As a bookish, introverted teenager I spent a lot of time considering the concept of ‘finding myself’.

It’s a phase I heard an awful lot back then (like a lot of teenagers as we navigated our new territories) and because I always had to dive deeper, would actively research it as well. Self-help books, YouTube videos, blog posts – I spent so much time consuming what I could about ‘finding myself’, trying to find the secret recipe to becoming this person I wanted to be.

Do you know when you say the same word over and over it loses meaning? Perhaps that’s what I did with ‘finding myself’ because I’m 28 now and I’m still going through the same cycles.

As I get older, the more patterns I see emerge within myself. At times, it feels like life is one big repetition of your adolescence; one ongoing repeat episode of the same old sitcom, what you did, thought and said at 13.

I heard somewhere that it’s a privilege to be able to ponder the meaning of life, to be able to have the time and freedom to worry about existential things like who you are and what you want to do. And while I agree, being inside of it can feel like anything but – especially when it’s the same pattern you’ve been in for well over a decade.

This blog is essentially a small, public insight into this journey or cycle over the past 10 years of my life. I started when I was 18 and figuring things out in a new way than ever before, and I remember genuinely thinking I had it all figured out then. Ah, the blind arrogance of being 18! Now I’m approaching 30 and writing from a completely different place, physically and metaphorically.

Yet we’re still connected, past Rachael and now, with the same bugging questions.

Perhaps that’s why I now want to change the script a little, turn the question on its head and consider not how do you find yourself but rather do you create yourself?

How To Make A Person(a)

If life is a series of ongoing questions and repeating circumstances, why don’t the answers come easily? I learnt best through repetition – reading and writing information over and over again was the only way I would pass my exams.

So how come after 10, almost 20 years of the same question going around my mind have I not found an answer? Sure, I’ve found some answers as I’ve had moments in my life where I think I’m ‘sorted’ but then of course things move on, something new happens, you grow up and it all changes again.

Everything, from where you are to who you are, is subject to change – that is the nature of being alive. Being human means we have the consciousness to notice when these changes happen too. Animals, driven by their own instincts, don’t get to notice (or appreciate) when they’ve grown. Yet people, granted with hindsight and memory and cognitive thought, notice it all.

I don’t want to return to my animal self, to rely solely on instinct and habit. Living is about experiencing and as time moves on and I get older that’s something I want more than anything.

Things move so quickly that I genuinely get upset with myself for all the time wasted in my adolescence, worrying about who I was and what I looked like when I could have done more. I had a fun childhood and had some great experiences as a teen, but as the cycle continues to repeat itself and I experience some of the same things again with new eyes, I feel a sadness creeping in with the nostalgia.

So what if instead of considering how to find yourself, the question is more about making yourself – giving yourself an active role in the pursuit? Being active instead of waiting for something to happen, whichI could have benefitted from as a teenager and continue to struggle with today

I’ve already said the key thing – who you are is subject to change, just like anything we experience or have in this life. There is no way that you can just stumble upon ‘who’ you are and expect it to stay that way forever.

What happens when your circumstances change, when your tastes change, when your physical appearance changes?

Making yourself, then, is the obvious path. It takes a combination of your external and the internal; combining what you know about yourself and the world and how thing now aligns with the current physical version of you.

Who I am today wouldn’t be possible if I was still 15 and living with my parents or 19 and living in student accommodation or 23 in a shitty job – she had to wait until things were just right before she could start to emerge.

The Here And Now

As someone who continues to think in black and white (I’m working on it) not having a concrete answer is incredibly difficult to handle. But the truth is I haven’t been where I am right now before, so I have no idea what to expect.

It’s like that Pinterest quote :

“I will never have this version of myself again. Let me slow down and be with her”

– Rupi Kaur (of course)

While searching for that quote, I found another one and it is even better at summarising what I’m feeling. It feels even more poignant because it’s from Clarice Lispector, an author who’s work I’m currently reading (and loving)

“I’ve never been free my whole life. Inside I’ve always chased myself”

– Clarice Lispector (Breath of Life)

Side note: This video from one of my favourite creators inspired me to seek out Clarice’s work, and I’m so grateful.

I have always been chasing the answers, always looking for some bigger meaning. For something to come hit me with everything I need to know. But that’s just not how life works, is it?

The truth is, I will never ‘find’ myself because I am not a landmark or a location. I’m not something you can mark on a map and head towards – because that would be too easy!

Instead, I have to make myself every single day. I have to wake up and meet the woman I am going to be for that day, that hour, that moment – form myself into who I want or need to be right now based on everything I know, have done, and want to do.

‘Finding myself’ is never going to be completed. I’m never going to feel settled and 100% confident of the person I am because I’m always going to change.

Maybe it’s because I think too much; because I’m a creative person – it could be because I’m a Pisces and we’re fluid like the water that rules our sign. Whatever the reason, I need to understand that I will never have the answers, I will never truly know.

All I can do is show up every day and continue to learn so I can make my journey easier every day. Make the transition from each new version of myself to the next more seamless with everything I absorb from the world.

Speak soon,

Rachael.

Photo by Simone Dinoia on Unsplash