The Knife

Who I Am

I don't know who I am.

I don't mean that like I don't know my name or my age or where I'm from, though sometimes those facts also get blurry in the moments nothing feels real.

I don't mean I don't know my favorite color. It's blue. Or at least that was the color I picked to be my favorite as a small child. For a while I'd changed it to blue and pink as I got older, but I dropped the pink after a while when my connection to it also fell. I don't know when I stopped feeling as connected to blue, but I keep it anyway because I don't know what else to switch it with. And it's not like I stopped liking the color.

I don't mean I don't know what I look like. Blond hair, blue eyes, not fat but not skinny enough to feel like I'm pretty. Though I guess that's society's doing. I know I'm at a healthy weight. If I could change how I looked I'd have more freckles too. I love the ones I do have. I also love my eyes. They shift between blue and gray and sometimes green. I got them from my mom, though hers don't shift to green, that part comes from my dad's hazel eyes. They're the only thing about me I've always liked. And even they don't always feel like mine, on the days I look in the mirror so disconnected from myself I can't recognize the girl staring back at me. I know those eyes. But it feels like I stole them from someone else. Just like my memories and everything else.

I don't mean I can't list facts about my personality. I'm creative and funny, but I'm also stubborn as hell. Or so that's what people tell me. They could be lying. I would never know. I can't actually answer that question on my own.

People say be yourself, but what does that actually mean when I have so many versions of myself? Each one carefully crafted for every person I meet and every situation I'm in, and even different ones for when I'm by myself because I don't know what mix of the crafted ones to pick.

I love books and music and talking to friends. I love drawing and making random Tik Tok edits. Swimming and even hiking for a long time. I barley do those last 2 anymore. I don't enjoy it as much as I used to. The things I do still enjoy have one thing in common though: distraction. Except for writing. That's the only time I truly feel alive is when I'm in someone else's journey. But I guess the distraction makes up for all the time I can't leave reality and overthink until I'm on the floor with tears pouring down my face, screaming for the thoughts to just shut up.

I could say I'm a mentally ill, traumatized teen, but that's more a fact then a personality trait. It's not something I picked or can give up on, trade out for another trait. All I can do is ignore it, a method that always fails me. And yet that non description is the closest answer I have to who I really am.

I used to know who I was. I knew when I was 4 when I first got abused. I knew when I was 6 when my best friend tried to stab out my eye. I knew who I was when my parents stopped living together at 7 and when I got abused again at 8. I knew who I was years later in fifth grade after so much more had happened. Or maybe fifth grade is when the little chips at who I was finally turned to cracks. And as the years went on, I finally just shattered. I've done my best to put back together the pieces, but it's hard to do that when I'm missing so many. So I grab the broken pieces from other cups around me and force them to fit only to break down when it doesn't work.

I don't know who I am.

I don't mean from the surface, the parts that everyone can see, or even just below the surface. I mean deep inside, where the only thing is darkness.

Cold

Dark

And empty

Where maybe...

I don't really exist at all.

***

8/19/2022