Who Am I Really Anyway?
a cartoon of me eating a banana. Yeah it’s probably kinda suggestive but also I did not draw myself flatteringly.
It seems silly at times to be in my forties and starting to truly explore my identity, but here we are. A childhood spent people-pleasing and a young adulthood hallmarked by some pretty gnarly cptsd did not leave me with a strong sense of self. Or any sense of self, really. I started therapy just after turning 30, but started it in earnest after having my first kid, determined to give him more opportunities to be a whole person than I had growing up. But healing is a slow and arduous journey, and only just now am I reaching a point where it’s meaningful to ask who I am, as I’ve slowly un-become a raveled mess of insecurities and trauma. What replaces all of that??
It’s a rebranding, of sorts, or really an un-branding. I’ve peeled back all the layers of masking and pleasant demeanor and indelible drive to be liked by everyone all the time (okay, for transparency sake, I’m definitely still working on that last one), but what’s underneath all of that is unfathomable. Amorphous. A blob of seemingly nothing at first, from which I must carve away all the bits that are not-me to reveal what’s really in there.
Instead, I’m trying to approach it as a new opportunity for good, healthy growth. Much like a shrub, I may be cut down to the nibs, but how I grow from here is hopefully into something vibrant, luscious and thriving. But the first step to that is, frankly, a sort of adolescence. That stage of uncertain exploration, of life like a giant wall against which I will throw the spaghetti and see what sticks. In this case the spaghetti is a metaphor for a personality.
Here’s what I know: the love of all things culinary is me. That pre-dates the worst of the trauma for certain, and doesn’t seem to go away as I heal. You see, when you are healing, all the skills you developed to cope with your trauma tend to also go away. They’re inextricably linked, which does make healing from trauma make you feel kinda incompetent and stupid. So having at least one skill and love to cling to while I flail around to dig up everything else that could be a part of me has been a lifeline, really. Manfried once commented that it’s the only hobby I haven’t monetized, and that was a wild arrow to the lungs as I was forced to confront that everything else I’ve ever done has been in the pursuit of survival rather than enrichment. Not to say that I haven’t attempted to make money off of cooking, but there’s a wide difference between the production work of working in a restaurant all night every night and the creative joy of puttering around in my own kitchen.
Add to all this the realization that the reason I burned out so hard on trying to make things for social media is because that game is a gambling game, not one with actual structure and rules and ideas. The attempts to go viral are literally the same as trying to win a jackpot at slots, where instead of pumping in quarters you’re feeding it your time and effort so that they can monetize it for themselves and give you nothing. The house always wins indeed.
But I liked making video content! Just not the content I felt was demanded of me to even have a chance. I’m glad that I didn’t pin all my hopes and dreams on winning big in that way, that I had the sense to diversify my income and find other jobs to do with my time that didn’t hinge on inexplicably becoming really popular for likely entirely spurious reasons. To be honest, I’m not much of a gambler overall, and I’m glad for the ways that particular aversion has saved my ass from ruin.
But that brings me around to my central question here: what is at the core of me? What is it that I love, that I want to share with the world for the sheer joy of sharing it? At a glance my interests lack cohesion, from culinary to construction to illustration and cartooning to invention to absorbing avalanches of new information and so on and so forth into eternity. What’s the through-line of all that? I know I like to make stuff, but “hey come watch me make stuff” is not the most compelling call to action. So what’s the pitch?
Who am I?
