Becoming, Lucy

Everything I enjoy feels like a lie. It feels as though I’m acting out a script I didn’t write or have a say in but find myself acting it out anyway. Everything feels rehearsed. “Do I even like this?” Or do I just like the idea of being someone who does?

Flowers, music, clothes, books – all of it. None of it feels… right. It feels chosen, but not by me.

I often notice myself liking something and then immediately questioning it. For example, the other day I found myself looking at my books on my shelf, admiring them, thinking about the next fictional tale I’ll find myself in but then: “you don’t even enjoy reading” could be heard from the corners of my mind in my own damn voice. The thought left as quick as it arrived but then I noticed it again when I was queuing a bunch of songs for my drive the next day. I was hovering over a band I’ve been listening to a lot lately and: “you only like them because you feel like you should.”

The more those thoughts linger, I find myself wondering if anything I like is truly out of my own choice. What if I only read because my best friend does and it gives us something to talk about? What if I only like that band because fans of another band I (apparently) like, like both bands? Why does everything I enjoy feel… forced?

And these thoughts feel even more solidified when people ask those basic ‘get to know you’ questions. What’s your favourite colour? What’s your favourite flower? Your favourite song? Sunset or sunrise?

I don’t fucking know? Am I meant to have favourites? I find myself analysing my answer, thinking really damn hard about something that should be straightforward or is apparently straightforward to everyone else. I find myself searching for the correct answer rather than what is true. Am I trying to appease people? Am I trying to be liked? Am I that fucking desperate? Because the ‘correct answer’ is usually what I think people want to hear and if I give them the wrong answer… The thought makes something in my stomach twist uncomfortably.

I’ve just remembered two examples of when I liked something simply because I thought I should, not because I actually did. One Direction and the colour pink. I remember these because I was trying hard to fit in within my first year of secondary school, trying to find my footing and I went to lengths to prove myself. Fair enough I was a pre-teen and easily influenced but what if everything I still enjoy now in my adult life, I was influenced to like? Because I thought I should? What if nothing was ever my choice? Was it my choice to be influenced? Ah shit. I don’t know. Send a psychiatrist in to tell me I’m fucked.

Maybe I’m just too aware of being influenced and that’s why nothing feels like an original thought. Is it possible for a human brain to have a thought that isn’t influenced? And if that’s true… Then I’m holding myself to a different standard to everyone else.

Maybe the questioning started when I was a pre-teen trying to find my way. Or maybe it was even earlier when I was questioned for liking something someone else didn’t and I was made to feel small. Because liking the wrong thing must mean something about me is wrong too. Or maybe it started when I was a teen and I admitted to myself I never liked the things I said I did – One Direction, the colour pink – so the doubt started creeping in about everything else.

Consistency feels like the only way I can decide whether I actually enjoy something. Consistency means it stuck around long enough that my nervous system recognises it as something I enjoy. It means I’m not faking my reaction because it’s all chemical. But then that minimises everything I have grown out of. It would mean I never really enjoyed those previous things and what does that say about things that aren’t hobbies and interests? What does that say about my previous relationship? That I never really loved them? Or does it mean I changed? Ugh. What the fuck?

What if I’m just a damn sheep? Is that the issue? I can’t decipher it. Am I copying? Am I original? Is nothing truly original? What if I’m only interested in something because I thought it was completely original and I didn’t want to be like anyone else? What if it’s opposite? Seconds away from spiralling, great.

I don’t know why it matters so much that the choices are mine. But if they’re not mine… Will I ever truly know who I am or will I constantly be trying to verify myself? Is ‘becoming’ just questioning myself like this repeatedly? Or is ‘becoming’ when I begin to question myself less?

The self-doubt is always whilst I’m enjoying something, never before I sit down to do the thing. I question myself mid-task, mid-thought. It’s almost as though I don’t trust my own identity… Fuck. It’s because I don’t trust happiness when it arrives so I find a way to sabotage it. Lol. Hey Lucy, haven’t you already written about this? Yes. Yes I have. If I enjoy something and find happiness in it – it feels undeserved almost as though I haven’t earned the right to get enjoyment out of it. What’s the point in feeling happiness if it’s just going to get stripped away anyway? Well, isn’t that a glass half-empty point of view.

I won’t lie I don’t know how to stop questioning myself. I can’t decide if it’s helping or limiting me. But I think I will always question myself and my happiness. Maybe not always so negatively, not always in a way that makes me spiral. But because I have to. Because it’s what stops me from fully feeling things and if I allow myself to fully feel happiness then what happens if I can’t switch off the ‘feel fully’ button when negative emotions occur? I might go back to surviving and I don’t want to be there again.

I guess my answer to the things I enjoy/like is somewhere in: if nothing else existed, no past influences and no one else’s opinion, what would I choose to keep? The only thing I feel certain on is Lego. Very random, I know, but I used to love it as a kid and now my son is in his Lego phase – I find myself enjoying it just as much still. It quietens my mind like nothing else can.

The colour white – or shade, or whatever you want to say it is – I think that’s my favourite colour. Like the moon, stars, clouds, lightening, seafoam and my favourite flower – daisies.

I guess I do know some things… Even if I am currently questioning them.