Who am I?

On Saturday I am giving talk . The organiser wanted people who had been through life transformations. Having morphed from being a scientist to doing holistic therapies and giving psychic readings I felt I had a story to tell so I approached him and he was interested and said he would love me to give a talk.

I have been finishing off the talk today. And although its the ‘only’ my life story, it was a tough talk to write. I have all the facts in my head, it was trying to sort out what to put in, what to leave out that was hard.

But writing it I was confronting a fundamental question ‘ Who am I’

I have a friend who has dissociative identity disorder. The person I know cannot go out, so another party of her “S” goes out when that is needed. While most of us do not have such distinct parts, most can identify a number of different personae. Husband or wife, parent, worker, lover, friend, football fan……….fill in the blank with your own words!……………………………and they will all bring out different sides of us, need different skills, thoughts.

Whoever S is she has the confidence to go out and deal with the world in a way my friend cannot. But she is part of my friend….as is the part that loves scotch eggs, and drinks black coffee something my friend cannot abide.

It struck me writing my talk that I have as many parts to me as she does. the only difference is I am always in control of what I do whenever I am doing it. When S or A takes over, my friend phases out and she will ‘wake up’ hours or minutes later with no memory of what has been going on. She sometimes find unexpected cakes that she has made….and lucky her , can phase out whenever house work needs to be done!

I am a very different person now compared to 30, 20 or even 5 years ago. Its called ‘growing’ ‘developing’ The way I see it, ‘I’ needed to grow to become the person I was meant to be. So maybe the question isn’t ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Who will I become?’……and I know that is a question all the parts of my friend want to know.