Navel, Navel

Navel gazing alert. If you are of weak constitution, avert your eyes.

I've been pondering the issue of identity lately. I've had three little events, wholly separate, pushing me down this path.

The other day, I was chatting with a friend. He's one of those people who has a good sense of who he is . . . he is comfortable being himself. I like that trait in people. He told me that when he was a child, he was abandoned by his mother. He ended up being reared by his stepfather and his stepfather's next wife. When he was a young adult, he legally changed his name to take his stepfather's name. He did this because identifying with the good and decent man who took him in when he really wasn't obligated to was a big part of his identity. My comment was, sounds like you found the right family, it just took you a while.

Then, while organizing my closet, I came across a letter. This letter started me down a rocky path. It was from someone I thought of as the best friendship I'd ever had outside my partnership with the Phenom. Part of my relationship was based on the identity I assigned to this person, the identity she worked hard to create for herself, and how I identified myself in relation to this person. This letter shattered all of that. I've come to accept that at some point, who really knows when, my friend stopped being the person she thought of herself as . . . the person I thought of her as being. Now, she's crafting a whole new identity for herself, and my definition of myself has been forced to change too.

Lastly, this week I received a note from a very old friend . . . one of those people you use to never go a day without seeing but over the years grew apart and now your friendship is mainly polite, intermittent exchanges. Even into adulthood, she struggled with her identity. She finally, probably later than many people do these days, became comfortable with being a lesbian. But, not before at least one abusive relationship and a round or two with substance abuse. My friend, explained in her note that her partner has discovered that he is transgendered and will be creating a male oriented identity. I've never met my friend's partner, but I immediately worried what this would mean for my friend and her own identity she worked so hard to accept.

And, I realize that one of the great privileges in my life is that I became comfortable with my monkeyness fairly early in life.