Who Are You?

In my early 20s, I thought that this is a question I had to have an answer to since everyone around me seemed to have one for themselves. The struggles were real in finding my own identity since this was a question that I had never asked myself.

It was around the same time that someone I cared about deeply started attaching my personality to an identity that is globally known as evil. “Psychopath”.

Since I was still in the process of figuring out who I was myself, my mind seemed to take up that identity even if part of it fought the idea of not wanting any part of it. Long story short, the battle between the two opposite ideas in my mind led me down a path of depression and near suicide.

Fighting to get rid of my depression without an identity to oppose the psychopath idea that had taken my mind hostage was next to impossible. I tried to search for events and experiences that could disprove the idea that I was not a pyscho but even the good deeds I had done in the past seemed like things I did only to manipulate people. At least that is how my mind framed those memories when I re-visited them.

Let us not even talk about how much mental baggage of bad deeds I had for my pyscho identity to pick from.

At the time I lost 40kg and being 6'2" and having 39kg was not a pleasant sight. My bones were showing, I lost 4 teeth in that same time among other health beatings my body was taking as it was slowly beginning to shut down.

I had reached a point where I dwelled on what it would be like to be dead and I wanted that. CMC hospital in Vellore where I had previously gone frequently to donate blood and platelets had now rejected my donation and the doctors there were really concerned about what was happening to me. Donation sessions had turned into therapy although nothing was working.

What changed was meeting Nivedita. I met her at a time when I was going to take the biggest decisions of my life. I was going to quit school and commit suicide so that the school was not to be held liable.

It was extremely spontaneous meeting her because at this time, I wasn’t talking to anybody and I wasn’t interested in talking or listening to anybody.

“Excuse me…. Excuse me….” Nivedita exclaimed as she came running up behind me.

At first, I thought that this was someone late for her class so I moved to the side to let her pass. But she didn’t.

She instead came and stood right in front of my then tall, skeleton-like figure and she started introducing herself.

I had never seen her in my life and am sure she had never seen me either.

She had that free-spirited personality that beamed with what seemed like joy and enthusiasm leaving only a little bit of mystery in her eyes. She was breaking all the rules I had come to think of Indian girls given that for starters she was getting out of her way to talk to a stranger who clearly wanted nothing to do with her or anyone else.

I was thinking about quitting school and suicide that is all I was thinking about and my facial expressions were not hiding it either but she somehow ignored that and at the point, I was about to cross the road and enter the building to the Chancellor’s office, that is when she showed up. To me and the way I had lived my life up to that point, it was a miracle. She was the miracle.

We talked for what seemed like a very short time, maybe 30 seconds to a minute but something had changed in that time. There was this one memory that my mind had attached itself to that could not be corrupted by the psychotic identity that I had been identifying with.

Apart from the introduction, the memory she left me that could not be corrupted was simply just hope. On leaving, she said something like “ Am having class now but maybe I will see you around.”

That statement coming from her at that time was like a renewed strength that my body had to fight to make it through that time.

I never went to the chancellor’s office that day. I instead tore up the letter I had written to him, dumped my suicidal plans along with it, and went back to my room and watched all the movies in the hobbit and lord of the rights for the next several hours.

Had it been any other person that had told me those words, I do not know whether they would have been effective but I think that they probably wouldn’t because many people from my friends to professionals who had become concerned about me had tried and failed.

Over time, Nivedita and I have become very close friends and I still get amazed by the free spirit she has even though she probably doesn’t see it and has problems of her own to fight.

What was the purpose of that story?

For me, I have come to realize that I can shape who I am at any time. In other words, to answer the question …. (who are you?) I would say. (You are/ I am.)

The identities we take on are never permanent and can never be. We constantly change and evolve as we go through different life experiences and our identities can be changed by ourselves or other people through ideas.

When I took on the idea of having my identity be known as a psychopath, part of me wanted nothing to do with that. It did not affect my health alone but it also affected my character.

I did not become a serial killer, or rapist, or any of the other extreme characters that most people act out when the psychopath identity wins but I developed psychotic tendencies of my own that I fought to get rid of. These were things I knew would have to develop into extremes if I allowed myself to identify with these tendencies and call them my own.

I could for example call people just to hear the sound of their voices and these were things I had never done before but things that had now become my reality. The part of me that wanted nothing to do with this was strong however and my healing from depression came with the distaste for any such behavior.

Had I chosen to identify with those feelings, I would be dead now or in some max security prison somewhere.

Ideas are powerful and my quest for trying to find out who I am and constantly worrying that I was falling behind in life led to my mind quickly accepting the psychopath idea that someone had called me in their moment of anger. Whether they believe it or not isn’t the point but rather what I believe and how I go about it. Whether I reject it or not.

When I met Nivedita, all I started having was a hope which brought courage and determination with it. I then picked up art at 24 and became good at it, same with other things in design and programming.

But do I say that being an artist, designer and programmer is who I am? Or do I say that since my career is in civil engineering then being a civil engineer is who I am?

Or do I say that I am someone who came from a third-world country and one of the poorest countries in Africa and the world?

I picked up writing and I have been on and off for 3 years. It’s only this year that I started writing consistently on here. Do I say that I am a writer now?

I have a youtube channel with 180 subscribers. Not much but can’t that pass for me being a YouTuber? No? Maybe in the future?

None of those. Yes, I have an interest in those things but they are not who I am.

I JUST AM — YOU JUST ARE

If you are trying to find meaning in your life, then do not sweat trying to get the right one. You are.

Anything you choose to attach to that statement afterward is just something you have chosen to identify with. It may be temporary or you may stick with it till you die which in this case we could say was permanent relative to being on earth.

Nivedita is.

Today that statement has something attached to it at the end… “my friend”.

But maybe it would hold for our entire life or maybe not. God forbid but it could have an opposite statement attached to it at the end.

Whatever voice you hear in your head trying to put a limit on your identity is not who you are. You can play a character. But you can also change that whenever you feel like that character does not serve you anymore.

Sure you may get a character that will last you a lifetime but it’s ok if you do not get one that lasts that long.

All you have is to take those characters as lessons that enrich your identity, not stamps that seal the fate of your human experience.

If you are a lawyer, politician, engineer, doctor, thief, robber, murderer, rapist, and so on, those are characters you have played in your human experience. If you desire changed conditions, you can quite willingly change them.

People will always choose to remember you by the character you played because they cannot point to the identity of who you really are. If you have done terrible things in the past, it does not mean that just because you change your character, people will forget. Maybe they will, maybe they won't.

People now know Bill Gates as one of the most generous people in the world but most have no idea of the ruthless businessman character he had in his younger days.

Am not saying the bill is hiding his past. No, he isn’t. He just chose to have other hopefully better experiences that enrich his health, wealth, love, and happiness, and the world at large.

In my depression days, I never once had one identity. Soon as I thought I was a bad person, I would find myself with pure gratitude and appreciation for myself and totally unconcerned about my bad side. The next time I found myself thinking about being a good person, I would find myself doing creepy things on top of planning my suicide totally unaware of the good I had in me or what it was even doing.

Yes, you can be whatever you want to be. This is because YOU ARE. If there’s anything you want to become, there will be resources and work you need to do to get there but that is all. Getting there does not mean that it is who you are. You can choose to live in that place just as you can leave one city or country for another. You are not the city but rather experiencing life in the city.

On your part, you just are.

Your interests and curiosity will guide you through the unlimited potentials of your mind with imagination being only a thought away from creating even more potentials to add to your already infinite potential.

I AM — YOU ARE….. Ego Sum