Pop Culture Messed With My Sense of Self

I am sincerely learning how to really show up for myself. It’s not by cramping yourself into areas you don’t fit into, but by generously giving yourself love when you cage yourself in.

I have a suitcase full of fears today. More than I ever had as a child. This bag of fears sneaks up on me.

Still, I initiated extensive self-help. This work hasn’t made me confident.

Social media has made me insecure.

I am guarded, but I am not careful with details. I try to stand without being finicky, tell drawn-out stories, and teach 8th graders explanations to questions I am still interpreting. Still, I am terribly afraid of driving and making the first move. The tough part of living in this age is constantly making access to your true self bulletproof, whether it is the strategic “no filter” filter or proofreading and second guessing the caption too many times.

Pop culture taught me that identity is something to be performed. That if you create the right routines, the right lighting, the right character, you will find the finished version of you. It convinced me to measure my life in “eras” rather than focusing on the big picture. To reinvent myself when I feel tired instead of resting. I learned that I am only confident if I am loud, sexy, and feminine. And I am constantly falling behind.

So I tried to become the girls on my screen who always seem so sure of who they are. The girls with the morning routines that feel holy, interests that look well on camera, clean-girl opinions. And somewhere along the way, I mixed up being perceived with being known.

What’s ironic is that the more self-aware I became, the more fragile I began to feel. Once you begin to pay attention, you notice every little crack. Each hesitation. The place where you’re still waiting for somebody’s permission. Pop culture never readies you for the slow, unglamorous part.

I think that is what scares me about myself. I am afraid of making declarations. It’s like I am saying, this is what matters to me now, without knowing if it will still matter to me in a year. I’m afraid of being wrong. Of being too sincere in a world that gives fake niceties. Of loving something so much only to embarrassingly lose it later.

And yet, there are pieces of me that I still hold on to. 

I still write. I still teach. I still speak loudly about what I’m still learning.

Perhaps pop culture didn’t ruin my sense of self. Maybe it just hid it. Maybe all of the uncertainty and anxiety is part of the undoing. Like a necessary pause before I choose myself again.

For now, that feels like enough.