That knot at the pit of your stomach; tied tightly one time, two times, how many times more? Losing yourself, the waking and then haunting realisation that you don’t know who you are.

The pure dread of not knowing if you ever will. Perhaps, in reality, you never did know; that weird feeling that maybe this helps and maybe it doesn’t.

It’s horrid. It’s confusing. It’s exhausting.

I’ve been there a few times. From the books I’ve read and films I’ve watched (since that’s most of my experience with the “normal world”), I gather most teens and young adults will face an identity crisis.

Perhaps they’ll go through a period of losing themselves, perhaps not.

This seems realistic from what I’ve witnessed as a younger sibling, so I’ll go with my belief it is here. Excuse me if it’s not. I’ve seen a few articles about losing yourself written by those much older, but not a nineteen ear old.

I feel like some may laugh at this point; after all, what do I know? Yet I don’t pretend either that I know everything (as nobody does) or that I don’t have many years ahead to continue to find who I am. I only know my journey until now, and I’m here to speak about that.

Or, at least, it felt like that.

I went there when I first became severely chronically ill. Deeper when I faced sight loss and then the inability to be anything but horizontal due to crippling intracranial hypotension in quick succession.

The “losing myself” stage lasted for more time than most would perhaps realise. For several years, I clung onto an outer confidence that didn’t truly exist but acted as a shield for my broken, fragile self.

Back in those years, I would never have imagined that I’d stand here and say “I fell apart”. Even when I first started my blog, every post had to have a bit of “glitter”. It’s only more recently that I go “it doesn’t because that’s not what life is”.

Sure the whole glitter thing was somewhat due to my desperate search for a silver lining in every situation; to be honest, I still have said desperation. However, it was also my desperate desire to go “life with chronic illness is crap but I have it together”.

Here’s where I tell the truth.

News flash (although you’ll already see this coming), I didn’t, I don’t and I probably never will. The reality is I stayed in said “losing myself” stage, it just evolved; perhaps it wasn’t several times like I thought.

See writing really is therapy, you do all the actions: talk, cry, smile, learn and walk away but sometimes you continue to return to the “problem” not always noticing it’s the same one. You don’t have the other person there to see that and let you know though.

Furthermore, I’ve had crippling self esteem & confidence for much longer than I’d care to admit; one of the things it stopped me from doing was finding who I really was and living as them. Writing those words is both liberating and startling, because they set me free and yet I hid from them for years.

Then last year was a rollercoaster. The start was pretty hellish, although I joined a virtual group run by a local charity I had never heard of before. I turned eighteen, which quite frankly was terrifying, and I began Open University, which didn’t go too well.

It was a challenging process. I had more surgery when I was supposed to be studying. I had to postpone my studies which I’d carefully planned around my health (a part time version of the part time course). I also knew that more surgeries were (and still are) coming. And I was falling apart. It was terrifying and so utterly frustrating. I cried a lot. I also screamed.

I have a problem: I don’t know how to say this next part. That’s a lie. The problem is it hurts. It hurts so bloody much and, like I have done so many times, I want to walk away. Run away, more like.

But the ringing in of 2022 and everything that happened even in the first couple of months made me start to sit up and take note of the fact I deserved better. I deserved to face that pain because not doing so was far more brutal and trapping than doing so ever could be.

Society told me I was “too much”. I listened.

I’ve noticed society’s crap from a very young age. It told a lot about me and I knew it was wrong: I knew that I wasn’t sitting in the corner crying every hour. I knew that I could use a phone, even study computer science. I knew a lot.

I didn’t know that I wasn’t “too much” and I didn’t properly open about this until last year when everything started crashing down around me. I had tried to shut off parts of me, big parts, not wanting to be even more “too much”.

I had stayed (virtually for the most part) around people who didn’t love me for even what I was then willing (or had) to show, because why would they? I had hated myself because I wanted to be what society said (and still does say) I should be.

Things happened at the beginning of last year that made me start to crumble. It wasn’t that I suddenly believed that I wasn’t too much. It wasn’t that I suddenly believed that what my family had been desperately telling me for years was right: they loved me for me and would always do, not because they “had to” (by any shape of my imagination). Or that I thought I was lovable by others in the world.

It was that I’d had too much.

Even if I wasn’t consciously ready, I couldn’t keep going like I had. It was honestly terrifying because I’d dug such a big hole through my mirroring of society. But I couldn’t keep lying to myself. Even if the world completely rejected me, I couldn’t keep hurting myself day-in-day-out pretending to be something and someone I’m not.

Everything that happened with university caused me to break down quite honestly. I think one pressure was that I wasn’t as accepting as I needed to be for myself yet. It was like a kettle, it had simmered for way too long and now it was ragingly boiled.

I had a journey to acknowledge I was on and my soul, exhausted of the restraints and hatred I’d put onto myself (when life already gave many), made me do so. I had a journey to make steps upon that, with acceptance, grew less and less painful. It was still terrifying especially whilst I was losing myself in so many ways, but it’s growingly less painful.

That group I mentioned earlier helped enormously. I met my best bud there. I met the knowledge that I’m not “too much” and that I am lovable to those other than family through there. I met the courage to join an online space where I met my wonderful girlfriend and other good friends.

In reality, it was a massive starting point and changed my life significantly and for the better. I’ve had so many more people to love me for who I am and who I can give and hold my hand through this tricky path. In the end, it was losing myself that led me to finding myself and acknowledging who I really am in so many ways and accepting my future as I wanted it as far as I could choose.

Lots Of Love,

& Big Gentle Hugs,

Tig x

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