part II
Question:
Do you find it difficult to be yourself?
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