Well, I've Been Afraid of Changing...

Sometimes I get scared that in these past few months I've lost my identity. There's something in the combination of losing what was such an integral aspect of who I was before college and the fact that I am so lost in these surroundings that has left me struggling.

It's the puzzle of combining the micro, meso and macro levels of an identity that is leaving me with a 1,500 piece jigsaw of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Who am I according to me? Who am I according to those who are in my life on a personal level? Who am I according to the jock who sits next to me in Bible class wondering which iTouch game I am playing? And with all of these questions come the assumptions you make about what others are think about you based upon your own internal belief system. Your identity is a combination of the different things you believe people feel about you.

Since I stopped stage managing after CLOC this summer, I lost something that was such a structure for who I was. I know it's not gone for long but right now, its absence leaves this awkward unstable aspect of me that invites conjecture about who I am beyond the theater. Suddenly, I am defining myself by my brain and my love for literature and English (which is whittling away as the academic spark in me is fading due to UC classes). And here at UC, those are very hard things to define yourself by because no one gives a flying Fig Newton about any of that.

So what do you do when your identity runs counter to the environment you are in? How do you become comfortable in an identity you are still so insecure about in a place that makes you feel lost? I guess if I knew the answers to these questions, I wouldn't be struggling to pass the few months I have left in Cincinnati. Maybe I would be trying to save myself from drowning rather than waiting out the storm in my bed with my crime dramas and kitten. Maybe I would feel comfortable enough in who I am in this moment to try harder to find my niche.

[A quick shout-out to a friend who loved me enough to remind me that I used to love writing here and for giving me a little incentive to try again.]