Sometimes I find my mind wandering over the topic of who I am as a person. Our whole lives we are told that we are one of a kind, a unique person that is the only copy in existence.
But, more recently I have been thinking that I cannot even claim my individuality to be of my own creation. I may live in my mind alone, and no one is exactly me, but I don't believe that I am who I am because of me, or my choice. The longer I think about it, how could I possibly take credit for my identity as a human? I am just the embodiment of everything other people have told me.
My music taste is mostly based on what other people who I am often around listen to, my sense of style is based on how other's have told me to dress, my beliefs aren't even my own. It's as though I am a shadow of every person who is, and has ever been in my life. Do I pursue the things that I do because of me, or what I have picked up from others? It's a curious thought, that I might be different if only one person weren't in my life. Or that if someone I'd met changed, that I might unknowingly change myself too.
There is no way to know if this is fact or fiction, so I can pretend that I am of my design and take credit for it, but the underlying dread lingers still. I am who I am, because others have told me, and I have accepted. I am who I am because of societal expectations I cannot fight, the expectations that have been passed onto my family, my friends, they believe and follow so I too must follow.
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