The Question of Identity

Personally, identity was not something I had decided to question myself until my transition to highs chool. It was not a subject that consistently came up, or had thought about since I felt comfort within myself as a person. This led me to assume that my whole being and values were set, that there was no need for any improvement since I thought that there was nothing much to improve on. I moved often prior to entering high school and because of this, I was able to witness different experiences and learn about the lives of various people. Through these encounters,  I too was able to question myself and who I considered myself to be.

I could remember the beautiful paintings made by my classmates that hung on the hallways as I walked by them to enter the classroom where my friend gestured me to come. She was going to tell me about something very important, and when she did, all I could respond was “what does bi mean?” When I said that in response she was neither shocked nor dumbfounded because she knew the kind of household that I grew up in.

After my friend discussed with me about her sexuality, I began to wonder about myself. My family never really told me what being gay was, and this resulted me to have the lack of knowledge to understand a part of myself. Maya Salam, the writer of an article titled, They Challenged the Status Quo said, “Truth is, I’ve had to fight my whole life because of who I am, who I love and where I started.” In this quote the author expresses her emotions of the process that she went through to understand herself. Throughout her life she had struggles of trying to comprehend herself as a person who is gay. Being bisexual myself, I also struggled with understanding my identity, which led me to eventually fear it. Admitting my identity when it was still an ambiguous blob made me more malleable, in which resulted in unsure changes about myself.

In my time spent in California, I realized that, compared to before, I had a new understanding of myself. As I often went out in California and socialized with a multitude of people, I realized how privileged I was as a person to have the time to figure myself out. However, meeting people is not the same is understanding their individual experiences. I mistook certain things and assumed others to be something they were not while forming generalized  ideas of who they were. I learned that attempting to comprehend others distracted me from paying attention to my own identity, but learning from others is not unfavorable. Perhaps if I had my own sense of self and values to begin with, I could have learned from others the way that parents teach their children.

In the Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway discusses about his relationship with his father. He says an important life lesson that his father shared with him. “Whenever you feel like criticising anyone,  he told me, just remember everyone in the world hasn't had the same advantages as you.” Fitzgerald says this in his book to express that he felt inclined to keep all judgements about others. I can connect to this in the sense that not everyone is going to have a complete understanding of someone else no matter how one will try to understand. Before assuming   the identity of others, it is crucial to remember that others have a different life from your own. It is complicated to fathom a life experience other than the one you have now. No matter how many times someone says to “put yourself into someone else's shoes,” what extent can you actually understand another human being when the advantages that each person has in life is different?

Since I believe in some cases that people shape others to be who they are there is always something new to learn about yourself. Identity is not set because sometimes there is always a new aspect of yourself that you learn, because identity can often alter depending on the situation or environment you are in. Back then I never questioned myself since there were terms that I never knew, but through people I was able to be more knowledgeable; to take pieces of others and use that to shape myself. In the end, however, it was quite risky to do that because you can distract yourself from your own identity, but it is not an imperfect thing, only because we are affected by others constantly.