Mental Health
Growing Up Gryffindor — Managing My Darkness When Magic Seems Far Out of Reach
Who do you become when you no longer want to be yourself?
“You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that no? Well, if you’re sure…better be… GRYFFINDOR!”
— The Sorting Hat, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Lumos
Who doesn’t remember the year they fell under Harry Potter’s spell, the summers spent carving away at those CHONKY hardcovers learning about the Boy Who Lived, the struggle against the darkest evil?
I remember exactly where I was when I closed the cover on The Deathly Hallows: It was late July 2011. I was spread out on the carpet while visiting my cousin, and we immediately queued up part one on the television. We watched part two in theaters the same day. This was a marathon dedicated exclusively to witchcraft and wizardry.
I don’t remember much else about being 11. Time tends to do that to you. You tease your parents for not remembering pieces of their childhood and suddenly — obliviate — your own memories start to wax and wane as well.
What I do remember is that I was a chatty sixth-grader.
“I’m so good at making friends. Like, SO good.”
“You’re not any better at making friends than I am though…”
“I make friends everywhere I go. It’s practically a talent.”
“You’re acting like the rest of us don’t do that, too.”
What I remember is a confident, magical young girl.
Obliviate
When I finished high school, I’d already shriveled into a shell of the person I thought I should be. I knew enough to guess that I was depressed. And I’d tried to get out of that nothingness every chance I got.
I dabbled in full moon meditation, collected bra crystals, and learned a thing or two about witchcraft — not the Harry Potter kind but the “spicy psychology” bits you see all over #Witchtok that might eventually have become a personal spiritual practice if you practice consistently enough.
I had no real interest in spellwork or achieving some higher understanding through meditation. I just wanted a change. I’d become so quiet. I wanted to be loud. I wanted to be liked.
I was on the precipice of a major life change: I was headed to the University of Southern California. That’s where the Gryffindors went.
I had done what I needed to do to go to a top-tier university. And that meant I didn’t have to put my life on hold anymore. Studying at a fast-paced university brimming with socialites would force me to become my best self.
…Right?
University halls lined in crimson and gold meant freedom. The opportunity to become someone. I could spend the weekend with friends in Joshua Tree and head back to work on Monday like we hadn’t just uncovered the meaning of life in the desert. I’d find love, perhaps. I’d find out who I really was.
But there would also be a pandemic. Hard classes. Heartaches. Downward mental spirals and daily frustrations. When darkness settles, it helps to have a firm sense of identity. But my identity is tumultuous. It shifts depending on where I am, and who I hope to become.
Who do you become when you no longer want to be yourself?
Confundus
At some point, all of my friends have answered the following question:
You find a strange door in your apartment. You’ve never seen it before. You’re the only one home, and you only have a pen and paper in your pocket. No phone. No tools. Beyond the door, you see a grassy field — another dimension, perhaps. You don’t know how long the door will remain open. Or if you’ll be able to find your way back.
Do you go?
I can never guess what the other person will say. Many self-proclaimed Gryffindors have told me they wouldn’t take that chance, wouldn’t head through that door. And many people I would never suspect theoretically decide to go through.
I don’t think I’d leave this world for another. But I also don’t think I could live with the knowledge that I passed up the adventure.
So here’s where it gets tricky: does this fun, theoretical question translate to my real life? Am I too scared to take chances, to reach out for what’s just out of reach? If I crave change and new beginnings so much, why not run towards the open door?
Petrificus Totalus
It’s difficult to pinpoint what about my personality I wish were different.
Why I’m bitter.
Is it that making friends is inherently difficult?
Is it that life starts to look dull when you strip away the magic of possibility?
When you realize that you’re stuck with yourself, no matter where you run?
Growing up MAJORLY sucks.
I recently noticed that I don’t look forward to anything anymore. I’m a visual thinker. That quality is what made reading fiction as an 11-year-old so thrilling. But I can no longer picture my own narrative, my own future in my head. Or at least I can’t picture anything good.
Even the most Gryffindor of Gryffindors I know are slowly losing their magic over time. Everyone I know is going through the motions. Everyone seems to feel the weight of the fiction leaving. Everyone is defending against something darker creeping in.
