Identity of an Inbetweener [Part 1]

"You can look at normal people and want to be like them. But you can’t be. That’s the truth."

Introduction

People are obsessed with identity. Hobbies, clothes, jobs, holiday locations, friends.

The way they speak and what they speak about.

All of what we do is materially bound up with our identity. But what if we don’t know why we do what we do? Does this mean we don’t know our identity?

I think the answer is yes, although not completely. We all do plenty of stuff without knowing why we do it. We are products of our environment after all. We brush our teeth, go to school, hug our parents.  We are shaped by social norms and relationships.

I am talking about a deeper intrinsic malaise where we do things and for some reason don’t feel like ourselves when we do them. In popular parlance this is referred to as a crisis of identity.

This can be defined rather simply, in my view, as a tension between our day-to-day behaviour and our internal thoughts and values. Between the external and internal self.

The Problem

The problem is that we generally don’t have total agency over our day-to-day behaviour. Our thoughts and values are ours. Nobody interferes in an active sense.

No doubt, people can shape your thoughts and values, but unlike your day-to-day behaviour, you still retain agency, privacy and constancy. There is a sense of control. They are who you are. They follow you like a shadow.

The day-to-day, in contrast, is your external world. Highly dynamic, ever-changing, public facing. It is the social world. Your school or job and family and friends. Your drive to work. Your donut after lunch. Depending on your circumstances you may have more or less agency over your day-to-day, but nobody has total agency.

The external world is full of random circumstances and you cannot change it. The external world is what it is. You are a participant, not a manager.

The tension between our thoughts/values and our day-to-day behaviour can manifest itself when we attach more importance to the external world. We try to brute force our way into an identity.

We believe we aren’t being cool enough. We want to be more respected at work. We want more money because this will impress your wife’s rich parents.

We chase, envy and crave a different identity to the one we have. This is because we are more focused on the external. To chase control (or agency) over your external world isn’t necessarily bad. I actually think it is a noble pursuit under certain conditions.

It becomes a problem when we betray ourselves through this pursuit. When there is an irreconcilable conflict between our internal and external identities.

This is the crisis.

And to not just bully the external self, I believe you can also betray yourself by focusing exclusively or predominately on your internal identity.

You claim to master who you are and don’t actualise anything because you take comfort in this position. The material world becomes irrelevant and you claim to have ‘let go’ or ‘come to terms with what you can’t control’.

For me, this is surrender masquerading as enlightenment.

The internal and external worlds you occupy must shape each other and co-exist.

The following sections will, I hope, give you the backdrop to why I’ve come to this conclusion. I’ve always been an inbetweener. Between places, groups, even identities.

Formative Years

I moved around a lot as a child due to unusual family circumstances. Separated parents and a foreign mother. I attended a total of 5 different primary schools across 2 countries.

Secondary school was a bit easier. 2 years in one school and then a move back to my home country where I completed the remaining years in the same school.

I made friends. I had fun. I have good memories. I am not bitter towards my childhood.

At school I wasn’t popular nor was I a nerd and I certainly wasn’t bullied. At least not actively or consistently.

I was an inbetweener. I hung out with people and had fun, but in my head I was always thinking about what was next or if that was it. I never really felt like I belonged.

Not fitting in can be incredibly painful. Social acceptance, friendship and shared experiences are vital for a fulfilling and happy life.

There was a continuous sense of paranoia and fleetingness. That I could lose it all, that people would change on me.

My focus was dominated by what other people were doing or what they were thinking. Highly observant and emotionally aware, I would pick up on micro-rejections or emotions, energy shifts. I had a hierarchy of people in my mind – and wanted acceptance from higher status people.

I cared so much about other people’s identities that I forgot to develop my own. I was constantly adapting to other people and different environments.

This takes a toll on your energy levels. Your physiological state is perpetually tense as it is not living authentically. (Some of this is normal as a teenager by the way.  I am aware of that. It is a formative period in the identity sense and most people struggle with status/popularity).

I was putting people into camps (at least in terms of their external identity). They seemed more confident, less uncertain and more comfortable. People seemed to act consistently within this camp. On the other hand, I was trying to fit into multiple camps.

I was straggling between different groups, different themes and interests. My adaptability which helped me make friends and integrate was also preventing me from settling and embracing any one domain. I had become addicted to keeping my options open. The result was that I didn’t have any great sense of identity or individuality.

Towards the end of secondary school, I was at least starting to realise this. I liked my friends but I could not see myself growing with them. I was finally starting to have some original thoughts of my own. Things were percolating within me.

I felt different to the people in my school. I felt I was capable of more. This sounds arrogant but I felt smarter, more ambitious and deserving of a higher status. This shaped my decision to go to a college much further from my hometown and crucially one where I would be the only student from my school. I was going into the unknown…alone.

College

Looking back now, those thoughts I started having towards the end of secondary school were whispers from my internal identity. Up until that point my external identity was ruling me with an iron fist. This was the introduction of another actor into my life.

