identity-crisis

The tension between people is palpable, and the ideal of what it means to be and look American becomes a preoccupation to folks around the country, including me.

How do you eat your roots?

I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn__ be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike.I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn__ feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror__ reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. __ho are you?_ I__ ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn__ me. I__ watch my lips moving and say it again, __ho are you?

They don't know who I am; what they do know, is that I'm not nothing, and that I'm not noone.

Our identity has already been chosen for us; but it is up to us to accept it, or fight and change it.

No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of ide

We usually don't realize the thing that is defining our identity until that thing is taken away.

Throwing your heart into something is great, but when any one thing becomes all that you stand for, you're vulnerable to an identity crisis when you pivot to a Plan B.

Identity was just a box people liked to put themselves in, a mast to tether to in a storm, a security blanket.

The Rebellions were the first gang in The Bahamas, to come up with a popular logo/brand in the wearing of Raiders clothing. However, other neighborhoods gave birth to their own gangs using popular sporting team images as their official colors and name. You had the Hoyas Bull Dogs out of Kemp Road; the Coconut Grove area took on the name Nike, which became their clothing of choice. Miami Street took on the name Hurricanes, and wore Miami Hurricanes clothing. However, when you look at it closely, because of the lack of involved fathers, a lot of us were simply lacking an image and a positive identity of ourselves.

Everything I touch makes me a little bit more like the thing I__ touching, so I__ better start paying attention to what I__ touching.

Just be yourself. You don't have to put on an act.""To be myself, I have to put on an act," Ginny said bitterly."What's that mean?""It means I don't know who I am.

What matters most is not 'what' you are, but 'who' you are.

When we do not know our true identity as powerful creators, we are susceptible to being used and manipulated.

Identity was a liquid state, ever interchangeable, and adaptable to its surroundings... It was better to not have favourites - a snake didn't mourn when it had to shed its skin.