who are you, really?

Who are you, really?

You are whatever you want to be.

You are whoever you say you are.

I kind of have two lives, I guess – my online life and my offline life.

In my offline life I go to work every day and I have to do boring tasks like fill my car up with petrol and go to dentist appointments, in my online life I get to express myself and talk about things that make me happy, I get to connect with the people that came from the same star as I did.

On this blog I just kind of exist the way I want to and if someone was to ever ask me who I was this is what I’d show them, because it’s the innermost thoughts and workings of my mind. I talk about what I love here whether it’s people, music, books etc. I talk about my mental health and how I’m feeling, I talk about the fact that last week I wanted to throw myself in front of a car and this week I’m feeling a lot happier again. I talk about my tattoos and explain them all in great detail, which I don’t necessarily do in real life because I have no time to explain things to people who would never understand.

I’ve noticed that when I explain my tattoos to people, I don’t explain them but rather, try to justify them – I make excuses and say things like “I know it’s silly, but…” and then afterwards sit to myself and think, why did I just do that? Why did I just try to justify something so personal to me, like it’s anyone else’s business anyway? I don’t know. Because I feel like I have to make excuses for myself maybe – it’s a confidence thing and something to do with being a woman where I’m made to feel like I take up too much space and have to say sorry for everything , which then transfers into other parts of my life too like, for example, explaining the ink on my skin.

In ‘real life’ (though everything feels so fake these days I’m not sure how it got that name), when people ask me what the meanings are behind the tattoos I either don’t tell them and leave it as a mystery, or I’ll just say something along the lines of “Oh, it’s because I liked the way it looked.”

But what is real life, really? My online life is more real than my offline life. There are two sides to me and I’m myself in each of them however, the online me is more real, believe it or not – I feel like I can freely express myself this way. Like I said, if someone was to ever ask me who I was I’d direct them to my “online presence” for lack of better wording, I am who I say I am – there’s no one to tell you that you’re wrong because you can create yourself exactly the way you want to be. There’s no one to say “well, that’s not true because you don’t do that in real life”. How do you know that I’m even myself in real life – are any of us really?

“Everyone has a chapter they don’t read out loud.”

I’ve mentioned it before in this post but people will create versions of you in their minds that are easy for them to understand, because people always want to put you in a box. They want to label you and fit you into a certain category because it’s easier for them to understand you that way – because they get frustrated when they can’t place you anywhere.

“Your ego will do everything it can to stop you from changing and growing, especially since you’re attempting to obliterate the very identity that you and everyone else has come to know as ‘you’.” – Jen Sincero, You are a Badass

“Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn’t you. That isn’t you at all.” – Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life

I’m a million different people and I’m someone different to everybody – we all are. I struggle with my identity sometimes in the sense that I feel like I’m so many things and I want to be so many things that I can’t be all of them at once, I’m constantly moving and changing and growing and I can never stay in the same place for very long, I’m constantly on the move – I’m constantly becoming inspired and the person I was two weeks ago is not the person I am today, the person I was two years ago is not the person I am today, and that’s where people get it wrong.

People think that because they ‘knew’ you in high school four years ago, they still know you now. They think that in the last four years you haven’t changed a single bit and are still the same person they ‘knew’ back then and fair enough there are exceptions, there still may be some people that haven’t changed yet but, for the rest of us? Not the case.

I use the term ‘knew’ lightly because in this day and age, does anyone really know anybody? Unless you’re soul mates, best friends and pretty much inseparable or however you’d like to describe it – does anyone really know you? How many people suffer in silence? How many people are fighting a battle you know nothing about? Think about it. Think about it a lot.

I don’t have a soul mate or a best friend or whatever, so I know that no one really knows me, but they try to and they’ll pretend that they do. I don’t share myself like that ‘in real life’, I don’t give those parts of myself to people, and why? Because it would fall on deaf ears I guess – it would be wasted energy. I don’t have time for that like I said, I don’t have energy to waste trying to explain and justify myself to people who would never understand.

Some people will get you and some people won’t, that’s just the way the world works.

So where do I put those parts of myself that I don’t share with the ‘real world’?

Here.