Riddikulus
And so at least for a little while, it’s been incredibly difficult to hope that I’ll ever be that extraverted, courageous, adventurous, magical Gryffindor I’ve seen in my mind’s eye. The buzz of anxiety overwhelms everything.
Fear of failure. Fear of the future. Fear that time is running out.
I don’t remember feeling that fear when I was younger. Now, it’s ever-present.
But there is hope. People are not all one thing. After all, Gryffindors value courage, bravery, nerve, and chivalry. But they might lack Slytherin traits like ambition, Hufflepuff traits like justice, or Ravenclaw traits like wit. In the Harry Potter series, friends harness all of these characteristics to fight the darkness facing their world.
Humans are complex creatures. We don’t do well with tiny boxes and reductionist stereotypes.
So why do I:
- Read my horoscope hoping to better understand my flaws
- Re-take MBTI and Enneagram tests to understand how I’ve changed
- Feel like I still haven’t come to terms with my own personality
Why, when everything is going well for me, do I still wish I were a completely different person?
Expecto Patronum
I got a performance review at work yesterday. Apparently, I am perceived as super helpful and social. I’m open to new experiences. Ready to help. I interact with guests at work and thrill them with those aforementioned weird animal facts. I am, after all, succeeding at putting myself out there — even on days when I don’t especially feel like it.
So maybe the problem isn’t that I’m not outgoing are adventurous enough. Maybe it’s something else.
“I don’t think I’m an extrovert, not really. I can fake it, though.”
“I’m a fake extrovert too. Or it’s like 50/50. Introvert. Extrovert.”
“Right down the middle?”
“Right down the middle.”
“Don’t you ever wish you were… an entirely different person?”
“Don’t we all? For the record though, I think you’re a pretty great person already.”
Perhaps the problem isn’t what’s wrong with my personality, but how I can improve.
I still carry those bra crystals, a bracelet that’s supposed to make me “more in tune with my inner energy,” and a little jar of anti-anxiety spices on my desk. I mean, these things can’t possibly hurt. I don’t believe in magic. But I believe that these things can help remind me that we’re supposed to be doing the work over here.
So how can I improve?
I can improve by being the sort of person people can depend on.
By showing up for myself and making plans to celebrate my hours off work.
By being the sort of roommate who takes out the trash.
By expressing myself more fully when interacting with people I trust.
By becoming the sort of relative who calls to check in from time to time.
(Is it just me, or am I seeing a lot of Hufflepuff traits here?)
And along the way, I’d like to better understand how I can cast off the shadows, and how I might build a beefy Patronus that can kick some ass when the time comes.
Maybe I can do that by going back to the beginning.
With every blip or full-blown identity crisis, I also rediscover a part of myself that I really like, a part I’ve forgotten.
I’m reading young adult novels again. And I’m not 100 percent certain that they’re a waste of time. They discuss growing into our place in the world, fate, and our relationships with one another. They discuss weighty topics like trauma and sexuality. And they are relevant to readers of all ages because at every stage, we are all changing, all stepping into the type of person we would like to become.
“To come of age is perhaps the most common ground there could be among readers,” says Virginia Zimmerman, professor of English literature at Bucknell University in an interview with the Atlantic. “Adults recognize it as something they’ve been through, but they also recognize it as something of a fantasy. It suggests some sort of stable existence. And as adults, we know that we continue to change, continue to come of age.”
I’m not quite sure who I want to become, but I know that a becoming is happening, whether I act on it or not. Perhaps that’s what I’m so afraid of — that passive becoming.
“Do you go through the door?”
“For the record though, I think you’re a pretty great person already.”
“Who do you become when you no longer want to be yourself?”
I’d like to become someone who rediscovers her magic and deals with her darkness. Hell, I’ll go on a hero’s journey while I’m at it. And by all accounts, I’ve already been doing that. Becoming is not something you ever outgrow, I assume.
And there’s also this:
“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”
— Sirius Black, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Perhaps I don’t need to change after all. I’m not sure who I’ll become. But I’ve chosen my own adventure thus far, and I get to do that in the future, too.
