All My Identities Are Me

I think the hardest part of tackling mental health is that I am so many things at once, as we all are. You can't extract one piece of me, fix it, pop it back in, and then go to the next one. All the pieces of me are linked. My traumas are so intertwined with each other that, even when I spend some time digging into one, I can't forget the others. They're all fragile, but they can't be broken apart from each other.

If I may, I'd like to borrow a term from feminism: intersectionality. But instead of talking about intersecting identities on a social scale, I'm thinking of how our identities also intersect inside of us. I'm an adoptee, an abused child of a narcissist, a sexual assault survivor, a bisexual, a cult survivor,  a fat person, a person who lives with chronic illness and pain, as well as mental illness. All of those things are me, but, while they're not the whole picture, asking me address my identity without all of those pieces and more is unfair and impossible. 

I think we spend a lot of time separating ourselves into pieces, into digestible and livable chunks, both for others' comfort and for our own. For a long time, I resisted the labels of my identity that might make me seem broken or weak, buying into my own internalized ableism. 

But what I'm finding lately is that embracing those labels is strength. It's empowering to claim all parts of myself, both because it's rebellion against society's expectations and also because it just makes me feel more whole. How could I possibly love myself while denying parts of myself? Once I claimed the parts, the shameful connotations fell away. I didn't feel guilty or ashamed anymore; I felt free. I felt more like me. 

For example, I've talked a lot about my adoption here and in therapy, but one thing I was missing was how that fit into my identity. I've always felt rootless, like an orphan, like someone who existed both in and out of my family, lacking my full story. But in the last few weeks, I've been finding community with other adoptees and they taught me something I hadn't considered: adoption is trauma and that trauma is embedded within me.  What I mean is that I felt rootless because my roots were stolen from me, both through my adoption itself and also due to the state's treatment of my story. They took it. They filed it away and told me I wasn't allowed to access it. My history was taken and I was assigned a new one that was incomplete. The key here is that I've discovered that it's not just about my stolen roots; that trauma itself IS part of my identity. That theft is part of my story. It's a piece I hadn't noticed that was sitting there all along. 

I can't go back and change that, but I can piece myself together embracing the truth of it. So much of my life has been written in trauma that I've felt like I needed fixing, but now I think it's about learning about myself that I can feel whole and confident with all my parts. 

Another example: in the words of my therapist, I have the soul of an activist. I want to fight for others the way I wish someone had fought for me. I want to be the person to stand up to injustice and use my voice for good. I couldn't turn that off it I tried. It's in me. It's a flame I can't extinguish. But, I rarely do that for myself. I rarely think before I jump in, but once my identity is threatened, once I get bullied for who I am or feel a part of me is being erased, I panic. I retreat. I go to ground. 

I know this comes from my CPTSD. My own mother gaslit me my entire life, but so did my adoption and so did the queer community when I came out, and so did multiple abusive partners. I'm so new to feeling confident in my own identities that those parts of me are still extremely fragile to attack. I find this infuriating because I rarely think of my own safety when defending others, but I can't defend myself in the same way. I've been called every name under the sun when fighting about racism or homophobia or sexism and laughed about it, but when it feels like I'm being personally attacked or erased, I panic. 

Okay two stories to illustrate this dichotomy:

When I was around 21, I was at a small get together at a girlfriend's house. There were maybe 6 of us there, just hanging out. Now, one of our guy friends got super wasted and started running around the front lawn taking off his clothes. As the rest of us tried to chase him down and get him to go inside and put his clothes back on, a car drove by the house multiple times. It turned out that it was the ex of my friend who lived there and he was stalking her and was convinced that my naked drunk friend was a threat (stalker logic). He finally stopped the car, jumped out, and charged at my poor wasted and nude friend with a baseball bat. I didn't even think; I just got between them and screamed at him to put them bat down. He did and he left and everyone was fine. But y'all?!? He could have bashed my head in. I didn't even think about that. I just wasn't going to let him hurt anyone (except me evidently). 

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when I pissed off the lesbian community when trying to discuss lesbian biphobia with my fellow bisexuals (something I'm absolutely entitled to do btw) and lesbians both on TikTok and Twitter started attacking me and calling me horrid names and trolling me and I completely panicked and made all my socials private and deleted Twitter (with over a hundred unchecked notifications) and haven't been back to either platform since. And I felt chickenshit and weak and furious both at the community which should be a safe place for me (and other queer people) and at myself for letting them bully me. 

But you know what I forgot? NOONE LETS SOMEONE BULLY THEM! Bullies bully with or without our consent. This whole, "nobody makes you feel badly without your consent" is bullshit and it takes the onus off the bully and puts it on the victim. The fact is that many lesbians made me feel unsafe and erased 15 years ago when I first came out and they did again a couple weeks ago and that's on them. 

I was discussing this with my therapist yesterday and how I still get very triggered when my own identity is attacked and she said all the things I've said here, but also we talked about how to survive that kind of attack and how to feel more confident in my identity and I think I've come to two realizations: 

1. Feeling fragile in my identity is part of my identity. It's a piece of it. I don't have to feel ashamed that I am sensitive to that and it's okay to not always feel up to defending myself. Knowing that is power. Knowing that I'm a sensitive flower sometimes is valid and something I don't need to beat myself up for. 

2. But also? I don't owe anyone shit, let alone a bunch of strangers on the internet. I don't have to defend myself to them. Bullies always make us think that we owe them a fight, but why? Why do I have to fight to prove myself to anyone? I don't. 

Next time I feel like my identity is attacked, my goal is to take a step back, breathe, and try to remember that nobody defines my identity but me and I don't need to defend that. This will obviously take practice and I'm going to try to give myself grace and kindness through it. 

But my point is this: once I figured those things out, I felt calmer, centered, more empowered, even though part of that is acknowledging weakness. I think we've really done ourselves a disservice in the deification of strength and power, when it's in vulnerability that I've felt the most empowered. And I don't just mean publicly vulnerable, because the most difficult person to be vulnerable with is myself. Every time I've learned to embrace so-called weak parts of myself, I've felt stronger because of it. 

I'm not just one thing and I'm still figuring all those things out and I'm sure I'll continue to do so. I got a late start, but I'm learning to be okay with that. There is power in acceptance. It doesn't make the trauma accessible; it's just means it's part of who I am and that's valid.