Because this is my world, because I choose to be myself here. I can either choose to ‘label’ myself as the person I am in reality which isn’t fully me, or I can ‘label’ myself as my true and honest self that I choose to project here in my ‘online presence’.

Which one are you?

I’m still me of course, if you met me in real life I’d still be the same person, I just don’t talk about the things in ‘real life’ that I talk about on here, because there’d be no point – who would I tell it to? These days people don’t really talk and they don’t really listen either, everyone’s always caught up doing their own thing – in their own world that they’ve created for themselves, and that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I have to talk sometimes, I can’t keep everything in forever or I’d probably combust.

“I must write or I shall die of grief.”

If my favourite artist has just brought out a brand new album, I need to talk about it, I need to get that out somewhere and let the universe know that I love this person and the things they’re doing – same for everything, I need to tell someone that my mental health is getting worse because I’m probably terrified and hoping it benefits someone else who can relate to it and know they’re not alone. I need to say things because there’s so much in my head that I can’t keep track of all of it and I want someone to know it was there, I want to feel like I exist. I need to keep track because if I never document it…who will ever know? Who will ever know who I really was? Who will ever know who and what I loved or what I thought about on my 20^th birthday? If I never said it out loud, did it even exist at all?

The amount of times I’ll say or do something and people say “Wow, I had no idea you did that” or “Wow, I had no idea you liked that” is insane, and why? Because I don’t tell people, I don’t talk about myself like that because it instantly opens you up to judgement and guess who doesn’t have time for that? This girl. (Though I will admit it’s always nice to see the look on people’s faces when they discover things I’ve known the whole time). I’d rather just stay comfortable and drama free and keep things to myself – I don’t feel the need to talk. I’d rather just live in my own little happy bubble and share that with people who actually care – people who ask how are you doing? But really, how are you doing?

Talk is cheap sometimes, there’s so much scrutiny and judgement and gossiping out there these days that I’ve just completely taken myself away from all of it for the sake of my sanity and mental health in general – why do I want to expose and surround myself with all of that? I never have and I never will, my whole life I’ve always been a drama free person. I mentioned it in this post but I’m so careful with the things I expose myself to nowadays because at the end of it all I just want to be happy and enlightened, not brought down by hearing and seeing things from people that just love the sound of their own voice. So many people are talking, but no one is actually saying anything.

I’ve said this before (a thousand times now probably, so apologies if it’s getting repetitive) but this ‘blog’ for me isn’t a blog – I’m not a blogger, I’m a writer. I’m not trying to market myself or sell my work as a brand, I’m not creating content to get sponsors or followers…I’m just writing, and it’s so overwhelmingly heart warming that people enjoy that – people enjoy me just being myself.

If I was to try and fit in with the term ‘blogger’ as it’s known, I’d feel uncomfortable, because that’s not me, and in a place where I pride myself on being my true authentic self, giving in to the pressures of societal / internet norms is the last thing on my agenda. There was a period around a year ago where I felt myself drifting into this ‘blogger’ stereotype and I hated it, I could feel it happening and there were certain things I’d post and think…why did I do that? That’s not me at all.

I don’t know where I was going with this post other than the fact that I’m so grateful to have this space where I can confidently be myself because I know that people understand me or if I say something crazy people aren’t going to raise their eyebrows and say hey…what’s wrong with that girl?

I’m so grateful for this space here where I can talk about whatever the hell I want – artists, books, tattoos, mental health…things I did on the weekend. Anything. It really allows me to breathe, it gives me a space to mould and change and continue to build on the person I want to become. Like I said, I struggle to have a general identity because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing or what I want from life, society says that at almost 21 I should’ve already figured that out by now but fuck it. Who wants to follow the rules anyway, who wants to be a stereotype?

I feel like I have an identity crisis at least 8 times a day but you know, I’m sure I’m not the only one. I am whoever I say I am and if that changes from one day to the next then so be it, it’s all just a big learning curve. It’s just another thing helping me grow and change into the woman I will eventually become but even then, I will always continue to grow. We will never stop learning and flourishing, that is a constant part of life just like the rivers that flow in you and me. Bathe in them, take it all in. Wander for a little while. Find out who you are and change it, make people confused, don’t let them put you in a box because guess what? This life is for you, not them. Live it.

All my love,

Chloe .xx