Who Am I Actually?

When you read the title, what did you picture? Did you visualize yourself exactly how you are right now, or were you bombarded with imagery of who you’d like to be? That question is something I ask myself daily and has recently become more of a burden then I’d like it to be.

In the past few years I have made significant changes in my life, including moving across the country and settling into a completely different lifestyle than the one I was living in my hometown. In 2015, my boyfriend and I decided we would pack up his silver Jetta with whatever could fit (or in his words: “highest price per square inch”), including our eight-year-old Maine Coon cat named Nike, and drove across the country to our new home with friends who graciously accepted us. We settled into a small forestry town, surrounded by mountains and beautiful green spaces. After one day, I had a job with a local charity and was settling nicely into my new life, seemingly comfortable.

Fast forward almost three years later and Im still working for that charity, we own a home, rescued a dog, and are looking into purchasing an ATV or side-by-side. I no longer talk to my friend whom we lived with in 2015 as I found out from her (now ex) husband and his family that she had been spreading lies about my life prior to our move and casting my recent successes in a light that completely devalued my efforts, but made her look a saviour who saved me from a bad place (which was disgustingly untrue). It hurt, as I had known her for more than a decade and believed we were pretty good friends.

Meanwhile, back in my hometown, my girlfriends were creating and strengthening the group I had once been a part of. Watching their daily Snapchats and being a member of a groupchat made it so difficult to be away from them, but I knew that my decision was for the best because I knew what I wanted. And unfortunately, my hometown could not give me it. Their lives continued, as did mine, but I missed many important milestones, including two post-secondary graduations and a thirtieth birthday. I’m sure you have heard the saying, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I can attest that this is a true statement!

Prior to the move, I was convinced of being an extroverted personality. I have even completed a Myers-Briggs Personality Test wherein I uncovered I was an ENTJ personality (Google it!). It was not until I was separated from my friends that I realized how extroverted I actually was.

Throughout my life, my friends have always been a priority, even more so than my family—which is a whole other story, for another time—and being separated from them affected me and my ability to be happy. At my core, I am a people pleaser and will do whatever I can to keep and make people happy, especially my friends. Not only that, I have a deep desire to have friends which stems back to being a kid and being rejected for having an ethnic mother, but being a white girl with freckles and strawberry blonde hair. Plus, I was a tomboy who would have rathered play sports than with Barbies, so the young girls were not interested in being my friend. These traits have led me to accept one-sided, volatile friendships that were unhealthy and immature. After losing that friend of over a decade, I started reevaluating my choice in friends and realized most of my friendships followed the same trend of filling the void of needing a confidant but that person not reciprocating the same quality friendship.

When your identity is engrained so tightly to the acceptance of your friends and your ability to be a good friend, losing a solid network of friends is that much more devastating. This network, formulated through years of being coworkers at a chicken restaurant, was a diamond hidden in the rough of horrible friendships and misconstrued intentions.

I attempted to recreate these positive connections in my new home, but that has proven to be very difficult. Have you ever tried to make new friends in a small town where most people have known each other essentially their whole lives? Let me tell you, it’s not easy. I have struggled to secure solid friendships in my new town, even to the point where I have stopped trying. It sounds like a sad, sob, “woe is me” type situation, but I think it’s been for the best.

My friends were my identity. My ability to foster and cultivate friendships, regardless of their toxicity was an engrained aspect of my personality, constantly switching who I was based on the group of people I was with at the time. That’s not healthy. I have come to realize that I don’t know who I am without my friends.

Now, at almost thirty, I contemplate my life choices and try to imagine the person I want to be, but the image is clouded with uncertainty. Who am I without my friends? Who do I want to be? What do I want to aspire to? These are questions that I must continue to formulate and seek out answers for, but I must uncover them on my own terms, without he answers being directly connected to the friendships I create.

Who am I actually? I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.