Identities within Society
Do they help or hinder us?
Hello and welcome back,
First a warning, this is quite a long letter this time, so get a brew and get comfortable.
I have been pondering many topics this week, from angels and how they came into my life, to grief and how it affects us. Not just the big grief, but the little things that we need time to grieve for. For me, that is not being able to go for a walk on the hills here on the island. Not that I really did before, I was not in the right head space. But now that I want to, I realise I am unable, and I grieve for the lost opportunity.
However, earlier in the week, we held the inaugural meeting of the London Writer’s Salon LGBTQ+ group on Slack, and we began talking about identity.
It got me thinking. Not only about how well I know myself, but how identity can impede knowing others.
I have had many labels throughout my life, as I dare say you have too.
Daughter, Sister, Cousin, Aunt, Wife, Girlfriend, Fiancée, Cat lover, Nature lover, Writer, Artist, Knitting Designer, Chef, Artisan…. The list is endless once you think about who you are in relation to others and yourself.
If someone who didn’t know me were to give me an identity based on looking at me, it would probably be White, British, Married, Disabled.
How would I label myself?
The honest answer is that nowadays I try not to. I spent the first seven and a half years as a normal child; I think.
After Neil died, I was the quiet, thoughtful, dutiful daughter, constantly trying to be helpful.
Add in layers of school/house moves whilst dad was in the army, I was constantly trying to fit in. After the army life, I moved even more. My early life had left an ingrained pattern of moving as a solution to problems. So I spent decades not facing things, squishing them all down. Unsure of what or who I was.
In 1999, I finally accepted that I was bisexual. All those times in the past when I had yet again squished down those feelings didn’t fit my ‘identity’, as the world knew me.
I joined an online dating site, thinking to dip my toe in and see what would happen. After a few misadventures (thank goodness that Tinder etc., didn’t exist then), I found Jo. We were both studying with the Open University and that was the first of many things we had in common.
After a whirlwind romance, I moved in with her nine months later. Embracing all my newly uncovered identities.
Then my world fell apart. All the labels, boundaries, and boxes full of emotional baggage that I had been carefully curating and dragging around with me exploded.
I often wonder what poor Jo thought or why she put up with me during my mental health breakdown. We have been through a lot since then and are still together, still happy. She is my rock.
But I am getting off the point slightly.
After the breakdown, I have had to rebuild me and my relationship with the world. This is still an ongoing process. The conversation earlier in the week reminded me that those labels, boundaries, boxes that we put ourselves and other into are just barriers.
By trying to fit into a perceived identity, we shut out so much.
I try not to give other people identities or labels. I do not know them and even if I did, what right have I to label them?
Giving and accepting identities can create communities and social groups, but it also creates differences. It makes some people ‘other’ than the perceived ‘us’.
I urge you all to not be bound by society’s labels and the identities that it tries to give us all. Be, first a foremost, a human being. Be kind, act with love, be curious about others, above all be accepting of other human beings in all their glorious variety.
The identities dolled out by society, by others are really just boxes, just labels, and boundaries so that they can categorise us.
Refuse to accept them, be your own being, whatever your beliefs, orientation, or colour scheme.
BE YOU.
BOLDLY.
PROUDLY.
Go out into the world with confidence, talk to strangers, smile at people, act from compassion and love. The world will only change if we do. I believe that only by treating everyone as an individual can we can heal the world of the growing hate and intolerance.
As ever, thank you for reading, and for being here. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. I am always interested.
Until next time, as ever, may your angels and guides watch over you and protect you until we meet again.
Love and Light,
Tracy
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Thank you again for all your support.
It really means a lot.
Tracy , you’ve been through so much, but your writing has suddenly made me realise why I was out of step with my extremely conventional family: I’m lucky enough to have always been ME. But that didn’t fit in with my family’s expectations. I’ve been a constant source of sorrow to my mother from stealing at the age of 11 (now I recognise this as a reaction to being sexually assaulted - the parents didn’t get the hint) to not going to university straight from school (I was 65 before I did that). This prompted my mother to tears; I’d only ever seen her cry when her father died. So it was a big thing.
I’ve always tried to live my life being considerate of others and it was a great wrench when I defied my mother’s wishes and moved to the Highlands of Scotland two years ago. Mum was in the early stages of dementia but was safely ensconced at my sister’s. Three weeks after I moved, mum was extremely well looked after and happy in a home near my sister’s. She died in May.
A few weeks ago my sister tried to take her life. I couldn’t imagine anyone less likely to attempt suicide. She really meant it, taking 14 temazepam and slitting her wrists with one of her precious Global knives in a passageway between their back garden and the street, where she wouldn’t be found. She’s just been discharged from 8 weeks in a mental hospital which followed an operation to fix the tendons in her right wrist.
But she’s not speaking to me as she’ll ‘never forgive me for moving here and leaving her with mum’. She forgot about the fifteen years during which I looked after both sick parents despite my disability: dad with Alzheimer’s and mum with all manner of organic disorders, like Addison’s disease. My sister only ever visited on Mother’s Day. We were invited to her house for a few days at Christmas. That was all the support I had. Son in Germany in the army, on my own. (Thank goodness for great friends!).
I’m begging my guardian angel to help me bear this and help my sister heal and understand.