The Identity struggle. Who am I online?

We all have different ways of how we choose to present ourselves in social media or how we use it and why. It is an inseparable beast of today’s society and somewhere along the way I have chosen to have my face out there and create online content.

Growing up without a father figure might have made me a person who seeks her value and validation from outside, from her peers, and teachers, which puts me at the mercy of others.

I used to have the best grades in school, and always do my homework, so I could be praised and rewarded and would not disappoint anyone. Then got sucked into social media and posting, to have that endorphin hit when somebody replied or liked anything I showed. It created an invisible feedback system of my self-worth in my mind. I feel like I always had this inner entertainer, who grew out of this need to be seen, appreciated, and praised. I wanted to be special and always the most interesting person in the room, relaying my worth on my knowledge and social connections.

I feel like up to recently this has been my basic model of seeing and crafting my self-worth – through how much others needed me or thought of me, which of course I will never truly know, so it is just based on speculation and imagination. This need of validation is not a separate and shameful part of me - it is my shadow. I can reshape it from something that has grown out of pain, into a great talent and integrate it fully with awareness, step by step.

So the online identity – is something unprecedented to which we have to craft our own handbooks. We are trying to truly understand how to swim in these oceans only in recent years, no one of our ancestors had the problem of disassociation from reality and identity struggles due to the unlimited information stream ready at their fingertips.

What are my thoughts or what are the thoughts and ideas I have read already somewhere? What are my values or what are desired values of me in this society? What are my talents and calling and what will people think of me when I post this or that? Constantly mirroring and throwing different perceptions from imagined others onto yourself is very tiring.

You might decide – nah and hide and shy away from the social world entirely, which is a reasonable response to this madness, or you might want to tame the beast and find how social media can benefit you and others, I am choosing the second.

I have heard criticism, that it doesn’t seem like the real me on social media, and I fully realize how that might seem so. After all, it is not often in real life that I fully have the confidence to go into the topics that I am interested in and remember all I want to say, or to find ways to authentically express myself and have trust that the receiving end will truly listen. It is easier for me to put that online. I know it is important time and time again to remind – that anything you see online is not 100% reality, it is a curated picture, a video or a thought frozen in time, in between an endless stream of other pictures or videos.

But then again – I refuse to disidentify with my social me, because that IS also me. We are multi-layered beings. It is me who had time to sit down and think through what I want to write, to come to conclusion in my own time and share that. It is me who loves editing pictures and aligning text in frames or putting together a video. It is me who loves creating beauty and sharing what resonates with her at that time. It is me who is confident and willing to learn by putting myself out there for scrutiny. It is me who scrolls the photos and memes and reads what others have to share and it is me who does that for the validation of herself.

Identity for me has always seemed such a fluid thing, I don’t think I have attached myself fully to one. I went through emo phase, where attaching myself to that identity was a serious task, but I grew out of it and morphed into the next one. Then, like a shape-shifting beast I tried on many different forms, of who I could be, and now I feel like I am shuffling them all to actually, sorry for sounding corny again – to really heal and integrate the best and the worst of them because - I am all of them!

I am the emo kid, I am the horse girl, I am the vintage London girl and I am this Agnese who is crafting her Self Actualization process and trying to integrate all the learnings on her way.

My only wish is that I can somehow truly, humbly, through my errors and trials share my journey and what is true for me.

Why share online then?

Because it is the outlet I know and feel called to. Because I want to create conversations and receive feedback, to feel less alone. To feel useful and seen. To maybe down the road hope that my journey can inspire or serve as a lesson for others.

That’s it.

It either resonates or not, and I am done feeling small and apologizing for how I am changing and expressing myself.

My promise is to stay truthful to myself and honor my process and keep learning and exploring how to communicate on social media and in real life in more authentic ways.

All I ask is trust and acceptance.

Love and potato crisps!

-Agnese