Over the next few years, this actor would grow stronger and louder.

Everyone thinks they will find themselves in college. This was partly true for me. The variety of experiences, people, and challenges I faced shaped who I am today.

College was not hanging out with cool friends, having an amazing social life and finding my purpose in life. It came about because of the contrary. I was more alone that I had ever been. Sure, I went out, had great nights, fun memories and made decent friends. This is not a sad story. Two things can be true at the same time.

But it was a grind. I worked hard and often felt on the outside. Like college was passing by in terms of the passage of time but that I was failing to get the most out of it.

I lost so much time in my head.

I struggled to really enjoy the present moment like so many of peers seemed to be doing. I had a foot there and a foot elsewhere. The approach I had taken in secondary school of keeping my options open was continuing but I was more aware of it now, and it was making me more unhappy.

When I lived inauthentically (a term that wasn’t really on my mind at the time but which I’ve since come to understand) I felt empty.

I knew something wasn’t right and that I had diminished myself. Dirtied myself. There was a part of me judging my external behaviour and was shaking its head at it. I have come to identify this as my internal identity.

As I said, this part of my identity only grew louder and stronger as college life unfolded.  There were some pivotal moments for me in this regard:

Internships

I completed two internships in two top law firms. It was a competitive process to get selected and I was proud. These firms make you feel 100 feet tall, smart and exceptional. They feed your ego.

During the course of these two months, I drastically changed as a person. My comportment mirrored that of my senior colleagues. I wanted to fit in so badly and I felt like I belonged to this team. I felt like I  had made it. I started talking like my peers. I started behaving in the way I thought I needed to behave. I got good at it. I became derogatory towards others and quite callous. Corporate and cold.

My objective was to impress people all the time, whether at someone else’s expense or my own expense. And I was pulling it off. My highly thought-out constructed personality was fitting in and I was succeeding.

I would characterise this period as my external identity running me like a tyrant. The internal voice had been locked away in the basement and my external, image-focused and insecure identity was running amok.

Thankfully, the internal voice eventually busted down the door of the basement. I came crashing down from my high. A couple of things happened. A friend called me an asshole with total legitimacy. They said I had become a corporate asshole and that it wasn’t who I was. She was right. The second thing was getting angry and frustrated at my family when they visited me. I lashed out and lost control of myself.

These two incidents shook me out of the phase I was in.  Spending some time alone led me to reflect on my experiences and who I was becoming. I realised I didn’t enjoy the fakeness, the superficiality and the monotony. Office gossip, flirting, drinks, promotion scramble, bitching about the client, sucking up the client…

The whole culture did not align with the person I wanted to be. But I was claiming I wanted to be someone and I didn’t even know who that was. I came to terms that not knowing who I wanted to be was okay as I was realising who I didn’t want to be.

I knew I was destined for more. That life could be different. I was starting to grow that sense of individuality.

Final Year

Final year of college is always different because there is more pressure with exams and the search for future job prospects.

I spent more time alone during this year than at any time in my life up to that point. Not only that, the more time I spent alone the more I realised that I was in peace. This only increased the amount of time I would spend alone.

Even when I was with other people, I was withdrawing myself. I wasn’t as concerned with fitting in. I replaced trying to fit in with observance.

I started observing people’s behaviour with a more questioning mindset. “Do I want to be like this?”; “Do I enjoy this person?” “I am different from this person, and I am happy to be”.

My energy levels were much higher as I didn’t waste so much time trying to be fake. I had more personal power than I’d ever had.

What really jarred me is that I felt people noticed. I felt judged and observed.

Instead of reacting positively, I felt certain people were even more exclusionary towards me. I felt unheard in group conversations, invisible. I felt negative energy and almost jealously towards me. If I was walking with a group, I felt nobody wanted to be side by side with me. I was nervous that people wouldn’t reply in a group chat to my message. I felt like an inconvenience.

I should couch this by stating this was certainly not everyone. It’s funny though. I really felt this from the people whose validation and approval I previously wanted.

Despite growing stronger in myself I still felt vulnerable. I was in a state of flux between resentment towards others and my loneliness, to joy and pride in my personal agency and power.

All of these thoughts are written with the benefit of hindsight. At the time this was an extremely difficult and unusual period. I wasn’t sure if I was in a negative feedback loop of spending more time alone and therefore growing paranoid and anxious when in social situations or whether there was an element of truth to what I was feeling.

The experiences I had in school were consolidated during this period. I never really shook off that feeling of being ‘different’ and ‘unconventional’ after that. It has lived with me ever since but I’ve come to terms with it.

This doesn’t make it any less painful but clearer. And with clarity you can move forward. I’ve realised this part of my life was a battle between my external and internal identities.

_ _ _ _ _

This brings a conclusion to Part 1.

Part 2 will pick up on with an examination of the two next major chapters that shaped my identity. It will also offer some advice on how you discover yourself and embrace your unique identity.