Who Are You When No One is Watching?

Did you see the movie Us? The Jordan Peele film is full of twists and turns and tons of fan theories. I believe one of the underlining messages is that sometimes we are the actual monsters, the villains, the bad guy. We can be our own worst enemies and often the bad guy in our own stories. Watching the movie, reading some fan theories and even Jordan Peele’s own revelations of the movie and just looking back on my life these past few days, weeks and months sent me on a path of self-reflection starting with a text message I received from one of my older sisters a month or so ago.

“You don’t look like yourself.” The text message read. “You don’t look like my sister anymore.” She went on. Though my sister may have been half joking, she then proceeded to point out pictures of me that she felt like I looked different and pictures where I looked like myself. While these pictures weren’t photoshopped or altered in anyway in some aspect I could understand where my sister was coming from. Perhaps I did look slightly different from the last time she saw me. As someone who is constantly switching up my hairstyle and a complete chameleon when it comes to my style of dress I could see how I could look different but to not look like myself I didn’t completely understand – like who did I look like and what is my authentic self to her, to anyone, to me?

It’s something I’ve been pondering a lot lately. Who am I? I know that sounds odd and self professed woke people are probably rolling their eyes at me right now like I’m some priviliged college student who took a year off from Harvard to find themselves while backpacking across Antartica but seriously, who am I?

Since I’ve been living in LA I’ve been several versions of myself. I’ve been the girl who never had the real college experience and had only been drunk once in her life who moved to LA started going out every weekend drinking, blacked out after leaving a function, woke up in a friend’s shower next to my boyfriend vommiting and drank again two weeks later.

I’ve also been the woman who has been invited by celebrities to perform for them, headlined at open mics, wrote and self published my own book in under a year’s time as well as wrote, casted, acted in and executive produced my own pilot.

I have been the woman who worked jobs I hated, quit and became an entrepenuer. I was unsuccesful at surviving without a job, had to get a job and was able to quit again and once again start on the pursuit of my dreams as a writer making my own schedule and grinding to not have to work a job I hate again.

I have been the friend who has encouraged, motivated and uplifted my friends at every stage of their journeys and I have been the friend who has been too caught up in my own bullshit to be able to be a good friend to anyone including myself.

I have been the person who has watched my peers pass me and cheered them on with true happiness and adoration for what they were doing and I have also been the person who has watched my peers pass me and ask why them and not me.

I have been the happy go lucky fun girl who laughs and jokes at everything and just wants to see those around her happy and I have been in very dark and depressed states where I have contemplated the worth or purpose of my own life.

I have been the wife who has dinner on the table, candles lit and soft music playing the moment my husband walks in the door and I have been the wife who didn’t lift a finger before or after my husband came home.

I have been the girl who has hurt other women and the woman who refused to ever cause another woman pain.

I have been the woman who has let hurt consume her and the one who turned her heartache into passion and profited from my pain.

I have been the girl who craves attention and the woman who turns her back to it. I have been the woman who wears her heart on her sleeves and the girl who acts like she doesn’t have one. I have been the girl who has been violent and soft and quiet and loud and shy, angry and sad and happy and full of life. I have been everything and nothing simultaneously.

I’ve been so many different things to so many different people and I don’t think there is a label I can put on that. I am not one thing but so many things it’s impossible to put me in a box. While I may not know if there is a word, a label, a stamp for myself or anyone else really, I know I am a person with a beautiful heart and soul even when I have been ugly. I am on a never ending path of self discovery and constantly pushing my own boundaries, comfortabilities and confronting notions of who everyone else thinks I should be while living my life as vulnerably as possible.

If you’ve ever felt confined to a box you didn’t belong in or simply didn’t know who you really were, it’s ok. We are all just cruising around this thing we call life trying to figure it out. No one and I mean absolutely no one is perfect and I hope you never allow yourself to be fooled into thinking they are. We’re all messed up in our own quirky crazy ways and that’s ok. No one makes it out of this thing alive anyway why not have fun and explore the makings of you why you’re here?