Identity Crisis

 27 mins...

Like a sticky web, intricately woven, tight knit and indestructible; an individual’s identity is not often laid bare. 

Rarely questioned, unpicked or unravelled but accepted as a whole entity. Never challenged for what it appears to be. An unassuming but powerful existence; the all encompassing sense of self. It is not until something traumatic, large and overpowering comes to crack this wholeness, that the fragility of identity is truly realised. 

To be an unwilling paralysing participant of this un-relentless unravelling is to lose a sense of control. This loss is tolerable but as the thread continues to be tugged and pulled, it leads most significantly to a loss of self. To experience that tremor, the first deep crack that resonates deep within, penetrating the pure core of one’s existence, is nothing but surreal. 

It is easy to embrace denial. Hiding from the cold and clinging clamour of fear. But it takes hold; silently and deadly as it snakes systematically through the body. Subtly attacking and invading. It is a dichotomy of emotion as the constriction commences. Denial deepens, ironically feigning familiarity as it rewires the body signals. Symptomatically, it will become a reassuring reminder of feelings and senses when the rest of you remains detached and cold. What and who am I? Questions. Thoughts. Doubts. All interspersed with periods of nothingness. 

It is only when you are forced to recognise that you are truly broken that the slow process of picking up the proverbial pieces of your former self starts. The fragments that lay scattered around you appear both alien and alienating. 

To lose the central core of character is worse than death itself. After all, death promises peace and tranquility; a never ending silence. To question who you once were and who you can now become is an endless terrifying silent scream, wrenching through your gut, ripping out your cortex. 

Denial deepens, befriending you as a doppelganger of death. Fatigue is rife and you cannot fight as denial once again feigns familiarity. You slip subconsciously further into the depths of denial. Pretence protecting you from the pain.  

Identity is a person's conception and expression of your own self. Own - that paradoxical word meaning it belongs to you, to have rightful possession and also is of your own doing. But something external has raped you of this self expression. Those around you travel alongside, failing to recognise the onset of the inner turmoil that you face. Maybe, just maybe, one day they will understand. But for now, you are here. Physically and emotionally isolated. The cliched shadow of your former self. 

When in public arenas, you scramble to reassemble those projected pieces of predictable personality. The automated responses and the shiny outer shell of front, unite to ward off unwanted attention. 

Who has the right to rob one of their own identity? Who is prepared for this ongoing arduous assault?

Part of the painful, probing process is the gradual realisation that the fabrications of self are so delicate. 

To pull on one single thread can be the deconstructive demise of decades of a determined dedication to life. 

Now you simply resemble that one loose thread; 

weak, undefined and simply drifting...