by Lauren Robinson
I was going to start this with the dictionary definition of identity. Though after reading it, I decided it doesn’t quite explain exactly what identity is; I believe if you asked 100 people their definition, you would receive 100 different answers.
To me, my identity is important for many reasons. There are many who believe your identity never changes, I disagree. During the years that my mental health was at its worst, I couldn’t tell you who I was, I was a version of me that I look back on and cry about.
When I was young, I was described as intelligent, bubbly, mature, beautiful. This changed quite quickly when I started to feel anxious, depressed and developed a stress disorder. I became the quiet, sad, lazy person that I thought I would be forever. At this time, all I wanted was to be “the old me”.
It was something I thought about everyday; people said to me they “wanted Lauren back”. That’s where I went wrong. I tried so hard to return to what I was, instead of trying to become what I wanted. 16 year old me was never going to be the blissfully oblivious 8 year old who read novels for fun and wrote scripts to perform for her mum; I had to stop looking back and start looking forward.
I started by thinking about who I wanted to be, I wanted to be the person who read for pleasure again, and so I did. I wanted to be a strong person and so I persevered, I went back to college after dropping out the previous year despite the blanket of anxiety that wrapped around me. I started writing again, even picking it up at college because I decided that being happy was something I should allow myself to be, because however much I felt like I didn’t deserve it, I knew somewhere that I did.
My biggest challenge was becoming a person who loved herself, or even was merely content with her identity, and physical appearance. Honestly, I can’t quite say I’m there yet, sure I like my physical appearance, I know I’m somewhat attractive, but I also decided that wasn’t important to me. I am more than a face, what I wanted was to be confident in myself as a person, I wanted to be kind, selfless, passionate. I wanted people to smile when my name was brought up in conversation, I wanted to be able to accept compliments when I wrote something well, or did something praiseworthy, and scream from the rooftops when I got a good grade, rather than hiding it. I’m not entirely sure how I’m working on this, but I am, I can almost feel myself being happy with the person I am. Sure sometimes I worry I’m not good enough, but it’s
a constant battle.
Now, I’m described me as passionate, confident, empathetic, unprejudiced, intelligent, the list is endless. And most importantly,
I believe them.