That title is not only for this blog post, but it's also the current working title of my (what was) SAVING PAIGES rewrite. Switch the arrangement around and you get Who Are We?
My new rewrite is about delving into yourself, looking for those dark corners and how they affect your life. It's about everything a person is in their entirety; the good, the bad, the recovering, the sensitivity. In it, a strong friendship crumbles because neither person can confide in the other about who they really are. Or, rather, one is very honest in all her flaws and the other can't speak a thought unless it is clear to them. When it fails to become clear, they harbor the bad feelings, causing a rift in the friendship. As I've mentioned, this story of the friends comes from a personal place, but this story is also prompting me to look inside myself as a person.
Here is the answer that I've found: I do not know who I am, what I like, how I write. I'm composed of everything around me and not just in the casual inspiration sort of way. Sometimes, when I'm shopping, I've tried to adopt other people's personalities into my own that I don't even know what I like. I'll cut my hair because some famous Instagram girl has, and then I'll spend months growing it out because another account has done so. Everything is so jumbled up in this brain.
I have a favourite kpop group called BTS and they launched a UNICEF campaign about Loving Yourself, released an album about self love and I, a person who has never been content with any aspect of myself, felt like I could benefit from that sort of concept. But then it occured to me in the deepest of guilt waves over this last week: I cannot love myself because I don't know who I am. Even in the smallest writing senses of adopting the writing style of whatever book I last read, I alter my style. Somehow, it never feels like growth. It feels like I'm lost in wanting to be everyone around me because I don't enjoy any remnants of myself that's left.
I had a Thing with my friend this last week, involving how a lot of myself has come from her. A little beyond inspiration. It's became a heavy, unhealthy dependence that I could never open up about. It only came to light when what I was doing got to her so much that she had to make me aware that she knew. This last week I've been trying to work out how to deal with the guilt of copying another person's look, often trying to mirror it, and how that affects them. I haven't worked that out yet, but each time I glance at my reflection now, I keep wondering how the hell I am because I don't know. I've lost myself so wholly that I don't even know my favourite colour is anymore. I wear pink because others that I admire wear pink when I don't even like the colour all that much. I wear hooped earrings now because it fits an aesthetic I want but don't own when, for years, I laughed at people for having hoops hanging out their earlobes.
About a year ago, I threw out a lot of old clothes, reminders of how I failed to know how to compose my appearance. During that time, I got a lot of comments about things I couldn't necessarily change, or wasn't ready to. I took those comments on-board to an unhealthy degree and began to think, "If I look like the people making these comments, how can I go wrong?" I took large snippets of my friends' looks--even people I don't know on Instagram, I will obsessively search to find the same aesthetic that they own and I just look silly copying--buried everything I was, and tried to rebirth myself, as such.
In a sense, it worked. I got more compliments from people who didn't know what I was doing, the fraud I felt like. I tried to make every look I did my own, tried to pass it off as my original when it wasn't. It was always a copy, and again, not in a harmless inspired way. I was going to unhealthy extremes to copy off someone's outfit, their makeup design, generally making every time I looked at something toxic.
Writing WHO WE ARE is forcing me to do a lot of self-reflection, to forgive my broken brain for not ever being happy with everything Bryony (and Shane) Reid is. It's forcing me to accept recovery, to style my hair in a particular way because I like it, and not veer towards another style because it's what someone else sports. When I write contemporary stories, it's always to work through a personal issue. When I began this story, I thought it was to get over the heartbreak a friendship brought. Now, I've realised it might be to get over myself. To get over this constant lack of "not good enough" feeling I have. Why am I, in myself, not good enough for me? I don't know why my mind thinks I'm not good enough until I look like someone else, until I adopt their mannerisms and ways and speech. That's my own issue and I need to stop putting it on others and causing them to form problems through it, because I have.
WHO WE ARE is a book that highlights the differences between friends and how those differences can exist in harmony until they become toxic. I am trying to rediscover my differences and embrace them once more rather than try to fit myself into moulds already taken shape. Moulds that aren't mine to fill. In this story, there are several important characters: there's Nina, who is suffering. There's Beth, who has suffered, still suffers when the bad hits, but helps Nina find the brighter side. There's Simon, who has recovered and endures the occasional knock-backs but he tries to simplify everything when Nina's anxious brain spirals it out of proportion. She has irrational thinking: she's upset her friend once and Oh, God, her friend is going to leave her forever. She makes one mistake in an assignment: wow! She is going to fail college! That sort of thing. WHO WE ARE is the emotional journey of Nina rationalising her thoughts and growing emotionally as a person and accepting herself for being different to her best friend.
I'm not entirely sure when it will be published as I'm still self-publishing this story, but I can't wait to share it with you all, and hopefully come out as a better person on the other end. <3
