My Missing Identity

What made me so different?  Why did I lose myself the minute I was around others?

My Missing Identity
  by Rachel Kelly

Looking back.... growing up, there were certain things that I knew for sure about myself.

I loved creating Art.

I loved Nature and Animals.

I loved Reading and Writing Stories.

I loved Music.

I loved learning about God.

I didn't love tags in my clothes.

I didn't love routine disruption.

I didn't love loud or raucous environments.

When I got around other people, I would tend to lose all that.  I would copy, mimic, study... and change.  Blend in.  Become them.  I don't think I ever had a conscious thought about it.

The older I got, the more I learned to camouflage.  Look like those around me.  Especially when the time came when the cliques were established and I became more an outsider. I still never had a conscious thought about it.

I wanted to badly to be like the girls that were confident, liked, and secure in themselves.

I never understood why I felt so different.  Literally like an alien.  I would study them and could not figure it out.

What made me so different?  Why did I lose myself the minute I was around others?

By the time high school came around, I was lost.  The minute I hooked up with a troublemaker, my decent to the pit began.  Miserable with the environment I had placed myself in, I surrendered to addictions to cope with the life I had created, rather than create a new one.

Miraculously, I escaped from that miserable existence after a decade and began the very slow journey of finding myself. 

I thought that journey was over in my 40s.  Living a completely opposite life from my 20s.  

Then came the BEFORE AND AFTER chasm in my life - an Autism Diagnosis - that came suddenly, unsolicited, but oh-so-unexpectedly joyous.

THE MISSING PIECE.

So, here I am on the cusp of 50, finally, stepping into myself.  Seeing a glimpse of my true identity, now that I know what I didn't before.

And guess what?

I am an Artist.

I am a Nature Lover.

I am a Writer.

I am a Music Lover.

I am a Christian.

I am Sensory Avoidant (yet seeking).

And now...

I am a Mother.

I am a Wife.

I am Autistic.

-RK

  by Rachel Kelly

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