Building an identity that remains
Inertia — 210
"Your identity should be so secure that when someone walks away from you they don't take you with them."
— Unknown
I once collected people into my life as easily as plucking shells along a shore. with each one—a friend, partner, or mentor—I’d take their ways and pocket the parts I wanted to become. Her confidence. His humour. Their certainty about the world. I thought this was how you form an identity.
Like pulling together a collage of magazine clippings. Isn’t it? And by my twenties, I was a mosaic of borrowed pieces; speaking in taken phrases and laughing with a forced cadence. My style was a bit individualistic but mostly based on whoever had most recently called me interesting at the time. But I learned that if you are everyone, then you are no one. When people started walking away, as they often did.
Some people move across the country and lose any remaining will to keep in touch, while other relationships simply fall under their own weight. Each time, they seemed to carry away the pieces I borrowed, leaving me lost with the holes left behind in the shape of their absence.
It’s a strange pain, conceding you can become so diffused among others that their departure leaves you diminished. Half-empty.
Identity isn’t found with imitation but with excavation. It exists beneath that surface of noise and layers of who we think we should be. Instead of focusing on giving time to everything you hear, look at what’s capturing your mind through it all and develop your self through that. Because identity is bound by presence. It’s what you see left after stripping almost everything else away.
Borrowed identities always collapse. They require constant maintenance, adjusting your thoughts, preferences, and behaviours to match the template you’ve chosen or the terrain you’re in. Exhausting work, this constant recalibration. And ultimately futile. Because authenticity will leak through the roof no matter how carefully you act.
The irony of it all is we imitate others to be seen, to be known. Yet, in doing so, we hide ourselves further. The more we pretend, the more we bury ourselves in the noise.
There’s a difference between influence and imitation. To be influenced is to take what resonates and integrate it into a foundation you already laid. To imitate is to abandon that foundation altogether.
Listen to your quiet preferences. Those small and seemingly insignificant choices we make when no one is watching. Are you drawn to cities or open spaces? Do you prefer sunrise or sunset? Do you need more or less time alone compared to other people? These inclinations are breadcrumbs leading you back to yourself. And recognise that discomfort is the potential doorway to authenticity. That unease you feel in certain conversations, relationships, or environments? It’s not always something you want to overcome. Sometimes it’s your real self, shooting flares, signalling a misalignment somewhere.
Last of all, integrity isn’t the same as rigidity. It’s a consistency of core rather than outward behaviour—the way branches of a tree chop and change while the roots remain anchored.
I still catch myself sometimes, trying on someone else's words or mannerisms. But now I recognise the impulse for what it is. It’s freeing to know that who you are is enough. And when your identity is anchored in self-knowledge rather than external validation, other people can leave, but they only take themselves. They do not take what was never theirs, nor do you.
Your laugh remains yours. Your beliefs remain yours. And your path remains your path.
In that security is freedom; love without clinging, connect without merging, and walk with others without ever wandering too far.
Perhaps that's the purest form of identity: not a fixed state but a continuous coming home to yourself, again and again, regardless of who stays or who goes.