I hate to use the slippery word "identity," but essentially that's what I want to talk about. In the past week, the concept of "identity" has come up a lot in my life. First, in my friend G's blog: "We have identities based on contraction. The basic premise behind this is how we come to a point of self actualization in our lives, and are curious about why/how it comes when it comes. We see ourselves as changing beings and don't understand how we got here...In this process as well, there is an opportunity to reflect on our life before, and how we have shed this old skin and have grown a beautiful and different new layer..." And second, in the book I'm reading, Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon: "Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being--not a constant state--that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden.--Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight;" and again: "I can't understand how people can settle for having just one life. I remember we were in English class and we were talking about that poem by--that one guy. David Frost. 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood--' You know this poem, right?...I loved that poem. But I remember thinking to myself: Why? How come you can't travel both? That seemed really unfair to me."
I'm sure these quotes stood out to me because I'm currently going through an identity contraction. And I know exactly why I am. In less than 3 months, I'll be married. I will literally be shedding "old me" ("Mathews," my last name that I've had for a quarter-century and all the memories that are associated with it) so that I may become "new me" (donning my husband's last name "Ware" for the remaining 3 quarters of my life (God willing I live that long)). Off with the Mathews and on with the Ware! It sounds like a simple issue of semantics, you say. Except that I've been catching myself in the mirror lately and have had to stop in my tracks. Who are you? Me asks. You-From-2-Years-Ago would like to know where You-Now came from. And I find myself wondering exactly what G wonders in her blog: How did I get here? I have a full-time job, a house, and I'm getting married in December! How the hell did I grow up so fast? More importantly, how did "old me" come into so many blessings? And hold onto them? The fact of the matter is, there's a ton of evidence stacked against me...after a few years, I've changed. As Chaon quotes Nabokov, I've found a new soul to follow. And yet, you know what? I'm not convinced that this "moment of self actualization," as G calls it, isn't just one looooong moment, one continuous undulation that started the day I was born. While I was "Erin Mathews" for 25 years of my life, and though I'll officially be "Erin Ware" on December 19th, I'm thinking that I've been undulating "Erin Mathews + Ware" my whole life maybe, who knows. So, I'm not shedding anything; I'm simply putting on another layer. Though I'll be retiring the name Erin Mathews in less than 3 months, I won't just be Erin Ware; I'll be both...sort of. And so, in some haphazard and over-my-head way, it seems I've found a way to travel BOTH paths, Mr. Richard Frost. Yeah-hmm.
*image from mosaicmama.com
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