Identity

Finding identity may be one of the hardest things for someone with mental illness to do. For all people it may be one of the hardest things to nail down. Are we our jobs, our achievements, our dreams, or even the plain monotony of our everyday existence? What are we besides our actions, both what we have done in the past and what we are doing? My father has been working on his auto biography for some time under the working title “Deeds Not Words”. For someone in my position finding self can be harder than saying it’s what I have done. Should I define myself by some of my more outrageous actions under the throws of a manic episode or my complete apathy and despair while wallowing in depression?

For some time I have been haunted by the idea of destiny. The genes we are born with have some of the deepest effects on our personality. While a child is still young they exhibit signs of who they are and who they are to become. Even fraternal twins are often incredibly different people despite that they share many of the same experiences in their formidable years. The other major contributing factor to who we are comes from instances of chance beyond our control and how respond to them, although even these responses will tend to fall along patterns of behavior that developed before we knew ourselves.

I would like to believe that I am who I have been as much as whom I will myself to become. It is a terrible thing for someone to define themselves by a label that has been assigned to them. Diagnosis with mental illness is far different than any other form of malady. There is no blood test to determine, no brain scan to show, or visible wounds to diagnose the demons that afflict us.

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.” John Stienbeck wrote that in  The Winter of Our Discontent and it has stuck with me ever since. Mental illness often leads to isolation. For months, even years on end I can lead a “normal” life. On the outside I probably appear much like any one else. But occasionally I enter mania; my actions stray outside of society’s acceptable limits. While I feel elated inside every one around me suddenly no longer knows who I am. Eventually I come back down to normal and my family and friends (those I haven’t driven away in the process) breathe a sigh of relief. Normal for me is ok, but I miss my wild side and even hold onto some of the delusions I experienced. And suddenly I feel that the people around me are not like myself. So begins the cycle of depression and isolation.  

Maybe none of us really know ourselves. Deep down below the layers of actions and thoughts is something our minds cannot fully fathom. As a race we have sought to add meaning to our existence and to understand ourselves in terms of where we have come from and where we are going. The culture of the western world is shifting towards a faith in science, where only what can be quantified and repeatedly tested can be trusted. Throughout history every religion has appreciated a metaphysical connection to something we feel but can barely describe or understand.

The journey to finding me is long and nowhere near over, but at this juncture I am certain of several things. I am more than a collection of genetic information. I am more than the chemical reactions and seemingly random synapses that occur in my brain. I am more than a label. I am a soul and I am not alone.